This is a tale of a 40-year relationship between a college programme, its staff and students, and the Isle of Rum National Nature Reserve (NNR). In 1972, the then Director of the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland (NCCS), Dr John Morton Boyd, wrote to outdoor education staff at Moray House College of Education in Edinburgh, inviting them to bring students to an island that the Nature Conservancy had bought from the owner, Lady Monica Bullough, in 1957. The 26,000 acres of hills and bogs that comprise the Isle of Rum (or Rhum as it was then called) had been bought for the nation (at £1 per acre), and came with its own castle. Neville Crowther, a lecturer, botanist and field naturalist who taught on the one-term outdoor activities programme for teachers, accepted the invitation enthusiastically, and the first ever educational field course on the island took place in the spring of 1974. The fit was perfect: the mountains, wild-land and coast of the island provided opportunities for outdoor adventures such as mountaineering on the famous Rum Cuillin; the diverse habitats were ideal for field studies, and the landscape provided rich opportunities to discuss the cultural heritage and consequences of centuries of upland management for sheep-grazing and deer-stalking.