Voyage Through the Heart of Scotland with Jules Verne – 23rd April 2024

Embark in Oban and settle into your cabin prior to the welcome reception and dinner. We remain alongside in Oban overnight.

Explore Oban, the gateway of the isles, on foot and visit the impressive McCaig’s Folly for spectacular vistas across the bay to the Atlantic Isles. During lunch, we sail to Craignure, Isle of Mull, for a tour of Duart Castle. Seat of Clan Maclean for over 700 years, it dominates the view of the Sound of Mull with its huge curtain walls and solid keep.

This morning, we travel to the Isle of Iona, the last resting place of some 50 Scottish Kings and where St. Columba introduced Christianity to Scotland. Discover the tranquility of this sacred isle and its restored Benedictine Abbey. Onwards to Mull’s island capital of Tobermory, for an afternoon exploring the harbour town, where brightly painted houses line the waterfront which were originally built by the British Fisheries Company to house its workers. We remain alongside overnight.

Cruising the Sound of Mull and Loch Linnhe, we pass Castle Stalker where the Monty Python film the Holy Grail was filmed, set on its own Island and berth in Corpach, at the entrance of the Caledonian Canal. From here we take a scheduled train along part of the West Highland Railway and cross the 21-arched Glenfinnan viaduct which overlooks Loch Shiel and the Jacobite monument.

From sea level, Lord of the Glens ascends the spectacular eight inter-connected locks of Neptune’s Staircase to Banavie in the shadow of Ben Nevis. Spending a relaxing afternoon on board, we sail through Loch Lochy then transit the tranquil, tree-lined Laggan Avenue to Loch Oich where we moor overnight at the top of the series of locks at Fort Augustus.

This morning, we decend the Fort Augustus locks which takes its name from a fort built after the defeat of the 1715 Jacobite uprising, before setting sail along Loch Ness. Pausing briefly, for a view of the ruins of Urquhart Castle, we continue the 21 mile transit of Loch Ness and Loch Dochfour, and along the man-made section of the Caledonian Canal to the cosmopolitan city of Inverness for our final visit to Culloden, the infamous battlefield where Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite forces were defeated in 1746.

After breakfast, we say farewell and disembark in Inverness.