St Kilda

St Kilda is the far edge of the British Isles: a scatter of islands and sea stacks about 65 km west-northwest of North Uist, the westernmost ground of the Outer Hebrides. The group is what remains of a long-extinct ring volcano, and the sea has carved it into a landscape of extremes. The north face of Conachair on Hirta drops roughly 427 m straight into the Atlantic, the highest sea cliff in the United Kingdom, while Stac an Armin (196 m) and Stac Lee (172 m) are the tallest sea stacks in Britain. Hirta, the main island, makes up most of the land; Soay, Boreray and Dùn, which shelters Village Bay from south-westerly gales, complete the archipelago.

People lived here for at least two thousand years, and probably far longer: pottery found in 2015 points to Neolithic settlers. The islanders lived on seabirds, taken by men who climbed the cliffs and stacks, on a few sheep and cattle, and on barley and potatoes grown in Village Bay. Adult men met each morning in the street to decide the day's work, a gathering outsiders called the St Kilda parliament. Everything was stored in cleits, dry-stone huts with turf roofs that let the wind through but kept out the rain; some 1,260 of them still stud Hirta, with about 170 more on the other islands. The curved street of cottages dates from a rebuilding in the 1830s. Disease brought by visitors, emigration and the upheavals of the First World War wore the community down, and on 29 August 1930 the last 36 inhabitants left on HMS Harebell, at their own collective request.

Emptied of people, the islands belong to the birds. St Kilda holds one of the world's largest colonies of northern gannets, around 30,000 pairs, together with about 136,000 pairs of Atlantic puffins and tens of thousands of Leach's petrels; Dùn carries the largest fulmar colony in Britain. The feral Soay sheep, small, brown and naturally moulting, are thought to descend from Neolithic stock, and the St Kilda wren and St Kilda field mouse are subspecies found nowhere else. The last great auk seen in Britain was killed on Stac an Armin in 1840.

The Marquess of Bute left the islands to the National Trust for Scotland, which accepted them in 1957, the year they became a national nature reserve. In 1986 St Kilda became Scotland's first World Heritage Site, and in 2005 it gained the rare double status of a site listed for both its nature and its culture. A small military installation operated by civilian contractors is staffed year-round, and Trust rangers, volunteers and scientists come in summer. Visitors can walk the village street, see the restored church and schoolroom, and visit a museum in one of the cottages; there are toilets and a small Trust shop.

Getting there

St Kilda is reached only by sea. Operators hold a reserve day for each booking because Atlantic swell can make landing impossible, so leave slack in your plans. Leverburgh is linked by CalMac ferry to Berneray in North Uist, and by road to Tarbert, which has ferries from Uig on Skye. The nearest airport is Benbecula (BEB), about 82 km east across the sea. Skippers of private yachts should contact the National Trust for Scotland before landing.