Live like the royal family on this cruise around the Hebrides

Add to this the chance to visit some of the most beautiful and unspoiled places on the planet and you have the trip of your dreams.

It is not cheap but as I soon discovered, not everyone on board was super-wealthy, for some it was a treat to celebrate an important anniversary but many just loved it enough to save up – in fact I came across one woman who had been on the Princess twenty times.

Oysters onboard (Image: free) On our first day at sea, as the weather was against our visiting Iona, we donned life vests, boarded small boats and made an unscheduled stop at the isle Ulva, off Mull. Another bonus on Hebridean Island Cruises is that a continuous tender service is in operation. You can leave and return to the ship whenever you wish - although on this voyage at many places we could just walk down the gangplank onto the quay.

On Ulva some passengers chose to walk around the island, it is only 3.5. miles long. I clambered up through ancient woodland to find a walled garden which was being restored and sat there in the sun listening to birdsong in such perfect peace that it was hard to imagine that this little island with no roads, no vehicles and only 18 residents, had once been a busy centre of the kelp industry.

Then it was back on board for lunch, preceded of course by a glass of whatever you fancied. Apart from a few selected malts, all drinks are included in the price and are available at any time. Food in fact plays a star role, much is locally sourced and the vegetables and seafood are the freshest and tastiest you’ll sample all accompanied of course by appropriate wines.

My favourite lunch was the buffet which consisted of Dressed Argyll salmon, smoked and fresh langoustine, lobster, Colonsay oysters, ham and other cold meats, plus salads and dressings – together with exquisite puddings for which I rarely had room. There were two lavish Gala dinners, one on the second evening and one the Captain’s Farewell, on the last. At this we were served a tasting of haggis neaps and tatties, a choice of roast venison, turbot or a curry. These are occasion on which everyone dons their finery, officers in dress uniforms or kilts, male guests in dinner jackets or kilts and ladies in evening dresses.

As I looked around at this glittering occasion I wondered if any of my fellow passengers were looking for romance. Many of them were, shall we say, grey haired but in fact I did come across a couple who had actually met on a Princess cruise. This brought to mind a woman on a previous cruise who told me she had met her third husband on board. “I was sitting up on deck and he came a tucked a blanket round me,” she said. ‘How romantic,” I remarked.  “You must point him out.” “Oh no, she responded briskly, “I haven’t brought him with me!”    Was she, I wondered, looking for number four?

Read more

• 10 of the most historic graveyards in Scotland to visit this autumn

• 'Communistic' Scottish community was turned into 'an isle of the dead'

We continued our cruise through the Treshnish Isles, The Sound of Sleat, the Kyle Rhea Narrows and under the Skye Bridge to our overnight anchorage. It is worth saying that although the Princess sails for the most part around the Scottish isles it isn’t important which isles - they could as well be the Tir na n’Óg of Celtic legend as the isles of Lewis, Harris, the Uists, Tiree and Mull which we visited.

All these seas and skies abound with wildlife: seals. sharks, porpoises, dolphins whales, white tailed eagles (and a nuclear submarine) have all been spotted.

The highlight for me however, was seeing the Standing Stones of Callanish on Lewis. The megalithic ‘Stonehenge of the North’ is an eerie, enigmatic place but unlike its English equivalent, it is free from crowds and entry is unrestricted.  The fact that no one is quite sure why these stones were laid out as they were, or what they meant, just adds to their mystery.

Getting there we had boarded a coach on the quay and driven over miles of boggy peat moorland and machair grazed by sheep and interspersed with lochs and lochans. (An area known dismissively by locals as MAMBA, ‘miles and miles of bugger all’ ) which I found bleak but beautiful. Throughout this trip the empty landscape especially that around Sollas on North Uist evoked a sense melancholy as if it somehow retained a memory of the harshness of the Clearances which put sheep above the lives of humans.

On a brighter note another little treat which the crew arranges if there is no café available, is to set up a table and serve tea and coffee (laced with Baileys or a dram if required) and shortbread - just part of the exceptional service.

A couple enjoy a drink on the deck (Image: free) At the Lews Castle Museum, in Stornoway my imagination was further caught by the Lewis Chessmen, tiny figures with wildly expressive faces which were discovered in a sandbank at Uig. They were carved from walrus tusk in the twelfth century and their origins too, are mysterious.      

Once of the most memorable trips was to Horgabost beach, on Harris, where  in glorious sunshine we wandered down from the dunes onto  miles and miles of blonde sand lapped by a sapphire sea with misty mountains rising across the water. Perfection.

These were but some of the activities. Every day offered something new: strolls around Plockton and Tobermory., a demonstration of Harris tweed weaving, a tour of a distillery, trips to Skerryvore Lighthouse Museum, traditional blackhouses and much more.

Truly a holiday to remember.

FACT BOX

Four nights from £3320* per person 7 nights from £3450* per person * Based on two people sharing an inside cabin on selected departures.

Website www.hebridean.co.uk

Email reservations@hebridean.co.uk  

01756 704704