Boulders, Beasts and Battles: Geological Landscapes, Stories and Controversies of North-West Scotland

Check into your hotel and check out the Scottish capital.

Settle into your hotel just off the Royal Mile, a short walk from Waverley Station, then make the most of your free time with some sightseeing.  Unmissable Edinburgh sights within walking distance of your hotel include:

• Edinburgh Castle
• St Giles' Cathedral
• Scottish National Gallery
• Princes Street Gardens

• Free evening.

Meet your tour guide and companions, and watch the views scroll by as you travel first class to Inverness.

After breakfast in your hotel, enjoy a free morning of sightseeing in Edinburgh. Then meet your Scottish tourist guide and fellow travellers at Waverley station in time to board the 13:29 train to Inverness, in first class.

Journey by rail through spectacular scenery to Inverness, then take the pre-arranged taxi to Coul House Hotel, a splendid Georgian country house featured in the Good Hotel Guide and with links back to the Jacobite rebellion.

• Check into Coul House, Strathpeffer for the next two nights
• Group dinner

Travel back in time and relive the Jacobite Uprising, Bronze Age civilisations, and the creation of Loch Ness

The day starts with a visit to Culloden, the site of the final battle between the British Government troops and the supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746. Take a private tour of the battlefield with your Scottish tour guide.

Next, your guide takes you back about 4,000 years to a Bronze Age burial site. Clava Cairns is an exceptionally well-preserved example of Scotland's early civilisations.

After a light lunch, cruise across the legendary waters of Loch Ness. It was formed along an ancient geological fault; we can't be sure when the Loch Ness monster arrived!  You'll take in iconic views of Great Glen, Aldourie Castle, Bona Lighthouse and even visit the  spectacular Urquhart Castle, as your guide regales you with stories about these famous places.

• Return to Coul House in the late afternoon.
• Group dinner.

Tour the dramatic landscapes of Loch maree, Gairloch and Loch Broom - classic Highland scenery and home to some of Europe's oldest rocks.

In part thanks to the Lewisian rocks, which are 3.2 billion years old - meaning around 70% of Earth's history happened before after their formation - this part of the Highlands has been designated the North West Highlands Geopark.  We'll stop to appreciate the remarkable mountain landscapes, the underlying geology, which includes billion-year-old valleys, and striking glacial scenery formed a mere 12,000 years ago.

After lunch in Gairloch, you'll hear the story of the Wester Ross area of the Highlands at the Gairloch Museum, set in a converted nuclear bunker.  The area was strategically important for North Atlantic Convoys in World War II and played a role in later aspects of British-US cooperation, including the deployment of US submarines equipped with nuclear missiles.

Our onward journey around Gruinard Bay and Loch Broom is the perfect opportunity to explore the stories of the Highland Clearances and their impact on local people, many of whom emigrated to North America.

• Check into The Ceilidh Place. This lively and welcoming hotel, restaurant, book shop and music venue in Ullapool is your home for the next two nights
• Free evening.

Marvel at the landscapes that inspired pioneering geological techniques and clashing geology theories.

As we stop at some internationally celebrated sites, we'll investigate the highly charged Victorian 'Highland Controversy' that contributed so much to our understanding of the way all mountain belts form.

Visit the UNESCO Geopark visitor centre at Knockan Crag, just north of Ullapool, and see the wild terrains surveyed by early pioneer geologists.

The world-famous Moine Thrust (a fault that has moved rocks tens of kilometres from the east) and the Glencoul Thrust (which inspired one of the most important interpretations in world tectonic geology) will play a key role in developing your understanding.

Put your learnings into action as you assess a more recent scientific debate on the hunt for a massive, 1.2-billion-year-old impact crater: do the rocks of the Glencoul Thrust Sheet show any evidence (a ground zero) of this immense meteorite collision?

After all that, dive into lunch at Kylesku Hotel and Restaurant, a former coaching inn with seafood that’s as spectacular as the views along the Loch and to the mountains.

In the afternoon, we visit the Clachtoll area to see some previously enigmatic rocks – now agreed to be part of the ancient ‘ejecta blanket’ blasted out by the meteor impact. Much more recently, the site was home to an Iron Age family. We’ll explore the exceptional archaeology and review life in an Iron Age broch.

Next, delve into the local Clan intrigues and clashes at the Ardvreck Castle on Loch Assynt, including a betrayal in 1650 with national consequences.

Finally, unwind with an evening of traditional Scottish music from local artists.

• Overnight at The Ceilidh Place
• Group dinner

Immerse yourself in vast geological features, the birthplace of modern global tectonics – and the childhood holidays of a Beatle...

Today we head north for spectacular coastal scenery, the sandy coves of Sango Bay and the village of Durness before ending the day on the edge of Loch Eriboll.

Your first stop is the enormous, cathedral-like Smoo Cave, carved in the Durness Limestone by the sea and an inland underground stream. Then, we head to the stunning sandy coves of Sango Bay to learn how the strange ‘oystershell rock’ was pivotal in unlocking the earth history here.

After lunch in Durness, where John Lennon spent his childhood holidays, we explore the Highland Clearance trail at Ceannabeinne, where the villagers of Durness rioted to avoid eviction.

The afternoon is dedicated to Loch Eriboll, which was the World War II base for HMS Hood. There are dramatic views south into what was the approximately 400-million-year-old Caledonian mountain belt. This ground was mapped by Henry Cadell in the mid-1880s. The structures he found here inspired him to conduct some amazing early experiments to illustrate how such thrust faulting could shorten continents.

The day ends on the loch’s eastern shore, with a visit to the remote cottage base of Charles Lapworth’s pioneering geological mapping in the 1880s and the very rock outcrop that saw the final demise of the Murchison-Geikie establishment ideas. For many, this is the birthplace of a new global tectonics.

• Overnight in The Tongue Hotel, a traditional lodge with homely rooms in Tongue. Think log fires, taxidermy and tweed
• Group dinner

Explore the coves and rocky headlands of Scotland’s wild north coast, before rounding out the day in a whisky distillery.

From Tongue, we drive north until we reach the sea around Melness. The Portvasgo area is an isolated, picturesque community of crofts and fishing communities set against a backdrop of the spectacular north Scottish coastline and a distant Orkney island. And it may soon become one of Europe’s first rocket launch sites!

Tear your eyes from the horizon to examine a 900-million-year-old boulder bed that has been folded and the boulders streaked out, like warm toffee, into rods and layers by the deep, high-temperature, slow geological flow that occurs below mountains.

After lunch in Tongue, we drive south down Loch Hope via Altnacaillich to visit the malt whisky distillery of Glen Ord. It’s a fitting last stop of the tour before we head back to Strathpeffer.

• Check back into Coul House, Strathpeffer
• Final group dinner

The end of your tour. Catch the taxi and train back to Edinburgh.

Linger over your last breakfast of the tour at Coul House, then transfer with the group by taxi to Inverness station to catch the 1050 train to Edinburgh. Share your tour memories as you travel first class. Your tour ends when you arrive back in the Scottish capital at 1429.

Note: this provisional itinerary is subject to change as specific locations and accommodations release more information regarding access in the coming year.