4 Best Sights in Argyll and the Isles, Scotland

Unlike their neighbors in nearby Tiree, Coll's residents were not forced to leave the island in the 19th century. Today half of the island's sparse population lives in its only village, Arinagour. Its coasts offer extraordinarily rich birdlife, particularly along the beautiful sandy beaches of its southwest. Coll is even lower lying than Tiree but also rockier and less fertile. There are prehistoric standing stones at Totronald, a cairn at Annagour, and scant remains of several Iron Age forts around the island, though it takes some imagination to visualize what they must have looked like many centuries ago.

The beautiful beach at Kiloran Bay on Colonsay is an utterly peaceful place even at the height of summer. The standing stones at Kilchattan Farm are known as Fingal's Limpet Hammers. Fingal, or Finn, MacCool (Fionn mac Cumhaill) is a warrior of massive size and strength in Celtic mythology. Standing before the stones, you can imagine Fingal wielding them like hammers to cull equally large limpets from Scotland's rocky coast. The island's social life revolves around the bar at the 19th-century Colonsay Hotel, 100 yards from the ferry pier. The adjacent island of Oronsay with its ruined cloister can be reached at low tide via a 1½-mile wade across a sandy sound.

Barely 7 miles long, this sheltered island between Kintyre and Islay has sandy beaches and rich wildlife. Ferries make the 20-minute trip from Tayinloan on the mainland.

A fertile, low-lying island with its own microclimate, Tiree is windswept, but has long hours of sunshine in summer. Long, rolling Atlantic swells make it a favorite with surfers, and in summer, when an influx of wealthy visitors arrives, the posh accents of southern England sometimes drown out native voices. Among Tiree's several low-key archaeological sites are a large boulder near Vaul covered with more than 50 Bronze Age cup marks, and an excavated broch (stone tower) at Dun Mor Vaul. Tiree has two hotels and an assortment of self-catering accommodations, including a hostel with shared dorm rooms. The island is served by CalMac ferry from Oban.