04-05-2025
This is the easiest way to see the islands of the southern Hebrides
I hadn't realised that we'd joined the ranks of the super-rich until we stepped ashore for the first time.
The Glen Rosa had set out from Oban on a sparkling Saturday afternoon to cruise southwards across a silvery sea hemmed in by hazy shoulders of land. On deck to spot whales and dolphins, we ended up watching the swirling and dimpling of the tide as it barged between the islands of Lunga and Luing, taking us with it.
Then the skipper, Jem Greaves, did the nautical equivalent of a handbrake turn and headed nor'nor'east to where Argyll and Bute waggles its long, bony fingers in the Atlantic. On our port bow we passed the private island of Shuna, owned by Viscount Selby, followed by the remote but lavish Kilchoan estate, where the Chilean multimillionaire Nicolás Ibáñez Scott had his helicopter parked on the lawn.
After this we 'dropped the hook' — that's anchoring to you landlubbers — in Loch Melfort, where the water came to an end in a forested natural amphitheatre filled with birdsong. Chef Damien conjured up a venison tagliatelle, and the rest of the evening was lost in a gentle haze of wine, sunset and the rocking of the Glen Rosa, with the enticing prospect of a late show from the northern lights.
It was next morning that we stepped ashore off Glen Rosa's tender into an armpit-shaped stretch of land at the head of the loch and wandered up to where Melfort House — pink-walled in Arts and Crafts style — and the adjacent Melfort Village were secreted among the trees. At the Village welcome desk — the estate cottages have been turned into an upmarket retreat with swimming pool and tennis courts — the receptionist became very effusive when she realised we were 'off that boat in the bay'.
'Here's my card,' she said, offering to open the restaurant in a minute or two if we cared to wait. I can only surmise that she thought that we were the Glen Rosa's owners; possibly oligarchs looking to add to our assets. That was fine by me. I regularly count myself among the super-rich — albeit in experience rather than in cash.
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I also know what I like and until now I've shied away from mainstream cruising. But this kind of small-boat cruising, inveigling ourselves into narrow inlets and shallow bays unannounced and (virtually) unnoticed, in a part of the world that has always felt like a spiritual home, struck me as a very different proposition.
The Majestic Line, based out of Oban, operates four tiny ships, the largest of which carries just 12 passengers. Most of the fleet tends to head for the northern Hebrides, particularly to the Isle of Skye. But my mother is from there, so I know Skye well, which is why I opted to drop south on a lesser-known 'Southern Hebrides and Sea Lochs of Argyll' itinerary to explore the lands of the lairds and their ladies, along with a personal chef, my wife and a handful of like-minded others.
After that first overnight in Melfort, Greaves turned our bows south again with the glad tidings that the overnight swarm of jellyfish 'hasn't been sucked into the generator inlet, so all's well'. There would be coffee.
Almost every peninsula in Argyll seems to be castle-defended and Duntrune, opposite Crinan where the canal of the same name begins, is no exception. The partly 12th-century tower stands high and austere on a rock supervising the bay, still privately owned and supposedly haunted by a ghost of a handless bagpiper.
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We saw no ghosts, but there was definitely a presence in the abundant castle gardens, reached through a couple of stag-topped gateposts and announced by a sign saying 'You found us! Well done!' The invisible hand had also secreted figures of naked satyrs and nymphs among the azaleas, bronze buttocks among the floribunda.
Returning to the rock below the castle, we fell into conversation with Jim, a local fisherman. 'Off that boat?' He asked. 'And you have a chef?' We acknowledged we did and when Damien came to pick us up with the tender, Jim dug into his bag and produced a fresh sea trout, which became that evening's appetiser.
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From Crinan we moved across to the island of Jura, a famously trackless wilderness where George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four whose tattered rags of green make a poor attempt to hide naked bog and rock. This is one of the least populated places in the UK, and so savage were the various Jura clans that there was a human skull guarding the entry of one of its caves well into the 20th century.
The sea was rough that night, so Greaves moved Glen Rosa to an anchorage on Jura's Loch Tarbert, opposite the remote lodge at Glen Batrick, where the former prime minister David Cameron used to take his holidays as a guest of Lord Astor, the owner of much of the island.
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After Jura, the next stop was its posher, more fertile neighbour, Colonsay. This is Baron Strathcona's demesne and the island shop was well stocked with fine wines. It was a Tuesday, so we were told that the gardens of Colonsay House were open to the public and the family were away. We did, however, bump into the baron's nephew's elegant Australian fiancée, weeding the vegetable patch in the rain.
It looked like the Macleans of Lochbuie were away, too, because there were no lights on in their baronial property when we arrived offshore that night after crossing the Sound of Mull. In the morning we landed on Lochbuie's unblemished beach, where the Maclean mausoleum stood on a small knoll surrounded by trees. Inside, inscriptions honoured a long line of military men and 'distinguished country gentlemen'.
Our last stop before heading back to Oban was Iona, run by the National Trust, but whose metaphysical laird is (in some people's eyes) the ultimate aristocrat. The island is a little green chip off Mull's southwestern corner, a place of pilgrimage ever since Saint Columba sailed over from Ireland in 563 and founded a monastery that would become a key hub in the spread of Christianity.
That day was one of those perfect moments when the Hebrides impersonates the Caribbean. We joined the flood of pedestrians coming off the Mull ferry, wove our way through all the temptations of tartans and woollens, coffee and cake, did the obligatory tour of the (admirable) abbey church and its cloisters, and then decided enough was enough, and walked away from the pilgrim crowds.
Iona's northern tip is springy machair — wildflower-rich grassland — lined with white sand. Here Traigh Bhan Nam Monach (White Strand of the Monks) is one of those places with aquamarine water so inviting you just have to strip off. Except, I confess, I am a cold-water wuss — and somebody had to hold my wife's towel.
Frankly, it was exhilarating enough just to be there, soaking oneself spiritually in the Sound of Iona, its topaz waters flecked by divebombing gannets. On days like these, the Scottish islands can be heaven on earth, and not just the domain of saints and Eames was a guest of The Majestic Line, which has a full board, six-night Southern Hebrides and the Sea Lochs of Argyll cruise on the 11-passenger Glen Massan from £2,995pp, departing from Oban on June 21 and including wine with dinner ( Fly or take the train to Glasgow
