Pure shores: a Scottish sea safari

In the narrow strait between Jura and Scarba, the sea does strange things. Standing waves barrel over phantom surf breaks. Steely waters seethe and swirl, as if stirred by invisible hands. No wonder the gulf’s name, Corryvreckan, means “cauldron of the speckled seas” in Gaelic; this is the world’s third largest whirlpool, classified as “unnavigable” by the Royal Navy. Yet here I am, aboard a thirty-seven-foot rigid inflatable boat (RIB), riding the rapids. Skipper Sandy Campbell cuts the engine so we can try “boat surfing,” the swell dragging us apace past Scarba’s looming quartzite cliffs.

Islanders of old dreamt up mystical explanations for this phenomenon. It was a gateway to the underworld, dwelling-place of fierce storm kelpies, the wash-tub where divine giantess Cailleach Bheur washed her tartan. Now we know it’s caused by strong, competing ocean currents and unu- sual underwater topography — the Atlantic being funneled over a pinnacle and a deep hole on the seafloor — but in the Hebrides, an archipelago scattered off Scotland’s west coast, the fabled past often seems within touching distance. Crumbling monasteries and castles cut lonely figures on long-aban- doned islands. Wild goats forage for kelp along craggy shorelines. White-tailed eagles build their nests atop gnarled Scots pines.

A place this untamed and elemental might seem incompatible with luxury travel. Yet Glenapp Castle, a stately five-star hotel back on the mainland, is proving otherwise. After an adrenaline-fueled cruise around Corryvreckan, Sandy steers the RIB toward a headland on northeastern Jura, where a cluster of pale canvas tents sprouts like mushrooms among the bracken and purple-blooming heather. This will be home for the next two nights. A doe and her fawn eye our arrival from further up the hillside — a fitting welcome party, considering that Jura’s 220 residents are significantly outnumbered by some 6,000 red deer (the Vikings called it Dyrøy, “deer island”). The only way in and out of the site is by sea or helicopter. After docking at a natural rock pier, we scramble up the slope to an inviting sight of Champagne and tartan blankets waiting beside the firepit.

Glenapp’s owner Paul Szkiler took cues from Africa’s tented safari camps, which immerse guests in nature without scrimping on creature comforts. “Me and Roddy, our skipper, spent a few weekends exploring the coast with an ordnance survey map to find the perfect location,” Paul says. “In terms of the vista, I’m yet to see anywhere else quite like this. It’s sheltered, with these big hills behind bringing some cover. There’s no road, nobody’s going to walk past.”

The result is a far cry from my previous camping trip to the Hebrides. The freedom of a private charter replaces public ferry routes and timetables. Instead of pitching a two-man nylon tent, cooking pasta over a campfire and zipping myself into a sleeping bag, the sturdy, spacious tepees contain double beds, slippers and piping hot showers. In a dedicated kitchen tent, chef Aaron Connolly rustles up three-course suppers using Scotland’s unrivaled “coastal larder.” Think scallops, lobster, langoustine and venison, alongside vegetables grown in Glenapp Castle’s walled garden.

After dinner, I toddle back along the wooden walkway to find my tent aglow with tealights and curl up beneath a cozy, cloud-soft duvet. The next morning, the camp’s wildlife guide Mark Littlejohn points out a deep, round indentation in the bracken steps away from my tent: “See, that was probably made by a deer, sleeping there overnight.” I wonder if it’s the doe I’d seen on the hillside; I’m bewitched by the idea of us slumbering away in such proximity (unlike an African safari, wildlife around here doesn’t really get more threatening than Bambi).

Despite the team’s wizardry at conjuring up such comforts and gourmet meals in the middle of nowhere, they can’t, of course, control the weather. Itineraries are crafted around guests’ interests — whether that’s whisky, birding or archaeology — but the Atlantic has the final say. Rough seas meant the first leg of my journey from Glenapp Castle was rerouted. The plan is normally to cross the exposed, rough North Channel, which is closer to the hotel, and visit Ailsa Craig, a 3,608-foot-high volcanic plug famous for the high-quality granite that’s carved into Olympic curling stones. Instead, we must embark from the more sheltered, northerly port of Crinan. This involves a longer, yet incredibly scenic, overland drive up through the forested valleys of the Trossachs National Park, skirting Loch Lomond and Loch Fyne, spotting the thatched cottage where Robert Burns was born.

Now, as the RIB navigates through the sea lochs, Scotland continues to perform its four-seasons-in-a-day routine. One moment, all is monochrome — rainclouds hugging hulking gray cliffs, gunmetal ocean churning — an hour later, scarlet-berried rowan trees are blazing against a sky as blue as the St. Andrew’s flag. Coats are peeled off. A picnic of lobster salad, finger sandwiches and scones with clotted cream and jam is devoured on deck while a pair of osprey wheel and screech overhead. Dolphins’ dorsal fins slice through glittering water. Seals sunbathe on skerries, turning whiskered faces quizzically toward the idling boat. Come evening, conditions have changed again, and our group gathers around the dining tent’s brazier for a wee dram while raindrops drum on the canvas. The previous week, guests apparently sat out stargazing and basking beneath the Northern Lights.

At odds with the fleeting nature of Scotland’s sunshine and storms, this dramatic landscape brings a dizzying sense of deep time. Perhaps it’s the lack of people and buildings — only the occasional hunting lodge or fishing village paints a white streak against the mottled gray-green of cliffs and Caledonian forest — which shifts attention to the forces that sculpted Hebridean islands and waterways. “These deep channels and valleys were carved out by glaciers the last ice age,” explains local marine biologist Mia Leng. “And you get these raised shore platforms where the sea level has fallen, so they look like terraces.” It’s a place that makes you think in eons rather than minutes and hours, where tide charts, not calendars, dictate plans.

The promise of wildlife had drawn me to the Hebridean sea safari. And happily, I counted off three of the Scottish Big Five in the form of golden eagles, common seal and red deer (otters and red squirrel proved elusive, this time). Yet this trip’s appeal turns out to be more expansive. With each island, layers of history are peeled away. I peer into an eighth-century hermit’s cave on Eilean Mòr and gaze over sea-flooded quarries on Belnahua, where thriving communities once mined a rich seam of blue-black slate that was used to roof cathedrals and palaces; now, only colonies of cormorants and shags call the place home. We retrace the routes sailed by Viking longships and early Christian missionaries and warring clan chiefs. While the Hebrides today has an edge-of-the-world feel, it wasn’t always like this. Perhaps, with more travelers looking to escape Mediterranean heat in favor of “coolcations” another revival of sorts is coming. But for now, at least, it’s a place to time-travel in magnificent isolation.

The five-day Hebridean Sea Safari is priced at $21,085 for two adults, including two nights at Glenapp Castle with dinner, bed and breakfast in a superior bedroom suite, transfers to/from Girvan harbor and, when “at sea,” fully inclusive of all food and refreshments, glenappcastle.com.