Our first port of call will be Stromness in Orkney. This sheltered coastal town was a collection of just 13 houses until 1670 when the Hudson’s Bay company began using it as a port for the start and end of their voyages to Canada. Bill Bryson once described Stromness as ‘draped like grey lace on an emerald shore’ and Sir Walter Scott wrote of its characteristic steep winding alleys which have changed little in the last few hundred years. We will spend the day losing ourselves in the labyrinth of the town’s closes, or travelling further afield to experience some of Orkney’s beautiful wild coastline.

For artists throughout history even the name St Kilda has been enough to inspire. This majestic archipelago is the westernmost part of Scotland and was inhabited for over 2,000 years until its voluntary evacuation in 1930. It was this poignant event which moved filmmaker Michael Powell to write and direct The Edge of the World in 1937, a film about a community of remote islanders grappling with the encroaching outside world. Many musicians have found inspiration in St Kilda including fiddler Paul Anderson who composed the slow air Farewell to St Kilda on a Trust cruise, and Anne Lorne Gillies who launched her album The St Kilda Mailboat by setting free a traditional St Kilda mailboat from our cruise ship in 2004. Weather permitting we will sail ashore at Village Bay and spend some time exploring the abandoned nineteenth century settlement, before getting back on board to circumnavigate the archipelago and marvel at the towering sea stacs and thousands of northern gannets which make their home on St Kilda.

Our third day of cruising will see us sail into Portree on the Isle of Skye. Here we will come ashore to explore the largest island of the Inner Hebrides. The Isle of Skye is the setting for Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse and also inspired naturalist and writer Gavin Maxwell when he lived in the lighthouse cottage on Eilean Bàn, just off Skye’s coast. Portree is famous as the site of the inn where Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora MacDonald said farewell after fleeing to Skye from Uist. We will have time to wander through this pretty colourful town and also to take trips to nearby Dunvegan Castle, seat of Clan McLeod chiefs for almost 800 years, and to the mysterious peaks and plateaus of the Quiraing.

The isle of Canna has been in the care of the National Trust for Scotland since 1981, after it was left to the Trust by Gaelic scholar John Lorne Campbell. He and his wife built up a substantial collection of gaelic literature, songs and photographs throughout their lifetime, which remain in the Trust’s care in Canna House. Inspired by their example, we will turn our ears to the folk music of the islands and hold an open-air ceilidh on deck in the evening while anchored off this tranquil magical isle.

After sailing through the Treshnish Isles keeping an eye out for the colonies of breeding seabirds that nest there, we will arrive at Staffa, an island admired by visitors from Jules Verne to Queen Victoria, and now in the care of the Trust. While circumnavigating the island, deck commentary from our onboard geologist will share with us the secrets of Staffa’s unusual geometric basalt columns. Weather permitting, local boats will take us inside Fingal’s Cave where we can listen out for the sounds that inspired Felix Mendelssohn. On leaving Staffa the Captain will steer us through the infamous wild waters of the Corryvreckan whirlpool, the setting for a climactic scene in Powell & Pressburger’s 1944 film I Know Where I'm Going!

Our final port of call will be across the sea in Ireland, where we will sail into Killybegs, a fishing town in County Donegal. Time ashore will give us the chance to visit Glencolmcille and the spot where St Columba set sail for Iona to spread the word of Christianity, or to journey into County Sligo to admire the landscape beloved by poet WB Yeats. County Donegal has been the home of playwright Brian Friel for much of his life and provides the setting for one of his best loved plays, Dancing at Lughnasa.