9-day trip to the Scottish islands with Classique Tours

Our party of four took a delightful, somewhat “different,” 9-day trip to the Scottish islands, particularly the Shetlands and the Orkneys, followed by a 7-day trip that included the Isles of Jura, Colonsay, Gigha, Arran and the Mull of Kintyre.

Our trip was handled by Classique Tours (8 Underwood Rd., Paisley, PA3 1TD, Scotland; phone + 44 [0] 141 889 4050, fax + 44 [0] 141 848 7616 or visit www.classique tours.co.uk).

This small and extremely well-run company has been in existence for 41 years, doing tours primarily of Scotland and northern England but also to Ireland, Spain, Norway and France.

David Dean, the principal owner, also drives and guides some of the trips. We were fortunate to have him. He is an excellent driver and an inspired guide, one who goes out of his way to see to it that people with special interests are given the opportunity of following those interests in addition to seeing the gamut of regular tourist sights. His rather special sense of humor lightened the long days, and he seemed to know every nook and cranny of the diverse areas in which he specializes.

Our trip, in August ’03, cost £690 (near $1,294) per person for the 9-day Orkney/Shetland trip and £490 ($919) per person for the 7-day Inner Hebrides tour. Between and after the tours, we spent several days in Glasgow.

Our bus was quite comfortable. We had 32 people on the first tour and 26 on the second. About 75% of the passengers on tour with us were British, with Americans, Canadians and a couple of Australians comprising the rest.

The hotels on the trip ranged from “best available” (but all clean, comfortable and adequate) to the Stonefield Castle Hotel (Argyll, Scotland; phone 01880 820836) on Loch Fyne, one of the most luxurious hotels in Scotland. It’s an actual castle and once belonged to the Campbells.

The food varied. Breakfasts were included and invariably excellent, although the British seem to have problems cooking eggs to our taste! We were on our own for lunch and often ate lightly, breakfast having been so large. Dinners, included in the tour price, varied from “adequate” to “outstanding,” about as you’d expect.

The Orkneys and the Shetland islands offer Neolithic and Iron Age sites plus a great diversity of animal life, including seals, Shetland ponies, puffins and enough different bird varieties to keep a bird-watcher busy all day. The scenery is outstanding, wild and beautiful. We reached the Shetlands via a Caledonian Macbrayne overnight ferry on which we had comfortable outside cabins with private facilities.

For the Inner Hebrides islands, we based on Jura at the Jura Hotel (Argyll, Scotland; phone +44 [0] 1496 820243, fax +44 [0] 1496 820249 or e-mail jurahotel@aol.com), a really delightful small hotel right next to the whiskey distillery that makes the “Isle of Jura” brand, some of the finest single-malt scotch produced anywhere in Scotland. We ferried each day to the islands, including several visits (with samplings) to different distilleries.

We like David and Classique Tours so well that we made arrangements to travel with him again in 2004, this time to Ireland.

R.E. LEE
Deland, FL