Mull Has it All

by Kate Thomas and Leo Wallace

We've just added a new beach campsite to our Scotland section. You'll find it on the spectacular Isle of Mull, home to a diverse range of wildlife and well worth exploring. Standing proudly on an exposed clifftop on the Isle is MacCulloch's fossil tree, believed to be between 50 and 60 million years old. At at height of 12m, the tree, coated in lava during the Tertiary period and now partly exposed, towers above the powdery sand beaches of this Inner Hebridean island. If one were to climb it - impossible, of course - the view would be quite something. From the snow-capped peak of Ben More to Calgary in the northernmost tip, red deer and wild white goats wander across the open moors. The calls of buzzards and great eagles drift out to sea, where atlantic grey seals, bottlenose dolphins, minke whales, harbour porpoises and even orca are regularly spotted. On the adjacent islet of Staffa is Fingal's cave, a subterranean sea cave worth writing poetry about; its basaltic pillars and abundance of marine life have inspired Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson and Mendelssohn.