Qualla: Coll

Coll: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Toby Thurston Thruston 10:32, 22 December 2005 (UTC), Public domain. A child's picture book gave Coll a second life. Mairi Hedderwick, the writer and illustrator who lived on Coll for years, drew this island into the Katie Morag stories under the name Isle of Struay, and a generation of British children grew up with a Coll that was not quite Coll but very nearly. The real island is rougher than the book version. Rocky, tussocky, 195 people in 2011 and 176 in the 2022 census, no street lights, no taxi, and a granny who would recognise the harbour at Arinagour even if she had only ever seen it drawn from memory.

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Image: Toby Thurston Thruston 10:32, 22 December 2005 (UTC) | Public domain

Coll: Johnson and Boswell, 1773

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim McKechnie, CC BY-SA 2.0. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell ended up on Coll on 3 October 1773, having missed Iona because of bad weather, and stayed nearly two weeks as guests of the local Maclean laird. In the morning we found ourselves under the Isle of Col, Johnson wrote afterwards. Their host was a yo...

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Image: Jim McKechnie | CC BY-SA 2.0

Coll: The Dùns of Loch Anlaimh

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Euan Nelson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Several small fortified dwellings, called dùns, sit on islets in Coll's freshwater lochs. They are usually called crannogs, the term for prehistoric artificial islets, but most of these have masonry instead of wooden piles, and Coll's local tradition dates them to the late mediev...

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Image: Euan Nelson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Coll: Basking Sharks, Sand Lizards, Dark Sky

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rude Health, CC BY-SA 2.0. Coll became Scotland's first official Dark Sky Community in December 2013. No street lighting, very little ambient glow, and a sky clear enough that the winter aurora is often visible. Mid-summer is a lost cause because that far north it never goes properly dark, but most of the ...

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Image: Rude Health | CC BY-SA 2.0