A few weeks ago I embarked upon a journey to a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, west of Scotland, called Mingulay. Known only amongst bird-watchers and rock climbers, Mingulay has been uninhabited since 1912.

Getting to the island was logistically quite complicated. The first two stages involved a ten hour drive from Oxford to Oban (with an overnight stop in Glasgow, and rendevous with a friend, who shared the ride from there), and five hours on a ferry from Oban to (the aptly named) Castlebay, a tiny town on the Hebridean island of Barra. Some Scotch whiskey may have been consumed on the ferry, and may or may not have been paid for by the Climber’s Club, a feat achieved by the amazing Kyle, who organised the trip, and evidently managed to squeeze a few pounds out of the CC for slightly questionable purposes.

We then proceeded to spend around 36 hours stranded in Castlebay, with horrific weather making it too dangerous for Donald the boatman to take us across. Eventually though, we boarded the Boy James and putted along for around an hour to finally reach the beautiful Mingulay bay, our home for the following week. The entirety of this journey, by the way, was accomplished whilst lugging around climbing and camping gear, and food for a week.

In addition to occasional groups of climbers over the summer months, Mingulay hosts an abundance of wildlife. A colony of what must have been a thousand seals (the population varied on a daily basis) was settled just a few hundred metres from our campsite, at the far end of the bay. Just beyond them was a colony of puffins, who seemed to enjoy flying around in circles for hours on end. While climbing, we did our best to avoid many other species of birds living on the sea cliffs (wildlife photos courtesy of my climbing partner for the week Joris Roulleau, a friendly Frenchman who is a much better photographer, and has a much better camera, than I).

In particular, throughout the week Joris and I tried and failed to develop a successful Bonxie (a.k.a Great Skua) avoidance strategy. During my week on Mingulay I came to the conclusion that bonxies are stupid, aggressive arseholes. They lay their eggs on the ground out in the open, and make no attempt to hide them. When anything (human; rabbit; another bird; nothing much else exists on Mingulay) comes within about 50 metres of them, they abandon their egg and start swooping at the intruder. We took to carrying around bonxie sticks whenever we travelled through their territory.

Anyway, back to the topic of climbing; once we arrived on the island we had amazing weather for pretty much the whole week, so were able to climb every day bar one. We spent the first few days exploring the cliffs in the North West, climbing The Arch Deacon on the first day, and then heading over to the Boulevard on the second. On our first day here we abseiled down at the wrong spot, and accidentally climbed what turned out to be a worthwhile new line (a variant of this one) which went at about E1. We soon oriented ourselves and spent the next two days ticking off several great climbs - the Boulevard is a top-notch crag.

We spent the remainder of the week at the awe-inspiring Dun Mingulay. On the fourth day of the trip, Joris and I quickly discovered why pretty much everyone else on the trip had gone straight to this cliff, instead of poking around on the smaller crags. It is an incredible place with immaculate rock, some amazing climbs (the latter two have to be some of my best climbing experiences to date), and an atmosphere second to none. This cliff was really what made the trip worth it for me, and what would make me strongly consider returning to Mingulay.

Mingulay is a very special place. I was lucky to get the opportunity to go there, and on top of that, go there with such an amazing group of people.