Planning A Trip To St Kilda, Scotland – Islands On The Edge Of The World

There’s nothing in Scotland quite like a trip to St Kilda. This tiny archipelago sits on the edge of the world, isolated by crashing seas and inhabited by hundreds of thousands of seabirds. Technically, it’s part of the Outer Hebrides but you’ll need to travel an extra 40 miles west of the others if you want to visit St Kilda!

These are very special islands for more than just their remote location, they’re also packed with natural beauty and fascinating history. In fact, St Kilda is Scotland’s only Dual UNESCO World Heritage site for both of those things!

A trip to St Kilda had been on my bucket list for a very long time, with few people ever getting to see them. With our tent packed, it was an early start for what was hopefully going to be a two night trip, but as you’ll see, things don’t always go to plan…

Where Is St Kilda?

Found just over 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides, St Kilda is a tiny archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The largest island is known as Hirta and was home to practically the entire population of St Kildans throughout history. It wasn’t an easy place to live, not just due to the remote location, but due to the archipelago’s geography.

Aside from Hirta, there are the tiny islands of Soay, Boreray and Dun but none had sufficient land to farm. The surrounding water was too violent to be relied upon and so locals were forced to live off seabirds. Often that involved climbing up and down cliffs on Hirta or one of the surrounding jagged sea stacks!

How To Get To St Kilda

There’s no ferry service for your visit to St Kilda, but there are a few different options that will take you to the islands. We used Go To St Kilda which operates from Stein in the north of the Isle of Skye. Leaving from here makes the trip slightly longer but also meant we didn’t have to take a ferry to the Outer Hebrides first!

The trip to St Kilda took just under 4 hours and those there for a day trip had around 5 hours to explore Hirta. You’ll also explore the different sea stacks while being given an overview of the history and nature of the archipelago. There’s no food available on the island so bring your own packed lunch, but there’s coffee and biscuits on the boat while you head back!

We loved our trip with Go To St Kilda and would highly recommend it, but there are other options. If you want to get to St Kilda from the Outer Hebrides, then Sea Harris leaves from Leverburgh as does Kilda Cruises. You can also leave from a little further south in Eriskay with Uist Sea Tours.

With all of these trips, you have to be flexible! Poor weather out at sea can cancel your boat, but there may be a space for you to fill in the next day or two. You don’t want to miss out on exploring St Kilda because you booked something else that clashes!

Can You Camp On St Kilda?

Not many people ever manage it, but you can actually camp on St Kilda for up to 5 nights! The campsite is run by the National Trust for Scotland and charges £20 per night (cash only). Just email stkildainfo@nts.org.uk with details of your dates and which company you’re arriving with. There’s plenty of fresh water available but no food and remember that you’ll need to carry everything!

Flexibility is even more important when it comes to camping on St Kilda. Your return boat might not be able to come and get you for an extra couple of days, so bring extra food. Unfortunately for us, while the weather was beautiful on the day we visited, things were taking a turn. Our skipper advised us not to camp otherwise there was a chance we’d be stuck there for a week!

One day, I’ll have an updated post for you about exactly what it’s like to camp on St Kilda!

Quick St Kilda History

It’s hard to believe, but this tiny archipelago has been inhabited for thousands of years. The journey feels precarious enough with modern boats, so it must have been terrifying back then. No wonder that those who made it over there didn’t want to leave and go through that again…

The population of St Kilda seems to have bobbed around the 100 mark, sometimes dropping unsustainable low due to illness and other times stretching almost to 200. There isn’t lots of rich soil to farm enough food here, so the islanders turned to what they had an abundance of – birds. There are around a million seabirds in St Kilda and the locals were very good at harvesting them.

That involved climbing up and down the cliffs and sea stacks, using horsehair ropes for safety. Their feet became warped from these efforts and proving their balance on precarious rocks became a test of manhood. In 1764, it was recorded that a St Kildan diet consisted of around 36 eggs and 18 fowls a day!

Little changed in St Kilda’s unique way of life until the arrival of tourists. Thanks to the invention of steamships, cruises around the Hebrides became far more common and that included these remote islands. It was the islander’s first introduction to money as they sold homemade goods to St Kilda’s visitors.

Finally, in 1930 the final islanders were evacuated. Since then, St Kilda has been home to a small military base, NTS rangers and occasional wildlife researchers! However, they do have to share the island with plenty of curious wild sheep!

How To Spend A Day On St Kilda

Most visitors will only have a day on St Kilda, so you’ll want to make the most of it! If you have the energy then it’s worth heading up to some of the viewpoints on the main island. This walking route will take you up to Hirta’s highest point of Conachair before descending to the village. That would take up most of your time though, so we didn’t complete the entire thing.

Instead, I’d recommend following the instructions to around halfway through. Climb up to “The Gap” where you’ll have incredible views over the cliff to Boreray. Be careful, the cliffs along here are the highest in Scotland and we don’t all have the skills of the St Kildans of old! The best views over Village Bay can be found if you head along a little track across the face of Conachair, saving you a hike right to the top.

Head back down to sea level and explore the old drystone houses along “The Street”, including one that has been transformed into a small museum. Inside the old church, there’s a small shop with some souvenirs to remind you of your trip.

What Is A Cleit?

During your trip to St Kilda, you can’t miss the strange stone huts that litter the islands. One of these is known as a “cleit” with the plural “cleitean” and there are over 1200 on Hirta alone! They aren’t houses and contrary to what they sheep think, they aren’t for them either. So what is a Cleit?

Since St Kilda has no trees, the islanders couldn’t rely on smoking or salting their food to preserve it. Instead, the cleitean were used for both curing and storing their catch. The wind would blow through the loose stone structure and dry out meat hanging inside. Usually that would be seabirds but occasionally they had fish and lamb too.

Not everything stored inside a cleit was for curing. These huts also held any crops St Kildans had managed to grow or harvest including potatoes, grain, peat and hay. You can see them spread right up the highest slopes, in seemingly inaccessible spots!

The Strange Story Of Lady Grange

While cleitean aren’t for living in, there is one that is said to have been used as temporary home. This is probably the strangest story that St Kilda has to tell, one of violence, kidnapping and severe domestic unrest!

In the early 1700s, Edinburgh-born Rachel Chiesley married a man called James Erskine and subsequently became known as Lady Grange. This was no happy marriage though and Erskine’s unfaithfulness combined with Chiesley’s fiery temper was a recipe for disaster. When her husband decided to send Lady Grange away to live in the country, she threatened to reveal his darkest secret.

Erskine was a Jacobite, supporting the exiled Stuart Kings instead of the government. It was a secret he couldn’t risk getting out, so instead he sent men to kidnap his wife. Lady Grange was violently taken from her home and eventually dragged to the remote islands of St Kilda. Back in Edinburgh, her husband even held a fake funeral to explain her disappearance.

We don’t know for sure where Lady Grange lived while in St Kilda, but legend says it was in a cleit. For around 10 years, she was forced to shiver as the wind howled through the stones and scoop occasional snow away from her bed. The locals were kind to her and smuggled a letter from her to the mainland.

By the time anybody came to find her, she had been moved to the mainland and later Skye where she died. Lady Grange was buried at Trumpan Church in 1745, the same year as the famed Jacobite Rising. After all of that drama, her husband James Erskine doesn’t appear to have been involved with the rising in any way!

A Story Of Seastacks & Smallpox

Even with the abundance of seabirds on Hirta, the islanders had to collect some of their meals from the surrounding stacks. They would be rowed out and dropped off (since there’s nowhere to safely moor) for an agreed number of days before they and their precious cargo was picked up again.

However, in August 1727, after three men and eight boys had finished their hunting on Stac an Armin, the pickup boat didn’t appear. They had no way of getting back home and no idea that the main island had suffered a devastating smallpox (probably) outbreak.

Dozens had died in the 2 weeks since they had left and the community was so devastated that there was nobody to row out to the stack and rescue the group of 11. They were forced to survive on rainwater and the birds, huddling in a small Bothy all winter until May the next year!

They might consider themselves lucky that they were spared the sickness, but I doubt it felt like that as the wind howled and the sea swells crashed against the rock. Their real bit of luck was the arrival of the MacLeod chief’s Factor, visiting St Kilda to collect the rent!

It’s an amazing story of survival and a reminder of just how precarious life was like in these wee island communities.

WWI Comes To St Kilda

Of all the changes that impacted St Kilda, the greatest was undoubtedly WWI. On the outbreak of war in 1914, the importance of this remote archipelago was immediately recognised. Not as a naval base or airfield, but as a signal station.

The islands only ever saw one military action in May 1918. A German U-Boat arrived in Village Bay, informed the St Kildans to take shelter, then proceeded to bombard the island. They managed to damage a few buildings and kill one lamb, but they missed the radio masts altogether!

Regular messages were sent to the mainland and young men were employed as spotters, sitting on the top of cliffs to look out for enemy ships. That meant these St Kildans were receiving a salary for the first time ever and had the opportunity to buy things with it. Once the war was over, most working-age men decided to leave St Kilda forever.

Even though this archipelago is often said to be uninhabited, the military presence that arrived in 1914 remains to this day. Don’t be surprised when you visit St Kilda to see modern buildings sitting right next to the ruined village.

St Kilda’s Final Evacuation

In the years after WWI, the population of St Kilda steadily dropped to just 37 by 1928. With less able-bodied islanders, gathering enough food to feed the community was growing increasingly difficult. Farming the small amount of arable land became ever more important, but what the St Kildan’s didn’t know was that the seabird carcasses used for fertiliser were actually poisoning the ground.

That’s likely to have been a major factor of the successive crop failures that marked the 1920s. Things weren’t looking good for those that remained, but January 1930 saw the final nail in the coffin. A young woman called Mary Gillies had to be rushed to hospital by ship where she died. After that, the community decided it was time to leave.

Later in 1930, the last 36 St Kildans sent a request to the government for help to evacuate their home. As you walk through the ruined houses of the Street, slates list the names of the last occupants. They made their way to Morvern on the mainland, although they did spread out with at least one couple ending up in Fife.

It must have been incredibly hard for them to watch the islands disappear from the horizon. This was all most had ever known and they would never visit St Kilda again. Thousands of years of habitation, community and culture had come to a very abrupt end.

As our time on Hirta came to its end, I felt my own sadness at being forced to leave. I can’t imagine how much worse that would have been back in 1930. One resident described that gazing back felt like looking at an open grave.

The Famous St Kilda Birdlife

While the people may have left St Kilda, there was still plenty of life on the islands. While they’re kept company by wild Soay Sheep, mice and voles, the real star of this show is the St Kilda birdlife. There are around a million seabirds darkening the skies here!

Amongst the swarms of birds you can find Fulmar, Gannet, Shearwater, Petrel, Kittiwake and Shags. For those who love puffins, St Kilda is home to over 600,000 which makes it Scotland’s largest colony! As you hike around Hirta, you might also be introduced to the Great Skua. They’re more commonly known as “Bonxies” since they have a habit of swooping down to bonk you on the head…

Have you been inspired to plan your own visit to Scotland’s most remote archipelago? Hopefully this guide to St Kilda will come in useful, so make sure to leave a comment!

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