Kilda Cruises

Kilda Cruises

Kilda Cruises offer a day trip from Leverburg, Harris to St Kilda Island in the Scottish Outer Hebrides. This double World Heritage site is well worth the visit.

St Kilda Island Scotland - Exploring Remote Places - A Remote Island That Time Forgot

Explore the remote, abandoned island of St Kilda, Scotland, United Kingdom (U.K.) on a very wet and windy day. Please SUBSCRIBE to see more videos from the most remote places on earth.

Journey with me and get a feel for what life must have been like on St Kilda for it's inhabitants until they evacuated the island in 1930 in this episode of my Remote Travel Vlog.

St Kilda island is a fantastic place if you're interested in abandoned and remote places. I would highly recommend visiting on your next trip to Scotland.

If you would like to visit St Kilda please check out the post about how to get there on my website andyexplorestheworld.com

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About me: I'm a travel vlogger & travel blogger with a passion for remote places and remote travel.

Transcription:

Today we’re in Leverburgh in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland and we’re just abut to get on the boat behind me and head out to St Kilda which is one of the remotest islands in the UK.

It’s about a fifty mile journey from the Outer Hebrides so it’s a long way out. It takes about two and a half hours. The conditions today - it’s a bit lumpy out there. It’s very overcast. We’re motoring out into the gloom at the moment. There is no sign of St Kilda. We probably won’t see it until we get quite close today. It’s one of my favourite places in the whole of the British Isles.

So we’ve landed on St Kilda after quite a rough passage across from Harris. Straight away when you step ashore you’re struck by what a barn and remote place it is here.

At the moment I’m wondering along what would have been St Kilda’s only street. Today it’s very much in an abandoned state.

The St Kildan’s lived in very meagre accommodation. We’re just going to walk into one now. You can imagine how low that roof was for me to fit through there. I certainly wouldn’t have made it through there standing up.

It’s quite sobering to think that until the 1930’s this was someones house. It was in the 30’s when the St Kildan’s finally abandoned the island because their way of life was no longer sustainable. A lot of that was due to it’s remote location. The population grew older and the younger people left and the way of life slowly became unsustainable. There is a plaque in this house that I am walking through now that says the date of the last family to live here.

The incredible thing about the St Kildan’s for me was there ability to live out here in such harsh conditions. They survived out here living mainly off the seabirds they used to catch. It’s hard to imagine being out here through the winters completely cut off from civilisation.

Today it has taken us 2 and a half hours doing about 20 knots on a modern boat pushing hard against quite a big sea today to get here. For the St Kildan’s it would have been a two day row across the open Atlantic Ocean and that was just to reach the other Outer Hebrides Islands.

I think a howling gail with wind and rain your face is really the proper way to experience St Kilda. The weather certainly hasn’t got any better. It’s still looking pretty bleak and closing in. We got real low cloud cover today. I’m going to attempt to walk out of the town now and up one of the hills behind the town and see what else we can see.

Wow what downpour. I’d call that downpour. I don’t even need a bottle of drinking water today I can just stand here with my mouth open.

You can see the bay where we came in behind me there. Just about through the rain. We’re going to keep on going and see what else what else we can see. Probably more rain and cloud.

So at the moment we’re on the top of St Kilda. Just moments ago this was in thick cloud and I couldn’t see any of this at all. When the cloud cover lifts you start getting a feel for the scale of the island and the brutality and sheerness of it. There’s new bits of the island revealing themselves out of the cloud every minute t the moment. Hopefully the visibility will keep on increasing throughout the day.

We’re going to keep on walking on across the island.

There is also some military installations on ST Kilda as well. Behind em you can see what looks like one of the radar domes. It’s strange you want somewhere like this to be completely unspoilt but there’s a number of military buildings here to.

What’s in front of me that is absolutely beautiful. It looks like something out of a fantasy novel.

For me it’s just an incredibly beautiful and barren and unique place.

What an incredible place ST Kilda is. AT the end we went out to have a look at the stacks around St Kilda. They are amazing but it was really really rough out there.

We have had every type of rain imaginable. We had a great passage back tonight. It was pretty rough. A few green faces down below. Literally just arriving into port in Harris now. If you’re interested in remote places check out my travel blog.

St Kilda ... Trip with Sea Harris July 2014

We were so lucky to see this glorious place, the archipelago of St Kilda, is the remotest part of the British Isles, lies 41 miles (66 kilometres) west of Benbecula in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. The bird life was unbelievable.

St. Kilda - Scotland (UNESCO double world heritage site): Humans meet birds in the Atlantic Ocean

Video report of a day trip by speed boat to the remote and unique archipelago of St. Kilda in the Atlantic Ocean. A truly cool place in the middle of the water...
boat companies:



info about St. Kilda

Best Tourist Attractions Places To Travel In UK-England | St Kilda Scotland Destination Spot

Top Tourist Attractions Places To Visit In UK-England | St Kilda, Scotland Destination Spot - Tourism in UK-England.

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St Kilda, Britain's Loneliest Isle (1923-1928)

St Kilda, Britain's Loneliest Isle is a short, silent film about St Kilda (an archipelago to the west of Scotland) and the final period of its habitation.

In the 1920s, the steamship company running a service between Glasgow and St Kilda commissioned the 18 minute silent movie, directed by Paul Robello and Bobbie Mann. It was released in 1928 and shows some scenes in the lives of the island’s inhabitants.[1]

In May 2010, the film was inscribed in UNESCO's UK Memory of the World Register.[2][3]
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St. Kilda - Britain's Loneliest Isle (1923/28) screenonline.org.uk.

St. Kilda is the name given to the most westerly group of isles in the UK, being 100 miles west of the Scottish mainland. These isles were inhabited for over 4000 years. In the early part of the 20th Century the population had declined through emigration and disease to 36 souls. The decision was taken in 1930 to evacuate the islands.

The first known filmmaker to visit the islands was Oliver Pike in 1908. It was to be some fifteen years before the next known visit of a cameraman - the 1920s saw both professional and amateur cameramen on the island. The amateur footage was mostly shot by visiting tourists. By the '20s St Kilda had become a fashionable destination for travelling middle-class town dwellers from the Scottish urban central belt. They took passage on the scheduled steamer sailings in the summer months and had their box brownie and cine cameras with which they photographed the inhabitants as exhibits in a zoo. It was an amateur cameraman who took the only visual record of the evacuation in 1930 - official press and newsreel cameras were forbidden to record the event.

The tourist trade was a lucrative sideline for the steamship companies on the West coast route, and it was in an effort to capitalise on this that John McCallum & Co commissioned a promotional film for theatrical release in the 1920s.

The film shows the St. Kilda men hunting fulmar (a type of gull) on the cliff face. Fulmar meat was a staple in the diet of the islanders, and the birds' oil could be used as fuel for lamps. Catching fulmar was dangerous.; a man was lowered by rope to perch barefoot on the sheer cliff and snare the young birds in their nests.

The idea for Michael Powell's film The Edge of the World (1937) came from a newspaper article describing the evacuation of St Kilda in August 1930. Powell wrote his story in advance and set off to see the owner of the island group. To Powell's dismay, he refused permission to film on the island and the production location was moved to Foula in the Shetland isles.

Kenneth Broom and Janet McBain
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2010 UK Memory of the World Register, United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO, 2010. Accessed 4 June 2011.
Edinburgh library treasures to go on world stage, BBC, 14 July 2010. Accessed 4 June 2011.

St Kilda trip

After two years of having all trips cancelled due to weather, we finally made it to St Kilda during our May holiday on the Isle of Lewis. We went with Seatrek, who were excellent. You can see some photos in my flickr album:

Memories of life on St Kilda

Interview conducted by the National Trust for Scotland: Norman John Gillies looks through some photos and talks about his memories of St Kilda and the people who lived there.

Interview put to real and virtual footage of St Kilda, along with the photos he was looking through, with music from Anna Black, North Uist.

Dolphins May 26 2016 St Kilda Cruise

A large pod of dolphins bow riding Elizabeth G on our way to the Sound of Barra on our St Kilda Cruise in May 2016

St Kilda August 2011

Sailing cruise from the Outer Hebrides to St Kilda in the yacht Aquila walking cliffs

St Kilda - The Return

St Kilda Expedition 2009 - Two weeks diving around the St Kilda Archipelago in April of 2009 with Elizabeth G Charters - The best scenic diving in the UK - and possibly the world...

Isle of Harris (Outer Hebrides) | Scottish Highlands & Islands Travelogue 2018 | S1E9

After an unplanned early start (see video!), we depart the Torvaig Campsite on Skye and drive across the island to the ferry terminal at Uig. From there we load the Land Rover Defender 110 onto the CalMac ferry for the two-hour journey to Tarbert on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides.

We spend the afternoon cruising around Harris taking in the amazingly unique landscape which ranges from unearthly, almost martian-looking, rockscapes, to golden beaches, to turquoise oceans, to pastoral vistas to peat bogs. The island features thousands of lochs, both freshwater and saltwater, and these pepper the landscape. Patches of blue sky punctured the blustery rain, and Harris is beautiful because of, rather than in spite of, the changeable weather.

For the evening, we then head to Lickisto Blackhouse Campsite where proprietor Greig was good enough to prepare a yurt for us, even though we were actually out of season! Highly recommended if you're on Harris - blackhouses are dry-stone walled structures with thatched roofs and there are several well-maintained communal blackhouse buildings at the site with shower, bathroom, cooking and a stone hearth in the main blackhouse.

Lickisto Blackhouse Campsite:

Shortcut links:

Tarbert on Harris: 2:27
Coast drive commentary: 6:04
Quick stop at the beach: 10:00
Onward to Leverburgh: 10:23
Quick stop at Leverburgh: 12:17
Leverburgh to Lickisto: 12:25
Lickisto Blackhouse Camping: 14:22

This series follows our 2-week Scottish Highlands and Islands adventure from October 2018. Join us as we drive over 1,500 miles in 14 days and visit the islands of Mull, Iona, Harris, Lewis and Skye, and drive parts of the NC500 Scottish Highlands route.

Playlist for the series is here:

Sections of Lickisto footage at the following points copyright Mike Bellwood @ and are used with permission:

Lickisto Blackhouse Camping Entrance: 14:22
Approach to main blackhouse: 15:00
Main blackhouse exterior: 15:05
Main blackhouse interior: 15:10

Journey to St Kilda from Oban on MV Hjalmar Bjorge - June 2017

The archipelago of St Kilda lies 45 miles West of Uist in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. It consists of Hirta (which until its evacuation in 1930 was Britain’s most remote populated outpost), Soay, Boreray and two mighty stacks, Stac Lee and Stac an Armin. Because of its natural and cultural qualities it is one of only 6 double Unesco World Heritage sites. The whole trip from Oban took 6 days on a lovely converted old Norwegian rescue boat, with visits to Rum, Canna, North Uist, Hirta, Skye and Mull. The seas were rough, the day boats stayed in Leverburgh and so we were the only visitors, mooring overnight in the bay with two visits ashore. The sun came out, the clouds cleared and it is a stunning, atmospheric place. It is surreal and sad to walk through the long-deserted village and reflect that humans lived there mostly in complete isolation for over two thousand years, eking out a living mostly from harvesting the seabirds that live on the cliffs by absailing down on a rope made from the hair of the women or climbing the Stacs and Boreray. They stored their harvest in Cleits – unique stone structures that cover the island.
Thanks to the skipper and crew of MV Hjalmar Bjorge (Tim, Craig and Emily) for their expertise, affability and determination to get us there.

Film by Steve Poole

Music credits:

'Da Slockit Light' (Tom Anderson) performed by Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas from the CD 'Fire and Grace'

'Manannan' (Trad) performed by Emma Christian from the CD 'Beneath the Twilight'

'Winds and Tides Permitting' (Enda McCabe) performed by Tim Edey from the CD 'The Collective'

(Epilogue)
When visited in 1697 by a Martin Martin he described them as being the happiest people he had ever met, content with their abundant supply of food and their egalitarian society based on cooperation. When the Victorians started to visit in the 1800s by steamer they brought diseases to which the islanders had no immunity, and infantile tetanus was a major cause of death. They also brought dependency. Then came the tyrannical zealous missionary preachers who browbeat the islanders into attending church most of the time that they weren’t working or sleeping. Strict conformation was required on threat of terrible punishment in the afterworld, and all music and poetry was deemed evil and therefore forbidden. Much of that culture was lost and contentment was replaced by misery. Gradually the younger ones left for a better life abroad, there were insufficient men to man the boats and life became unsustainable. In 1930 the islanders were starving and evacuation was the only option - the saddest of acts. A few went back to visit or be laid to rest in their beloved land.

Row St Kilda to Skye

St Kilda Expedition June 2016

St Kilda Expedition June 2016

Wildlife and Sailing trips aroundthe Hebrides

About the trips done on Northern Wandererer specialist cruises around
the Hebrides and Western Isles of Scotland

Finlay McQueen of St Kilda

Finlay McQueen is a legendary figure from the Scottish Islands of St Kilda Scotland

Rare Visit to Scotland's St. Kilda

Discover the ancient, seldom-seen ruins of Scotland on the remote and inaccessible island of St. Kilda on a Lindblad-National Geographic expedition. Video by Rodrigo Moterani.