GBP 2850, six nights. Meet at Inverness.

The Isle of Coll, along with its neighbour, Tiree, is perhaps best- known for enjoying the longest hours of sunshine of anywhere in the UK. They are low-lying islands in the southern Hebrides over which Atlantic weather systems sail before crashing into the mountain ranges of the mainland. Traditional ways of farming clung on here longer than in most places and it was amongst the first to see the return of that shiest - and most insistent - of farmland birds, the corncrake. Its “crecks-crecks, crecks-crecks” call resonates like a dentist’s drill, day and night in the damp, iris-packed corners of glossy pastures. Above, skylarks sing cadenzas while riding the gusting breeze and lapwings and snipe hurl themselves around the cobalt sky, points of light against the gloom over the distant mainland.

Coll is a small island indented by numerous, little visited, dune-backed beaches and, behind them on the west side of the island, machair. This is a rare type of flower-rich grassland, typically on the western side of some Hebridean islands, made fertile by calcium-rich shell sand sweetening the sour underlying peat.

Enjoy the pdf brochure here.