As part of our commitment to the environment, we are very pleased to announce our new Corporate Grove with the charity, Trees for Life, to support the amazing work they do. The Trees for Life vision is of a revitalised wild forest in the Scottish Highlands, providing space for wildlife to flourish and communities to thrive. They have been rewilding in the Scottish Highlands for over 25 years.
We have started our Hebrides Cruises Grove and have funded our first 25 trees, to represent every year we have been cruising the Hebrides.
We chose Trees for Life because of its reputation as one of the leading experts in wild forest restoration in Scotland. Its Dundreggan tree nursery ensures enough native rare and hard to grow trees are available to be planted in the Highlands. Trees for Life works to ensure the Caledonian Forest grows from the last few patches of the original wild forest that remain so it can grow again in large areas of Scotland. It is helping the wild forest grow at a scale that enables rewilding to happen so nature can look after itself, especially around Glen Affric and Glenmoriston where it has worked for many years.
What Trees for Life are achieving is truly inspirational. The new wild forest will benefit everyone: helping to reduce the impacts of climate change by storing carbon; preventing flooding and erosion by holding back water after rain and; providing opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people to experience and be inspired by wild nature.
Hebrides Cruises will fund additional trees to our Corporate Grove after every season, for every guest we welcomed on board. We are also hoping some of our guests might wish to add their own tree to our grove which can be found here https://treesforlife.org.uk/groves/382692/
Just returned from our second successful trip to St Kilda on the Elizabeth G. It was lovely to be greeted by the familiar faces of Rob and Craig from our previous trip along with naturalist Zoe and chef Sian. Rob’s experienced weather-eye meant he paced our journey to St Kilda so that we made the best of the beautiful weather so that we had the full day ashore on the sunniest day, even better than the previous trip in 2019. As before, Craig attended to our every needs and sumptuous meals were served up by Sian, maintaining the high standard of cuisine we have come to expect on the Elizabeth G. As an experienced whale-watcher Zoe was indefatigable in keeping a lookout for whales and dolphins and her enthusiasm was very infectious. She was also careful to make sure everyone was alerted when any were sighted. All in all it was a fantastic trip and I can’t wait till the next one.
Helen Mainwood: 5 July 2021St Kilda and the isles of the Outer Hebrides