The Best of the Scottish Islands

Scotland has nearly 800 islands, and fewer than a hundred of them are lived on. Strung along the western and northern edges of the country, they hold some of the oldest human stories in Europe: Neolithic villages older than the pyramids, Iron Age towers still standing to their full height, Norse place names and a Gaelic language that survives in daily use. The best way to understand the Scottish Isles is to travel through them in order, by ferry, and that is what our Scottish island tours do: twenty days from Glasgow to Edinburgh by way of Arran, Mull, Iona, Skye, Lewis and Harris, Orkney and Shetland. Many of our Australian and New Zealand travellers also come looking for the islands their families left. This guide covers each island group in turn, what the tour does there, and the practical questions mature travellers ask before booking. For the route itself in more detail, see our guide to island hopping around Scotland.

What are the main groups of Scottish islands?

There are three main groups and one smaller one. The Inner Hebrides lie close to the west coast and include Skye, Mull, Iona and Islay. The Outer Hebrides, also called the Western Isles, sit further out in the Atlantic, with Lewis and Harris the largest. Orkney and Shetland, together known as the Northern Isles, lie off the north coast. The smaller group, the islands of the Firth of Clyde, includes Arran, which is culturally close to the Hebrides but separated from them by the long Kintyre peninsula.

The Hebrides are a crescent of around 200 islands, with the Inner Hebrides closer to the mainland and the Outer Hebrides, the outermost islands of the British Isles, taking the full force of the North Atlantic. Here Gaelic is still spoken in homes, shops and churches. Orkney and Shetland are a different world again. They were under Norse rule until the fifteenth century, and their dialects, place names and festivals still look east to Scandinavia rather than south to Edinburgh. You can read more about the islands in our guide to the Outer Hebrides and our Shetland Islands guide.

Scottish island tours: travelling the Scottish Isles by ferry

The tour runs clockwise. It leaves Glasgow for Arran, crosses Kintyre to Oban, then works north through Mull and Iona, Skye, and Lewis and Harris before crossing back to the mainland at Ullapool. From the north coast it sails to Orkney, takes the overnight ferry to Shetland, and returns overnight to Aberdeen for the drive to Edinburgh. Along the way there are around a dozen ferry crossings, from the short hop to Mousa to two nights at sea. You travel between the ports by mini-coach, with a tour leader throughout and local guides on some of the islands. Ferry crossings, entry fees and gratuities are included in the tour price.

Isle of Arran

The Bronze Age stone circles on Machrie Moor, on the west side of Arran.

Arran is often called Scotland in miniature, with granite peaks in the north and green rolling hills and villages in the south. People have lived here since the end of the last Ice Age, and the island has a number of Neolithic burial tombs and Bronze Age stone circles. Arran passed from the Norse to the Scottish crown after the Battle of Largs in 1263, and it is said that Robert the Bruce received the signal to return to the mainland while his followers harassed the English garrison at Brodick Castle.

The tour takes the ferry from Ardrossan to Brodick and spends two days on the island. You visit Brodick Castle and take a fairly easy walk across Machrie Moor to the standing stones, about an hour and a half on foot from the road. Our Isle of Arran itinerary covers the castles and stones in more detail, and our guide to the Isle of Arran covers its history and island life.

From Lochranza a second ferry crosses to Claonaig on Kintyre. The road north passes the Crinan Canal and Dunadd Hill in Kilmartin Glen, where the early Gaelic kings of Dál Riata were inaugurated, before reaching Arduaine Garden and Oban, the Gateway to the Isles.

Isle of Mull, Iona and Staffa

Tobermory, Mull’s main town, was built as a fishing port by the British Fisheries Society in 1788.

Mull is one of the larger islands of the Inner Hebrides, a landscape of rough moorland, sea lochs and basalt shaped by lava flows more than fifty million years ago, rising to the peak of Ben More. The tour spends two days here. You explore the island’s scenery and visit Tobermory, whose brightly painted houses line the harbour. If time permits, you also stop at Salen, the Eas Fors waterfalls and the burial place of Lachlan Macquarie, the governor of New South Wales who was born on Ulva, just off Mull, whose mausoleum at Gruline is cared for by the National Trust of Australia. Our guide to the Isle of Mull has more on the island and its clans.

The second day is given to Iona, the small island off Mull’s south-west tip where the Irish monk Columba founded his monastery in 563. It became the birthplace of Celtic Christianity in Scotland and the burial place of early Scottish kings. Our guide to visiting Iona covers the island itself, and our article on Iona Abbey covers the restored abbey and its history.

Is the trip to Staffa and Fingal’s Cave included?

No. A trip to Staffa is not covered by the tour cost, but there may be time to make it on the Iona day if the weather and ferry timings allow. Staffa’s basalt columns and Fingal’s Cave inspired Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. Landing on the island can be hazardous because of the slippery basalt and the tides, so it is only for those comfortable on wet, uneven rock.

Isle of Skye

The Quiraing in northern Skye, passed on the drive to the ferry at Uig.

Skye is the largest island of the Inner Hebrides, a volcanic landscape of sea lochs, limestone grassland and the bare peaks of the Cuillin. The tour leaves Mull on the ferry from Fishnish to Lochaline, drives to Mallaig and crosses to Armadale, where you visit Armadale Castle and the Clan Donald centre. Skye gave refuge to Bonnie Prince Charlie after Culloden, and its abandoned crofts record the Highland Clearances, when thousands of tenants were evicted and many emigrated to Canada and Australia. Our article on the Highland Clearances on Skye tells that story.

The next day the tour drives to Dunvegan Castle, seat of the chiefs of Clan MacLeod for around 800 years and home to the Fairy Flag, with time in its gardens, then continues to Portree. On the way north to the ferry you stop to see the Old Man of Storr and the Quiraing. Our page on touring the Isle of Skye sets out these two days in full.

The Outer Hebrides: Isle of Lewis and Harris

Stornoway, the main town of Lewis, is the tour’s base in the Outer Hebrides.

Lewis and Harris are one island with two names, joined by a narrow isthmus, and home to most of the people of the Outer Hebrides. The ruins of the Iron Age tower at Carloway Broch, not a stop on the tour, are another sign of how long people have lived here. They are made of some of the oldest rock on earth, about 3,000 million years old, and people have lived here for some 6,000 years, from the sea and the thin turf, burning peat cut from the moors for fuel. Approach from the east and you see rocky, glaciated valleys. On the west coast are white sand beaches that rival any in Europe, with peat moor and lochans between.

The tour takes the ferry from Uig to Tarbert and drives up through Harris to Stornoway. On the full day that follows you visit the Callanish Standing Stones, one of the best-preserved Neolithic monuments in Scotland, then a Harris Tweed shop and the distillery in Tarbert, the beaches at Luskentyre and Horgabost, and St Clement’s Church at Rodel. The next morning is spent at the Arnol Blackhouse, a thatched crofting home where a family and its animals once shared one roof, before the afternoon ferry to Ullapool. For more on the island chain, see our answers to common questions about the Outer Hebrides.

From Ullapool the tour crosses the far north of the mainland, stopping at Smoo Cave near Durness and at Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of mainland Britain, where on a clear day Orkney is in view across the Pentland Firth.

The Orkney Islands

Stromness, where the ferry from Scrabster comes in under the cliffs of Hoy.

The ferry from Scrabster to Stromness passes the Old Man of Hoy, a sea stack of red sandstone, and the cliffs of St John’s Head. The Orkney Islands lie only about ten kilometres off the mainland, yet they are low, green and fertile, quite unlike Shetland. As the islanders put it, Shetlanders are fishermen with farms, while Orcadians are farmers with boats. Orkney also has one of the densest concentrations of prehistoric sites in Britain.

The tour spends three days here. The first begins at the Stromness Museum and continues to Skara Brae, a Stone Age village uncovered by a storm in 1850 and excavated from 1927 to 1930 by the Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe, then to the Broch of Gurness. The second takes in the Earl’s Bu at Orphir and the Barnhouse Neolithic village, and Rennibister Earth House if time permits, before crossing the Churchill Barriers to the Italian Chapel, built by Italian prisoners of war on Lamb Holm. The third morning is spent at the Bishop’s and Earl’s Palaces in Kirkwall, with the afternoon free. Our guide to Neolithic Orkney covers the prehistoric sites, our Orkney Islands guide covers the wider islands, and our page on touring Orkney sets out the tour’s Orkney days.

What is the overnight ferry to Shetland like?

Comfortable, and closer to a small cruise ship than a car ferry. NorthLink sails from Kirkwall to Lerwick overnight, with a restaurant, bar and lounges on board, and a continental breakfast before you arrive in the early morning. You sleep in a cabin or a sleeping pod depending on availability, and travellers on their own may need to share a cabin, because single cabins cannot be guaranteed. The return from Lerwick to Aberdeen is also overnight. Our article on NorthLink ferries to Orkney and Shetland explains what to expect.

Touring Shetland on a small group tour for mature travellers

Lerwick, Shetland’s harbour town, where the overnight ferry from Kirkwall arrives.

Shetland is Scotland’s northernmost outpost, just over 300 kilometres from the Norwegian coast and under Norse rule until 1469, when it was pledged to Scotland as part of the dowry of Margaret of Denmark on her marriage to James III. The Norse influence was stronger here than anywhere else in Scotland, and it lives on in the local dialect and in Up Helly Aa, the fire festival held in Lerwick each winter. Of roughly a hundred islands, only about fourteen are inhabited, and nowhere is more than eight kilometres from the sea.

These are the things to do in Shetland on the tour, over three days with a local guide:

• Visit the Shetland Museum in Lerwick for the islands’ history, from the Norse settlers to the fishing fleets.
• Take the small ferry from Sandwick to Mousa for a nature walk to Mousa Broch, the best-preserved Iron Age broch in Britain.
• Look for puffins on the cliffs at Sumburgh Head.
• Explore Jarlshof, where some 4,000 years of settlement lie on one site: Neolithic and Bronze Age houses, an Iron Age broch and wheelhouses, a Norse longhouse, a medieval farm and a sixteenth-century laird’s house.
• Spend a full day on Shetland’s history and wildlife with a local guide, including a stop to view the Northmavine peninsula in the far north.
• Visit the Scalloway Museum, which tells the wartime story of the Shetland Bus, the boats that ran agents and supplies to occupied Norway.

Along the way you are likely to see seals, seabirds and the small, hardy Shetland ponies that have lived on the islands for thousands of years. Our page on touring Shetland with Odyssey sets out the three Shetland days in full. After the Scalloway Museum, the overnight ferry sails to Aberdeen and the tour ends with two days in Edinburgh, a guided look at the city and a farewell dinner.

How fit do you need to be for this tour?

The tour is rated Level 2, moderate. You need to be in good health and mobile, able to carry your own luggage and climb stairs, and comfortable with three to five hours of activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to eight kilometres on uneven ground. The walk to the Machrie Moor stones on Arran, for example, takes about an hour and a half from the road, and the weather on the islands can change quickly, so good walking shoes and a rainproof jacket are essential.

Can I join the tour as a solo traveller?

Yes. Solo travellers are welcome, and you can book a room of your own for the hotel nights. The exception is the two overnight ferries (see above). Groups are small, up to 16 travellers, so you travel as part of a group with a tour leader throughout. Most meals are included, 19 breakfasts and 11 dinners, so there are plenty of shared tables.

Other Scotland tours and the British Isles

If you are looking for the best tours of Scotland for mature travellers, three other Odyssey tours include Scotland. Prehistoric Britain follows the standing stones and ancient sites of Britain, our British History through Canals and Railways tour looks at Britain through the Industrial Revolution, and our Edinburgh Festival Fringe tour is built around the world’s largest arts festival. All of them sit among our wider British Isles tours.

The Scottish islands reward travellers who like their history in layers, where a Neolithic village, a Norse longhouse and a crofting cottage can sit within a few kilometres of each other. Before you go, our guide to Scotland’s standing stones, Neolithic history and whisky and our list of ten great books to read on the Scottish Isles are good places to start, and our Scotland island hopping guide follows the whole route day by day.