Island Rediscovery - A Family Trip to Mull and Iona

Places from your past can have a pull on you. I was seven years old when my parents drove my sister and I out to Mull and Iona – one of many such family road trips, for which my carsick-prone younger self never showed nearly enough gratitude – and the two islands have been special to me ever since. I remember running wild in the hills around Iona Abbey, gulping down the fresh summer air, elated by the freedom of it all. 

Now a mum myself, I can see more clearly that my childhood holiday experiences haven’t just stuck with me, they’ve also shaped who I am. For me, Scotland has always been a place rich with the promise of adventure. Big skies, rolling landscapes, and days that you hold dear. 

When my partner, Jack, and I start planning a trip to Mull and Iona with our two-year-old son Aedan, it’s a way of chasing that nostalgia: an opportunity to taste the past while casting our own new memories as a family – and getting there from our home in Aberdeenshire will be part of the fun. When we founded this magazine five years ago, it was with a view to unravelling the very best of what Scotland has to offer. Here’s a chance to do just that.

We map out a plan, with pitstops at Braemar and Aberfeldy en route to the west coast. Our stop in Braemar is a joy – thanks to a riverside breakfast at The Bothy – while Aberfeldy gives us the chance to browse the excellent, newly relocated Watermill Gallery (where enthusiastic curator Zanna Wilson makes the perfect guide) and visit the Aberfeldy Watermill Bookshop & Café. A spot of lunch for us; two new holiday books for Aedan. Next, along Loch Tay and out west to Oban. 

By evening, we’re catching the last ferry of the day across the Sound of Mull to Craignure. The sea stretches out as the afternoon turns to evening. There’s something deeply comforting about an island ferry, knowing nothing else matters but the here and now, the wind in your hair and the waves against the bow. In the distance beyond the water, quiet isles and far-off monuments, lighthouses and castles. Promises across the sea. 

There are still two hours of daylight when we reach Mull. As we exit the ferry, every vehicle apart from ours veers right in the direction of Tobermory. We turn left, towards the shores of Loch Spelve, and immediately feel a tingle of anticipation. Our home for the next three nights will be Fern Cottage, out on the Croggan Peninsula, on the loch’s furthest bank. Steering onto the long winding road that leads there, a peacock appears in front of us as if guarding the way. Soon there are ferns, stands of crooked trees, a herd of deer, and finally the cottage. 

It’s the kind of accommodation you fall hard for: secluded, cosy, stylish, ringed by wilderness. Aedan refers to it as "the cool house" for the whole trip, which says plenty. Owners Lettie and Stephen Corbett have created a beautiful base here: an internet-free getaway with a log-burner, a record player, a games trunk, bold interiors, original artworks and cushions you can sink into. The seashore is just steps away. We sleep heavily.

Like so much of Mull and Iona, Fern Cottage is also somewhere with history. It forms part of the Lochbuie Estate – a 25,000-acre traditional estate farmed by Stephen’s family for more than a century. Tucked away in the estate’s green folds are ancient stone circles, an old clan castle, an 18th-century house and the remains of a one-time village. Its tales of the past are many, making the cottage itself – with its brightly coloured wooden panelling, DVD player, bookshelves and comfortable beds – a sanctuary of rare character. 

It's drizzly when we wake. Aedan looks out of the window to spot the peacock back again. It really tickles him to see a tropical bird strutting among grazing sheep. Within the hour we’re back in the car and exploring, stopping at Moy Castle to toss stones in the loch and jump in puddles. Nearby, at the Lochbuie Standing Stones, there’s hanging mist and the ground’s boggy. This about-turn in the weather is Scotland all over – yesterday we were in shorts and T-shirts, today we’re back in boots and thick jackets. It’s a charm of sorts. 

After the Standing Stones, we call in for a delicious local-produce lunch at the Old Post Office. We’re still just 20 minutes from Fern Cottage, and are charmed to discover that the café owners are cousins of Stephen’s. It’s a wonderful little place: two local paramedics at another table step in to help out with service when things get busy, then three young girls come in bringing hand-picked flower posies to one of the ladies working there. It can be something to witness, an island community in motion. 

We’re bound for Iona this afternoon, which means a drive through towering mountain scenery out to Fionnphort on Mull’s south-west tip, where a ferry runs between the two islands. Mull is the kind of island that dwarfs you with its size, all eagle- flown ridgelines and monumental contours. Iona is different, a low-slung island of gentle slopes, a place where spirituality has drawn pilgrims for almost 1,500 years. My heart quickens when I see it from the dock at Fionnphort, recalling my first childhood visit.

A 10-minute crossing and we’re there. That afternoon we ramble through the nunnery, abbey grounds and graveyard. It’s now my turn to see Aedan run and giggle as he discovers the island, just as my mum had watched me decades earlier. The hours pass as we meander the area around the harbour, wandering onto sandy coves and into stone-built craft shops. There’s a peace on Iona that isn’t found in many places, something subtle but very real. It’s an island on the edge of things – where its land stops, the Atlantic Ocean swells away to another continent. 

As we cross back to Mull, it’s a thrill to see a pod of dolphins frolicking in front of a rowing skiff, leaping and rolling. When we disembark and start queuing for scampi and chips at the impossible-to- resist Creel Seafood Bar, we get chatting to two of the ladies that had been at the oars, who tell us it’s the closest that dolphins have come to the skiff in the 13 years they’ve been rowing. To describe them as ecstatic at what they’d been treated to would be an understatement. As we eat our takeaway on the pier and stare back across to Iona, our talk is of sea creatures and sailing. 

We set aside part of the next day for Tobermory, Mull’s compact but colourful "capital". When we set off from the cottage we meet cows on the lane, hazel-coloured and sturdy. Lettie had forewarned us of just such a bovine roadblock, advising us simply to wind down the window and politely ask them to move. Improbable though it sounds, our polite request does the trick – much to Aedan’s delight! 

Tobermory might be small, but it’s packed with diversions. I pick up a 12-year-old single malt from Tobermory Distillery for my dad’s upcoming birthday, after which we head to the port’s famous rainbow-hued waterfront, picking up tubs of handmade ice-cream (when you’re faced with the option of a whisky, chocolate and cherry fl avour, how could we not?) and sitting outside to people-watch.

Mull Museum is our next stop. It’s a classic local museum, full of curios and layered stories. Jack asks a volunteer to point us in the direction of an interesting exhibit, and soon we’re engrossed in the 1930s tale of a Canadian schooner that got blown off course while carrying a domestic cargo of salt cod, spent 48 days at sea and ended up here on the Scottish coast.

After yesterday’s dolphin display, we also feel the urge to take in the child-friendly Hebridean Whale & Dolphin Trust – it’s well worth the visit – before moving on to Tackle & Books, a beautifully serene shop of books, maps, historical texts and, yes, fishing tackle. Both Mull and Iona, we decide, are adept at serving up spots where you want to linger.

On which note, following a fantastic late lunch at The Glass Barn farm shop and café, we feel the call of the cottage again. After driving back, we take the rest of the afternoon and evening slowly, taking in the loch views, watching for otters, wandering the shoreline and collecting shells. When the sun goes down we sift through the Scottish vinyl in the cottage – the memory of Aedan dancing around the living room in his pyjamas to "Mull of Kintyre" will have us smiling for years to come. 

It’s been a short trip, but it feels somehow longer than the calendar shows. This is the beauty of places like Mull and Iona, we decide, when we wake early the next day to make the cross-country journey back home. They immerse you and slow you down, pulling you into their world. And watching Mull recede from the deck of the morning ferry, with a still-sleepy toddler in our arms, we realise there and then – we’ll be pulled back soon.