Month: May 2023

Tuesday 16th – Journey from the Harris Hotel up through the island to Borve House Hotel, Lewis

We weren’t really prepared for what a large place Lewis is. Or for the fact that once you get much above the half of the island which is Harris, most of the interest in Lewis appears to be round the edges.

Although on arriving from the Southern Islands we had been immediately struck by the evidence of increased prosperity – almost none of the deserted or ruined buildings, almost none of the abandoned and rusting farm and other machinery that on the whole tourists don’t care to photograph..

But after the beautiful hills and mountains of Harris, the central area of Lewis appears to be a huge expanse of more or less uniform peat bog. Which has its own fascination, but would be an heroic trek for anyone determined to complete the Hebridean Way on foot. Bicyclists were a different matter, although for them it is tough going as well, but there were a great many of them doing the trip.

Ancient sites along the way spoke of the milder climate in the Hebrides many centuries ago. The.Standing Stones of Callanish are 4,000 years old – older than Stonehenge – and the visitor centre and museum at the site did a good job of telling the various theories about the significance and purpose of the site. Two avenues of stones, one long and one short, crossed at what was clearly some sort of ceremonial centre. We checked the orientation of the long axis out of curiosity and found it ran towards the SSE. The stones themselves were more of the ancient gneiss rock, naturally grained and patterned and very beautiful, especially when the sun broke through the scudding clouds.

We were told that the visitor centre has been awarded a six million pound grant for upgrading, which was a bit eyebrow-raising. Let’s hope the stones are not going to be roped off from visitors as Stonehenge has been – although of course that was for excellent reasons. Progress, and all that.

Please expand the above pictures to get a getter idea.

The second visitor attraction along the way was the Iron Age tower of Carloway Broch. A mere 2,000 years old, this is a surprisingly sophisticated structure of double-skinned dry stone walls, with staircases inside them giving access to what were once upper floors.

This site was even less regimented than the standing stones, and you could go inside through the very low entrance, through another doorway opposite into the space between the walls. and climb up the first flight of the staircase.

It had turned into a sunny afternoon and the close turf was delightful to walk on. There was a steady, spread-out stream of visitors, but I was the only one who climbed the hillside behind to see and photograph the view from above.

From there we pressed on, past what was to be our hotel for the next two nights, to the northernmost point of our journey – the Butt of Lewis lighthouse. After mile upon mile through almost uninhabited country we came to a string of relatively heavily populated habitations at the very top of Lewis: South and North Dell, Swainbost, Habost, Lional and Eoropaidh. We wondered what on earth so many people could find to do up there, but were assured by a local that employment there was good.

The Butt of Lewis is known as one of the wildest and windiest places in the British Isles, but we found it, and its lighthouse, on a beautiful day. It was a lovely place, with intricately-folded metamorphic gneiss rocks, crashing waves, and seabirds, which we recognised as fulmars, roosting on the sheer rock faces in pairs who seemed to spend much of the time billing, though not actually cooing.

Having sat and walked on the short grass and talked to the cosmopolitan visitors, we started back along the road and almost immediately stopped above a little bay to which we descended and Lesley had a paddle in the sea.

The hotel was rather strange and did not live up to its star rating for us. Although it probably ticked all the boxes for a modern building it had fire doors every few paces in narrow corridors with no pictures on the walls, and for us it seemed soulless. Certainly in comparison with the more traditional hotels we stayed at and no comparison at all to the two B&Bs further south.

Wednesday 17th

The weather was deteriorating by the next morning, and we set off to have a look at Stornoway. With a population of around 9,000 it is by far the largest town in the Outer Hebridean chain. The general feel was much more like a mainland town, and a prosperous one at that, with streets of large well-built houses.

But at the same time much of it felt quite run down, and quite grey, It may have been the weather, and another frustrating experience with a charger, but we felt quite dispirited. But we found a Guardian, and the same day’s at that, and sat reading it in the lovely public library which had a delightful young woman librarian who allowed us to use the toilets which were marked ‘staff only’. Which was a good thing because the only public toilets were closed for renovation.

With the car fully charged – yes, I’m afraid I have to admit that doing this trip with an electric car, even one with a big battery like ours, charging does form a constant background preoccupation, and I would be misleading you if I didn’t include this aspect – with the car fully charged, we made our way to the castle and its modern museum, with a film of Hebridean landscape scenes projected onto three large walls, with no narration – just the sounds of nature. The museum continued with well-curated displays of aspects of Hebridean and Gaelic culture and history. Then we had a light lunch in the excellent cafeteria.

Heading west across the moor, on 17 miles of narrow, single-track road, we came to the village of Gearrannan – where a picturesque group of old Black Houses has been conserved to illustrate the very simple conditions in which the crofters lived, often with their livestock at the downhill end – helping to heat the building. At the end of the winter they would apparently take down the end wall, clear out the manure and bedding, and spread it on the fields.

The last families were moved into council accommodation as recently as the 1970s and fortunately it occurred to someone to preserve the village as a record.

The interior of one of the houses has been fully restored, with even a peat fire burning brightly in the grate,

At the other end of the building there was a demonstration of the weaving of Harris Tweed.- a traditional occupation of the villagers. This wonderful character was there six days a week patiently demonstrating to a constant stream of inquisitive visitors.

In the evening we decided to eschew the hotel restaurant, braving the rain to drive 10 minutes up island to The Cross Inn which was situated in what was little more than a scatter of houses called, unsurprisingly, Cross.

This was a warm, cheerful and bustling place and suited us fine. As elsewhere, it was a perfectly decent meal, though scarcely memorable. I finished off with a single malt, in valediction to an extraordinary trip, and Lesley drove us back to the hotel.

Completed in the next post…

I have to tell you about the places we stay, because they are such an important part of the trip. We had been assured by both Margaret in South Uist and by the assistant in the Hebridean Jewellery Centre, when we told them where we were heading next, that we ‘would be alright with Mary’. And so indeed we were.

It later transpired that one of her two dogs had died at the vet’s the day we arrived (and the other hadn’t got out of its bed since) but she gave us the most wonderful welcome in spite of this. Another tremendous character, she had simply not missed a trick in providing facilities for our comfort and convenience, including a no-touch automatic soap-dispenser in the bathroom, if you please, and a power hub with no less than six power sockets and four USB charging points. Wi-fi, as everywhere we stay, is a given, and the password is almost the first item in every welcome.

Mary’s Borve Guest House logo was on welcome card, biros, wrappers round table napkins, and even on the disposable paper covering for the fresh butter in the pat. She told us she had burnt it onto the wooden table mats herself with a kind of soldering iron as something to do during lockdown (no photo – sorry!).

As before, we went for supper both evenings to a hotel about half a mile down the road – this one was the Dark Isles Hotel. And this time it looked a little further and we drove, offering a lift to two fellow guests the first evening, for which they were very grateful. We shared a table with them, two agreeable English ladies, who revealed knowledge of gin.

The excellent waiter was Romanian, and when we expressed surprise that he had found his way to South Uist he said he really liked it here, having tried Bath for a number of years. The dining room was a busy place and the sound of wild revelry burst through the door from the public bar every time it opened. Our waiter explained cheerfully that it was noisy music and noisy people. They were still at it when we left. And the second night was quieter.

Saturday 13th

We thought it would be wise to top up the car so, once we had had Mary’s sumptuous breakfast, we started the day by finding the charging unit marked on the Chargepoint Scotland app as being, improbably, in front of the school next to the hotel where we had eated the night before (which would obviously have been a good time to use it!) and found it already occupied. So we set off for the day up the island of Benbecula, where, as on South Uist, the mainly single track but beautifully-surfaced road wound and undulated through relatively flat land studded with innumerable lochs.

Reaching and crossed the causeway onto North Uist we made straight for the ferry port of Lochmaddy where we were directed by a workman to the charger down by the quay where upgrade works were in progress, so we were able to leave the car on it for an hour. Leaving, as it turned out, Lesley’s phone in it, so that, amongst the obvious communication difficulties, the car ‘thought’ she was still in it (Bluetooth, in case you wondered) and never locked. Not that that seemed the slightest danger in these parts.

Anyway, we repaired to a lovely little, modern, gallery, shop and museum a short distance away, where we installed ourselves while I walked a little further up the hill than I expected to the local shop in search of a newspaper (Lesley didn’t know where I’d gone, hence the aforementioned communication difficulty). Reaching the tiny general store I learned that the plane with the nationals had not yet arrived from the mainland, so I came back with a Stornoway Gazette, from which we read of chaos in the Caledonian MacBrane ferry services disrupting the tourist industry which was now to be hit by a savage hike in business rates.

From Lochmaddy, with the ring of confidence afforded by 300 miles in the battery, we continued anticlockwise around the top of the island towards another bird reserve. On the way I suddenly recognised a conspicuous tower on an island as having been next to a farm on North Uist on a recent Countryfile on BBC television, featured because it had been taken over and was being run, unaided, by an utterly-extraordinary 17 year old lad.

As I stood by the car to take the above picture a woman with a stout walking pole and tweed headband came striding up the hill and I couldn’t resist sharing my discovery. She was delighted: “Oh, you mean Archie!”. It turned out she was a local and it was obvious they were proud of him.

When we got to the bird reserve we happened to be comparing notes about the birds with another local, and when I mentioned that we had seen the famous farm back down the road he said that the woman running the campsite at the reserve was Archie’s Mum. Small world. Lovely people.

Anyway, we had a superb walk around a complicated shoreline in very strong wind. Here we did see a lot of birds, a shag and a number of eider ducks on rocks, and lapwings, greylag geese, arctic terns and great flocks of dunlin which we tried not to disturb on the grassy slopes. And turnstones on the shore.

It was quite a tough walk for us and we got back to the car glowing from the wind.

Sunday 14th

Saying goodbye to Borve Guest House we drove back up through Benbecula, anticlockwise around North Uist past Lockmaddy and right at the top across yet another causeway onto the small island of Berneray where there was another ferry terminal from which we were going to cross the Sound of Harris in the early afternoon.

Wich left us plenty of time, on yet another sunny day, for another coastal walk.

Joining the ferry queue early I passed the time chatting to group of bikers about the practicalities of EV motoring, agreeing that it, or something like it, had to be the future, but they hadn’t got it entirely sorted yet,

According to my friend Alec, who skippered our four cruises in the past, the Sound of Harris. with its profusion of obstacles, involves probably the most intricate pilotage on the entire Western coast. The ferry, he told me, has to make 25 changes of course in the crossing, which was very apparent as we watched from high above the car deck (still having to cancel the car alarm with the app!)

We were third car off the ferry (that’s the front of our car in the picture – next to the bikes) and drove up the mountainous and incredibly beautiful west coast, stopping with others to look down on the beaches of Seilebost and Luskentyre.

to Tarbert where we checked in to the Harris Hotel.

Continues in the next post…

After a full cooked breakfast at the hotel I went out to put the car on a charger. The Chargeplace Scotland app showed two in Castlebay, one, just across the road outside the Council Offices, looked pretty tatty and although it recognised my card the instructions just took me round and round in circles. I may have been doing something wrong but a member of staff arriving for work said that people did seem to have trouble with it, so I went down to the more modern-looking one at the ferry terminal and that started charging fine. It said it would take 50 minutes to full, so I left it going and walked up the hill to pick up Lesley from the hotel.

She had selected the Vatersay Beaches Circuit for us from the superb walkhighlands.co.uk website – this is the actual walk but you may have to create an account, which is free, to go that deep in the site.

Vatersay is a causeway-linked island at the Southern extremity of Barra only a few miles from Castlebay. It is the starting point for the Hebridean Way footpath which extends the length of the entire Island chain, 156 miles, 10 islands, 6 causeways, and the two ferry crossings we are doing – the only point of similarity between our journeys!

Getting there gave us our first experience of the wonderful, winding and undulating, largely single-track roads with which we were to become so familiar (I’m writing this a week behind – from Harris as it happens, think tweed). With passing places at frequent intervals drivers tended to be courteous and cooperative in giving way as appropriate, with the discreet gestures of appreciation threatening an overuse syndrome in the waver’s wrist. A refinement was to give way promptly to a local vehicles coming up behind, sometimes earning a horn-toot acknowledgement. And, of course, these roads are stunningly beautiful.

Contrary to advance-reports of endless horizontal rain (which we were determined to enjoy anyway) the day became beautifully sunny, so we parked at the Community Centre as instructed, donned our boots and set forth along the beach. It was a long time since we had done anything like this and we were unsure how well we would stand up to it, but in the end we had a brilliant walk, seeing Lapwings (Peewits), lots of gulls and lots of sheep, and returning after a couple of hours to the cafe for ice-creams.

Pics will enlarge if you tap them

After the walk we drove right round the island back to Castlebay, which took about an hour. Then we rested, had another meal at the hotel, and settled down for the night. Not tough at all.

Wednesday 10th

The pattern for our trip was to have two nights in each of five places, all the way up to the top of Lewis. So the second day in Barra was the one in which we were to move on – but we had until 4pm when the ferry left for South Uist from the top of the island.

So we had another walk, this time on the South West coast of Barra, out to the remains of a two thousand year old iron-age fort, Dún Bán. We were feeling desperately intrepid, stepping across the sodden, resilient machair peatland with its outcrops of ancient gneiss – the oldest rock in Europe – especially as there had been a short rain squall soon after we set off. But we felt secure in our waterproofs, hats, and the boots which were proving to be both waterproof and completely secure against the slightest slipping.

But as we gazed down on the waves and the grassy fort, with its rings of long-ruined walls, thinking ourselves entirely alone in the landscape, we suddenly noticed we had been joined by a party of young people, some of whom were in shorts and T-shirts, and all of whom were carrying full packs. It turned out they were final year St Andrews students who were celebrating their graduation by camping up the Hebridean Way. Respect! Extremely nice young people.

Coming down we agreed that it was the best coastal walk we could remember.

Back in the car we went up to the top of the island, had a look at the vast flat beach used as the Barra Airport, put the car in the ferry queue and walked a little way along looking, unsuccessfully, for otters. But sitting peacefully on a rock we saw a lot of seals (lying peacefully on rocks).

Eriskay

The relatively short ferry journey across the Sound of Barra takes you to the tiny island of Eriskay – site of the wrecking of The Parliamentarian, loaded with Scotch and immortalised in the film Whiskey Galore, and more evocatively, home of the Eriskay Love Lilt, of which Sir Hugh Roberton said, in this recording by his Glasgow Orpheous Choir made at least two generations ago, “There is no lovelier tune anywhere”:

And from Eriskay a causeway takes you to the island of South Uist, our next stopping point.

Continues…