Eilean Mor (the Cairns of Coll)

I have not anchored amongst this group of small islands and skerries off the north tip of Coll. Although they have been a navigational hazard for centuries ("remarkable for their fatality to sea-faring men" wrote Martin Martin in A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, circa 1695, Birlinn, Edinburgh, 1994). They sound idyllic. So idyllic that they were bought by Sir (from 2024) Alexander McCall Smith, the well-known and extraordinarily prolific Scottish author, in 2013. He intends to leave them in trust to the nation after his death, a generous and rather different attitude to some others who have bought Scottish islands recently and attempted to keep people off them — Shuna in Loch Linnhe, and Sanda, come to mind. He has been quoted in The Scotsman as saying "I do not own these islands as I own my clothes, I am the person to whom the legal system of Scotland has given custody of this sacred spot, and that is something quite different. I want them kept in perpetuity as a sanctuary for wildlife — for birds and seals and all the other creatures to which they are home". Good on you I say.