Isle of Coll
A low green island west of Mull, with sandy beaches, corncrakes on the machair and some of the darkest skies in Britain.
Coll is a low, green island of the Inner Hebrides, west of Mull, home to around 160 people, with more than thirty sandy beaches and some of the darkest skies in Britain.
The ferry from Oban takes about two hours and forty-five minutes to reach Arinagour, the island's only village, a row of whitewashed houses on a sheltered bay with the island shop, a café and the Coll Hotel.
Much of the west of the island is an RSPB reserve, where the machair meadows flower in summer and the rare corncrake, which does better here than almost anywhere else in the UK, calls from the long grass. At Breachacha two castles stand side by side, a 15th-century stronghold of the MacLeans and the new castle built beside it in 1750. Coll is one of only two official Dark Sky Islands in the world, and on a clear night, far from any streetlight, the Milky Way is plain to see. It is an island for long walks on empty sand.
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The CalMac ferry from Oban to Arinagour takes about 2 hours 45 minutes.
- Ferry
- Oban to Arinagour, about 2 hours 45 minutes.
- Village
- Arinagour.
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