Mull is from the Gaelic maol, which means bare of trees and shrubs, and the name was once accurate enough that medieval chieftains feuding over the island were said to be bald men fighting over a comb. Today the island is green and partly wooded, much of it commercial pine plantation now mature enough to need difficult decisions about replanting. The population sits at 2,990 by the 2011 census, most of them clustered around Tobermory's painted seafront. The rest is space: 875 square kilometres of moor, basalt, lochs and single-track lanes, where Highland cattle stand in the road and the rules of right of way bend around them.
Sixty million years ago, a lava plain more than 100 miles wide spread across what is now Mull, Ulster, Newfoundland, and Iceland. Geologists call it the Thulian plateau. It built up not from volcanic peaks but from continual flows, miles thick in places, that cooled into basalt. As the Atlantic widened and pulled the plateau apart, sea cliffs faced the new ocean. The cooling lava cracked into the hexagonal columns visible today at Fingal's Cave on Staffa, just offshore from Mull, and at the Giant's Causeway in Ulster, six hundred kilometres south. The Ice Ages scraped most of the soil away. When the last glaciers retreated around 11,000 years ago, the sea rose into the fault lines and cut a much larger proto-Mull into the smaller islands of Staffa, Iona, Ulva and Gometra. Mull's coastline carries that history in its shape: long sea lochs reaching inland like claw marks, sheer basalt cliffs in the south and west, and headlands that point toward what used to be one continuous land.
Tobermory is the obvious base for anything except day trips to Iona. The painted houses along its harbour are familiar to a generation of British children from the BBC programme Balamory, which used the town as backdrop. Teenagers will recognise it instantly. The town also has Mull's only whisky distillery, a Co-op for groceries, and most of the island's accommodation. Craignure, on the east coast, is where the Calmac ferry arrives from Oban; Duart Castle stands three miles south. Salen sits midway between, with the only Munro on Mull, Ben More at 966 metres, climbable from Dhiseig to the south. Dervaig has Britain's smallest Post Office. Fionnphort is where you catch the short ferry to Iona for the rebuilt medieval abbey. Calgary, on the northwest coast, has the beach that named a Canadian city. Each is a separate small world reached by single-track lane.
The waters around Mull are some of the best wreck-diving sites in Scotland, particularly in the straits between the island and the Ardnamurchan peninsula. Just do not expect to find the San Juan de Sicilia, the Spanish galleon that blew up off Tobermory in 1588 during the retreat of the Armada. Four centuries of treasure-seeking have been thorough. A 2006 marine archaeology survey found nothing left on the seabed but a crater where the wreck used to be. Boat trips run year-round to Fingal's Cave on Staffa, which inspired Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture after he visited in 1829. Other tours visit the Treshnish Isles, an archipelago three and a half miles west, now a wildlife reserve where puffins and grey seals greet arrivals in summer. The Dutchman's Cap, formally Bac Mòr, is the Treshnish's most distinctive silhouette, though it looks more like a sombrero than headwear of either kind.
You need a car to see Mull properly. The main road, the A848, is single-track with passing places for most of its length, widening only for eleven miles between Craignure and Salen and for the last four miles into Tobermory. Bus 95/495 runs the Tobermory-Craignure route five times daily; 96/496 connects Craignure to Fionnphort; the legendary 494 to Calgary runs three times Monday to Friday and once on Saturday. The Ulva Ferry minibus completes a west-coast loop on weekends. Fuel is expensive and the filling stations are few, so arrive with half a tank at minimum. The hazards are mostly natural: cold winds, driving rain on almost any day, sea conditions that can turn quickly, and in summer, midges in numbers that defeat repellents and patience equally. The only sure deterrent is a stiff breeze. Shut the door before they all get in.
Coordinates roughly 56.45°N, 6.00°W centred on the island. Best viewed at 3,000-5,000 feet AGL to capture the full crescent shape, with Tobermory on the northeast tip, Ben More (966 m) as the high point in the southwest, and Staffa, Iona and the Treshnish Isles visible offshore. Glenforsa Airfield (grass strip) near Salen handles light aircraft; nearest paved fields are Tiree (EGPU) 30 nm west and Oban (EGEO) 25 nm east on the mainland. Hebridean weather changes fast: low cloud against the basalt cliffs is common, and crosswinds at Glenforsa can be significant.