Scotland
Staffa
Hexagonal basalt columns form a sea cave so resonant Mendelssohn scored it as an overture.
The basalt columns of Fingal's Cave stand in hexagonal ranks so precise they look manufactured โ each one a cooling joint in a sixty-million-year-old lava flow, stacked like organ pipes and tuned by the sea. Mendelssohn visited in 1829 and composed the Hebrides Overture from what he heard inside.
Staffa is an uninhabited island in the Inner Hebrides, born of the same volcanic province that made the Giant's Causeway across the water in Ireland. Fingal's Cave runs 72 metres into the island, its columns rising twenty metres above a sea that glows emerald as light refracts through clear Atlantic water, and the cave's acoustics โ wave rhythms amplified into something close to music โ inspired one of the most famous pieces of programme music ever written. Landings use a natural jetty formed by the basalt columns themselves, sea state permitting: boats run from Mull and Iona in season, time ashore is brief and precious, and the island's conservation charity asks visitors to tread its paths lightly. In summer puffins nest on the grassy summit, entirely indifferent to their audience โ a colony, not a performance.
Solo
Sitting inside Fingal's Cave as the sea plays the columns is a sensory experience that approaches the spiritual โ brief, and the better for it.
Couple
The cave, the columns and the summit's summer puffins make a shared day that earns its superlatives honestly.
Friends
The crossing from Mull is its own small voyage, and the island's compact size lets a group take in cave, columns and summit in one memorable landing.
- Fingal's Cave stacks hexagonal columns so precise they look machine-cut.
- Mendelssohn heard the cave in 1829 and answered it with the Hebrides Overture.
- Puffins nest on the summit through summer, indifferent to photographers.
- The sea inside the cave glows emerald as Atlantic light refracts through it.
Nothing on the island โ eat before the boat from Fionnphort or Oban.
Mull cheddar and langoustines back across the water.
Cape Palliser
New Zealand
Fishing boats launched by bulldozer into wild surf beneath a striped lighthouse.
Wharariki Beach
New Zealand
Archway islands rise from the surf behind dunes where seal pups play the pools.
Lake Waikaremoana
New Zealand
A mist-wrapped lake in Te Urewera, walked under the stewardship of Tลซhoe.
Tunnel Beach
New Zealand
A hand-carved tunnel through a sea cliff opens onto a beach the tide lends out.
Rannoch Moor
Scotland
Fifty square miles of nothing โ Britain's last emptiness, crossed by one road and one railway.
Glen Affric
Scotland
Ancient Caledonian pines guard a glen so remote it still feels like Scotland before roads.
Castle Campbell
Scotland
Castle Gloom at the head of a gorge where the Burns of Sorrow and Care converge.
Knoydart Peninsula
Scotland
No road reaches this peninsula โ you arrive by boat or not at all.