Scot free
I'VE been rescued. Having been shipwrecked in the Seychelles (my ship. Hebridean Spirit. was sold to an Arab sheik, that is, and the crew and I said our farewells in Mahe), a princess has come to my rescue.
I'VE been rescued. Having been shipwrecked in the Seychelles (my ship. Hebridean Spirit. was sold to an Arab sheik, that is, and the crew and I said our farewells in Mahe), a princess has come to my rescue. I had just completed my 34th cruise as naturalist on the luxurious and beautiful former gaming ship when the bankers' recession hit us like a tidal wave.
I was in shock for days. It was like losing a close relative. More importantly, I had lost an important part of my annual work and income.
But six weeks after getting home and a couple of later rejections by other cruise lines, I received a call from my long-standing friend Mike Deegan to offer me a cruise on Hebridean Princess.
This was an unbelievable call. Princess has her own guides and I had never worked on her despite the times I had sailed on her sister ship.
Mike was chief purser on Hebridean Spirit when I first started cruising as a passenger.
'I'm not going to like this,' I grumped at him quietly as we boarded.
'You are,' he retorted. And I did. I even led a birdwatching walk around a Swedish island for the other guests, who seemed to enjoy it.
Mike brought me back on board shortly afterwards and my long association with Hebridean Cruises and their eclectic, fascinating passengers began.
He is now managing director of Hebridean Island Cruises, with responsibility for Princess and other cruise ships.
Needless to say, I was elated. The reputation of Hebridean Princess was even greater than Spirit's. Working on her was a fabulous opportunity.
She was dressed overall as the train taking me on the wonderfully scenic journey from Glasgow to Oban pulled into the ferry terminal a few hundred yards from my new home.
She is a small version of Hebridean Spirit in livery and appearance and there was a tear in my eye as I walked up the gangway to board her.
The cruise was terrific.
Calling into tiny Scottish harbours such as Shieldaig, Gairloch and Ullapool was a refreshing change.
So many cruise ships tie up in busy ports where passengers mix with commercial vehicles, noise and dust (St Peter Port is not that brilliant in that respect with the hike down from the passenger terminal to Town) but the Scottish venues were attractive and interesting.
They also mean a steady stream of fresh produce for the ship's brilliant chefs to work their magic upon.
In Ullapool, a chef went out with a basket of delicious bacon butties (made using home-made bread) which were exchanged for fresh live crabs. It was little wonder we ate superbly well.
Our last supper on board was a gala dinner party held by the chefs in our honour. Imagine the guests' delight when a pair of vast white-tailed (sea-) eagles flew past the windows as we ate.
The cruise was studded with great wildlife events. The Shiants are reminiscent of northern Norway's Lofoten Islands with vast numbers of puffins, razorbills and guillemots (members of the auk family) nesting in boulder-strewn scree at the base of huge cliffs.
These are patrolled by Arctic and great skuas, which rob some of the incoming birds of their fish catches. Occasionally white-tailed eagles take the auks themselves, although we saw none until the final evening.
The Arctic skuas were a surprise, as these are rare breeding birds south of northern Norway but the food supply was so abundant we found a pair on the Shiants and six pairs on St Kilda.
That was another amazing group of islands.
Most of the ship's guests were up on deck as we slipped through the stacks, vast black hunks of rock towering up out of the sea and festooned with gannet nests. About 56,000 pairs of gannets nest on these far-flung outcrops – the remains of an ancient volcano – making St Kilda the largest colony in the world.
I mentioned those nesting on Ortac and the Garden Rocks off Alderney in my last article – they hold nowhere near as many gannets but are more approachable by boat and from the land, giving better views of Gannet City life.
The species is named Morus bassana after the Bass Rock which holds 40,000 pairs – not as many as St Kilda but again more approachable.
St Kilda is so remote that it has its own wren considered to be a separate species by many taxonomists. The bird is bigger and greyer than mainland wrens and has a different song.
We saw several in the stone walls and crofts of St Kilda's only village on the island of Hirta.
There were lots of rock pipits and wheatears breeding, too, and a lone immature great northern diver was spending the summer on the sea in Village Bay.
Some of us hitched a lift to the island's summit 1,400ft above the sea and looked down on the old settlement. It was strangely reminiscent of Machu Pichu in Peru.
Every young St Kilda-man had to pass a right of passage by building a cleit – circular stone stores, capped with turf, in which peat could be dried, fish, fulmars or puffins stored (some were used as cliff-top hides from which the birds were caught), or shelter taken in bad weather. There are more than 1,400 on the island, many around the village but the majority spread all over Hirta.
Getting to and from the island was also interesting. We saw three minke whales, pods of Risso's, common and bottle-nosed dolphins rounding the Butt of Lewis.
An excursion to the impressive Callanish Stones – Scotland's answer to Stonehenge – on Lewis was an undoubted highlight.
For me, though, the cruise was like coming home. The familiar luxury, sumptuous service, delightful cabins and the views of Scotland in all its moods slipping past windows and decks are untouchable.
