North Atlantic Adventure: Cruise to Svalbard from the UK

This is such a special voyage (I’ve done it many times over the years and know many of our destinations intimately); it’s hard to believe we pack so much into a single trip.

There’s something truly evocative about boarding a ship in Oban and ending up in the icy realms of the High Arctic. Zig-zagging the North Atlantic, we’ll see seldom-visited, wildlife-rich hotspots that don’t feature on typical itineraries.

Our home for this exclusive 16-night adventure is the very comfortable ship - the MV Ortelius - with en suite facilities in every cabin. She has plenty of deck space, is exceptionally stable and is just the right size for comfortable sea crossings.

There's a hand-picked team of great friends joining me, too - including the renowned landscape photographer Joe Cornish, Wildlife Worldwide Founder Chris Breen, naturalist Tim Stenton and my Project Manager Rachel Ashton. Here are some of the team on last year's trip!

There's likely to be so much wildlife along the way, it’s hard to know where to begin. We travel at the prime time for seabirds - visiting vast colonies of puffins, Arctic terns, gannets, common and black guillemots, as well as razorbills, Arctic skuas, kittiwakes, little auks, ivory gulls, king eiders, and much more - and, of course, a tantalising variety of marine mammals.

In the past, I’ve seen blue, fin, sei, minke, humpback, bowhead and killer whales, belugas, white-beaked and Atlantic white-sided dolphins, harbour porpoises, and harp, hooded, bearded, grey, common and ringed seals. And, of course, walruses and polar bears!

This exciting, well-planned itinerary is packed to the hilt, with as many landings and Zodiac cruises as possible. After setting off from Oban, we island-hop across the North Atlantic. From remote St Kilda (of rare vagrant bird fame) we visit Rockall, too, the iconic small granite islet 300 kilometres west of Scotland (of Shipping Forecast fame).

Next is a few days in Iceland, my second home, exploring its wildlife-rich coasts. The first book I ever wrote was Iceland - Nature’s Meeting Place, published when I was in my mid-20s, and Iceland has had a special place in my heart ever since (I’ve been back more than 85 times - helping to establish whale watching as an alternative to whaling, and leading umpteen trips).

Among many highlights, we circumnavigate Eldey Island (home to the largest northern gannet colony in Iceland, and where the great auk officially became extinct, in 1844), and explore Grimsey (a tiny island, cut in half by the Arctic Circle, with fewer than 100 people and more than a million seabirds).

After all this, we head to truly remote Jan Mayen, a beautiful volcanic Norwegian island, and cruise along Greenland’s ice edge looking for bowhead whales, polar bears and harp seals.

Then we cut across to Svalbard, with its towering glaciers and icebergs, to spend two full days looking for polar bears, belugas, walruses and other Arctic wildlife. See what I mean? There's nothing else quite like it.

Join us on our exclusive wildlife expedition to the Arctic! To find out more or to book your place, contact our expert team today.