REMOTELY MAJESTIC
John Honeywell tests the waters on Majestic Line’s new Glen Etive as it sails from Oban to Skye and the Small Isles...
Get used to wind or waves dictating changes
James Bond’s boss M drew her last breath in a Highland chapel at the end of Skyfall. So you’d forgive actress Dame Judi Dench if she chose never to return to Scotland. Far from it. She is a regular visitor to a five-star hotel near Oban, and recently chartered an 11-passenger cruise boat for a week in the Inner Hebrides.
Dame Judi wrote of her six-night cruise: “If you want complete privacy with sensational food and stunning scenery in Scotland, which is paramount to me, then this is the cruise for you.”
She’s not alone in finding the vessels of the Majestic Line irresistible.
Emma Thompson and Sir Alex Ferguson have both entertained their families on the company’s charmingly converted fishing trawlers.
And Jane McDonald says her week on board one was the favourite experience of her four-part TV series on Channel 5, which also included a luxury river cruise on the Danube, and mega-ship visits to the Caribbean and Alaska. So what makes the Majestic Line so special? I sailed on the company’s newest boat, Glen Etive, in order to find out.
Slightly larger than sister ships Glen Tarsan and Glen Massan, and with a steel hull instead of wood, she has been designed to venture beyond the Inner Hebrides to St Kilda, the most remote part of the British Isles.
Hence the expensive addition of stabilisers to reduce the rolling effect of heavy seas.
On my voyage from Oban to Skye and the Small Isles, however, skipper Ian Woollcott also made life comfortable for the passengers by staying in sheltered waters whenever he could, and judging the right moment to pass Ardnamurchan Point, the most westerly piece of the British mainland.
Every evening after dinner, as we relaxed in Glen Etive’s lounge bar, Captain Woollcott would brief us on what the next day held in store.
He would show us our planned destinations and tell us about what to expect ashore – but we grew accustomed to the wind or the waves dictating a change of course that would take us somewhere
Brew your own tea and coffee then leave cash in honesty box
unexpected. That’s the thing about a cruise with Majestic Lines.
There is no such thing as a fixed itinerary. There’s no point booking lunch ashore at a favourite restaurant (not that there are many in the Small Isles), or making arrangements to meet up with a friend.
This is not a cruise packed with expensive excursions – passengers are ferried to the nearest beach or jetty by tender and left to fend for themselves.
One day took us past dozens of inquisitive seals in Skye’s Scavaig River, then a strenuous walk above the shores of the freshwater Loch Coruisk, with views of the Cuillins that Lord Tennyson described as the wildest in the Highlands – even though cloud and mist hid them from him.
If it meant us arriving on the sparsely populated island of Canna – which has three churches but no tarmac roads – on the one day of the week when the local café was closed, then so be it.
As it happened, we could take shelter from the biting wind in the only shop. It doesn’t have a sales assistant in attendance, but leaves customers to brew their own tea and coffee, and leave the appropriate payment in an honesty box.
In any case, who would want to waste time eating ashore when the food on board is of Michelin-star quality? (Well, Michael Winner did once, but that’s another story, and says more about him than it does about Majestic’s menus).
Chef Mike Weir conjures up some veritable feasts every day, eaten at the large table for 12 in the dining saloon.
The mussels on our last night aboard could not have been fresher – harvested that day from the farm in Mull’s Loch Spelve that supplies most of the UK’s supermarkets.
We had beef and venison from local farmers, fresh-caught cod and haddock, served with intricate sauces that would have had the MasterChef judges licking their lips with delight. Highlight of dinner was the cheese course – four different varieties were presented each evening, so a total of 24 during the course of the cruise. Breakfast had its own treat – a nip of whisky, usually a single malt chosen from the local distillery, poured over a bowl of steaming porridge. Purists might sneer, but it was warmly welcomed by even the most strait-laced of passengers. Glen Etive might be a new-build vessel with a more powerful, fuel-efficient engine than its sisters, but the brassframed windows in the forward lounge are recycled from an older vessel, and the wheelhouse is dominated by a 70-year-old brass compass and a wooden ship’s wheel. They are purely decorative though – the skipper navigates by electronic chart and GPS, and steers with a computer mouse. Which rather sums up the eccentrically enjoyable Majestic Line: the finest of yesteryear and today combining to provide the most memorable experiences at sea.