Including 2 Gala Dinners
Ashore on the paradise Isle of Colonsay, home to a seemingly infinite array of wild flowers and birds, enjoy the autumn tints of woodland Colonsay House Gardens, past the sweeping white sands of Kiloran Bay.
Crossing to Castlebay, view the contrasting landscapes of Barra, rimmed with idyllic beaches, and the medieval MacNeil stronghold of Kisimul Castle standing proudly in the bay. Where the rare pink convolvulus still grows, historic Prince's Bay on Eriskay was the Young Pretender's first landfall on Scottish soil before the fateful Jacobite Rising of 1745.
From Lochmaddy pass the lochans and peat moors of North Uist to Barpa Langass and the great Neolithic chambered cairn, the only tomb of its kind in the Western Isles. Across the causeway, taste the delightful isle of Berneray swathed with wild, flower-sprinkled machair and silver sands. From the untold beauty of Harris at Luskentyre, travel through contrasting landscapes to the ancient history of Lewis at the Callanish Stones and Carloway Broch, exploring the rich diversity of this northerly Gaelic heartland. Cruise the Sea of the Hebrides to Skye, where colourful Portree, long associated with the Jacobite cause, was later the scene of sad departures during the Clearances and the Potato Famine.
Still haunted by its decadent Edwardian past, Sir George Bullough's opulent folly, Kinloch Castle, seems a world away from bright, bustling Tobermory, capital of Mull, our final call.
