11 Days Luxury British Isles Cruise - Belfast to Edinburgh

Belfast carries its maritime heritage in the Titanic District, where the Titanic Museum brings to life the story of the ship built in the city's own shipyards, and SS Nomadic serves as a time capsule to that era. The Peace Lines, built during the Troubles, can be explored on black taxi tours explaining the history of the murals along the walls. The Cathedral Quarter's cobbled pubs and venues where music spills into the streets reveal the city's thriving creative present.

Port St Mary is a quiet harbour village at the southern tip of the Isle of Man. The island is a self-governing Crown dependency with its own parliament, language, and cultural heritage shaped by Gaelic and Norse traditions. The surrounding countryside leads past thatched cottages and Iron Age hill forts, and the island's TT motorcycle course passes through Manx landscapes of great character.

Islay, the southernmost of the Inner Hebrides, is Scotland's whisky island — home to nine working distilleries producing the peaty, maritime malts for which the island is famous worldwide. Port Ellen's charming beachfront of whitewashed houses leads to distilleries including Laphroaig, Lagavulin, and Ardbeg, all within easy reach along the island's southern shore.

Iona, just three miles long and one and a half miles wide, is home to an abbey built in 563 by Saint Columba, making the island the cradle of Christianity in Scotland. St. Martin's Cross, a 9th-century Celtic cross standing outside the abbey, is considered the finest example of a Celtic cross in the British Isles. The cemetery of Reilig Odhrain allegedly contains the remains of many Scottish kings.

Lunga is the largest island in the Treshnish archipelago off the Scottish coast, with remains of black houses from its human occupation until the 19th century. Atlantic puffins breed on the island's plateau from mid-April to early August, with abundant plant life and dramatic coastal scenery. Seals haul out on rocky shores and birds of prey are sometimes seen overhead.

St Kilda, 50 miles west of the Outer Hebrides, is the UK's only dual UNESCO World Heritage Site — recognised for both its natural and cultural values. The archipelago holds the UK's largest Atlantic puffin colony and the world's largest gannet colony on the island of Boreray, while the evacuated village of Hirta preserves the last record of a community that survived on these rocks for millennia.

Uninhabited since the last St Kilda residents departed in 1930, Boreray is the domain of vast seabird colonies including Northern Gannets, Northern Fulmars on the volcanic cliffs, and Atlantic Puffins darting in and out of burrows. The rare Boreray Sheep, unique to the island, graze on its hilly slopes. Boreray forms part of the St Kilda World Heritage Site, one of the few sites recognised for both outstanding natural and cultural values.

The Shiant Islands, off the Outer Hebrides, are known for cliff faces of hexagonal basalt columns — volcanic intrusions exposed by millions of years of erosion, rising to 120 metres above the sea. The islands support one of Scotland's largest puffin colonies and are among the few Scottish sites where black rats — introduced by shipwreck — remain an established population.

Loch Ewe is the only north-facing loch in Scotland, used during World War II as a convoy gathering point protected by anti-aircraft guns, a boom net, and a mine defence system. The loch is a natural deep-water sea loch connected to the Atlantic through a narrow mouth. Nearby Inverewe Gardens thrive on the warm currents of the North Atlantic Drift, nurturing exotic plants from many countries on a latitude north of Moscow.

Kirkwall is the capital of the Orkney Islands, home to the sandstone St. Magnus Cathedral, begun in 1137 and completed over 300 years, known as the Light of the North for its stained-glass windows. The archipelago's prehistoric heritage includes Skara Brae, Europe's best-preserved Stone Age village and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. History-rich distilleries produce peaty single malts, and the dramatic meeting of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean defines the islands' seascapes.

Tórshavn is one of the world's smallest capitals — a city of half-timbered houses, grass-roofed buildings, and one of the world's oldest parliaments on a peninsula overlooking the North Atlantic. The Faroe Islands' eighteen islands, shaped by volcanic basalt and Norse settlement, are among the most dramatically beautiful and least-visited landscapes in Europe.

Fair Isle lies mid-way between Shetland and the Orkney Islands, with a population of around 70 people and a warm welcome for visitors. The island is famous for birds, knitwear, and historic shipwrecks, including the Spanish Armada flagship El Gran Grifon. Sheep Rock, rising over 100 metres, towers above the island's cloudy turquoise waters.

The Isle of May is a National Nature Reserve off mainland Scotland, managed by Scottish Natural Heritage as a breeding ground for approximately 250,000 seabirds. Over 40,000 puffin burrows have been counted as occupied, alongside kittiwakes, shags, eiders, guillemots, razorbills, Arctic Terns, and Great Black-backed Gulls. The island is also used by biologists for ringing breeding seabirds and surveying migrating passerines.

Edinburgh Castle watches over the capital from a skyline of sheer drama, while the modern Scottish Parliament and August festivals confirm the city's place in the 21st century. Nearly everywhere in Edinburgh stand spectacular neoclassical buildings, with Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian pillars against a largely Presbyterian backdrop. Arthur's Seat, a mountain jutting 822 feet above its surroundings, rears up behind the spires of the Old Town.

Itineraries are subject to change.