The Isle of Lewis

So, I’m a bit behind now but determined to cover everything! The Isle of Lewis was our final stop before Skye, and we had a day to run round and see as much as possible! The first port of call was the Callanish Stone Circle – older than Stonehenge and not quite as dramatic! The drive there, on the other hand, led us right up through the mountains with some amazing views down to the lochs, which I think were technically on the Isle of Harris (Harris and Lewis are not actually separate islands, but as you pass over a stream that marks where one ends and the next starts).

As with the other islands we had seen, there were very few of the lovely white croft houses I’d expected – it was more like a very spread out council estate, and a lot of the houses were abandoned. Lewis is the most populated of the Outer Hebrides (80% of the population are on Lewis), but for all that, outside of Stornaway it feels very remote. On the way to Callanish we passed a huge flat area of land, with machair and stagnant pools reminiscent of the Uists, without any houses in sight which was downright eerie.

The Stones themselves are worth a visit – it’s a very short walk from the carpark, and a wheelchair can just about negotiate the rough ground. Callanish village is surprisingly close to the stones, but with your back to the houses you get a dramatic view which has changed little in the 4000 years or so since the stones were erected.

From Callanish we drove North to the Butt of Lewis (leading to many jokes from the boy about going up Lewis’s butt). You can get right up to the lighthouse in the car, and it’s a short stagger from there to the cliffs, where you can watch the Atlantic swell come in all the way from America. From here we raced down to Stornaway for a quick fish and chips, and headed back to our hotel in Carloway. It was a decent enough place, lovely big room, but not very wheelchair friendly and the staff didn’t seem to care about us – we weren’t shown to our room and spent some time just trying to find the light switch so we could find the room!).

So that was our last night on the outer islands, all that was left for us was to head back to Harris for the last Calmac, over to Skye.

Harris – Magnificent Desolation

The boy has reminded me in the last entry on the Hebridean islands I forgot Benbecula. This isn’t entirely true, it hardly seemed worth a mention. Very similar in landscape to the Uists, it sits between the two. The problem with these islands is that there are so many lakes it’s hard to tell where one starts and another ends – there are just less bits of land in a couple of places and that forms the island of Benbecula. So there it is.

But on to Harris. It was a good start on the ferry, as leaving Berneray we spotted a seal bobbing along, unafraid of the rather large Calmac ferry with pointing tourists. Not much further out a flash of fin revealed a porpoise (at least according to the sharp-eyed woman next to me, I just saw the fin!). Also it was just a one hour journey, not the six hour epic from Oban to Lochboisdale.

Harris is much more mountainous than the Uists, and more green. The most striking aspect of Harris are its beaches, notably Scarista and Seilebost. These are all on the West Coast – the East coast of Harris is much more rocky and forbidding. But on the West, glorious, pristine beaches stretch literally for miles, gently washed by the Atlantic. Seilebost, where our B&B was, has the additional benefit that is it protected by a natural harbour and by the island of Taransay, where the BBC’s first Castaway series was filmed.

It must have been strange for the 360o odd population of Harris when Castaway was filmed; just 2 miles from Harris, it is only a few minutes away with a fast boat. But then Harris itself is pretty isolated – islanders seem to stay on the island, the owner of our B&B hadn’t even been to North Uist. Taransay now has a B&B on the island, left over from the tv show, so it is even less remote now – and apparently increased in value as a result of the show to over £1 million, which is still tiny given the acreage.

We did tour the island, and visited a Harris tweed shop on the East coast. This gave us a chance to see the harsher side of the island, rocky, lake-filled, dominated by oranges, pale greens and grey. Like Uist, it is a landscape like none other I’ve seen, and this seems true for others as this part of the island was used to represent Jupiter in Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey. But the only similarity with Uist is that it is unique – it is not like either Uist, or like Lewis, which was our next destination.

In short, for wheelies Harris is a surprising good place to visit, as you can see most of the best sights from the car (although don’t bother if you are a nervous driver!). There are no paths to the beaches, but again, there are some beautiful views from the road. One extra comment, which applies to travelling around all the islands – Calmac ferries are brilliant ways to see the islands, and all the ones we went on (Oban – South Uist, Bernary – Harris and Harris – Skye) were all wheelie accessible with lifts and stuff. However, every time you reach a ferry port, you need to tell them that you require the lift as early as possible. On one journey, had I not had my sticks, I would have been unable to get out of the car, let alone use the lift. And then I would not only have had a very dull journey I would have missed seeing a porpoise!

Today I am mostly cold

So this writing more frequently thing hasn’t gone too well so far…

Today sees me being rather cold in a lovely little cottage on the Isle of Skye. Lovely, but with no central heating so currently waiting for a no doubt authentic and somewhat cranky oilstove to warm up. And for a cranky and somewhat authentic Boy to cook dinner, which seems to be taking an age, but I have opted not to enquire how long that might be.

Skye is a beautiful island, of the Hebridean isles that we have seen so far, it has been my favourite. So let’s have a quick summary of the others:

South and North Uist

South Uist was the first of this islands that we visited. Arriving in Lochboisdale after a six-hour ferry from Oban (though we did see dolphins on the way!) we were glad just to be on dry land. It was dark by the time we disembarked, and so the view from my hotel window, my first view of the island was the now ubiquitous Calmac ferry disappearing into an inky blackness. Once the ferry had gone my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I realised I could see many many more stars than normal, and by studying where the stars stopped, could identify the vague shapes of nearby hills.

Morning, and litte more could be seen. The Uists are strange, stark islands. No trees grow, but the land is generally very flat, patches of rock in scrubland, interspersed with silent stagnant pools. In autumn the landscape seemed quite monochrome: grey land met grey sky, reflected in grey lakes. In summer it may be quite beautiful, as the marshy areas no doubt bring forth a host of flowers (interestingly the Hebridean guidebooks tend to show close-ups of flowers in wetlands rather than grand panoramas of Harris and Lewis), but in autumn my overwhelming impression was of bleakness.

We did a brief trip from South Uist over to the tiny island of Eriskay, linked now by a short causeway. Eriskay somehow felt friendlier than Uist, with more of a sense of community that the larger island, perhaps because of it’s size and the fact that the majority of it’s residents had chosen to live in closer proximity – in South Uist the houses seemed scattered at random – both in location and orientation – as if a giant had taken a handful of monopoly houses and dropped them all over the island, people moving in where they fell. Eriskay is the island to have been “blessed” with the gift of the Am Politician, which ran ashore there in 1941, releasing its cargo of whisky. The only pub on the island is named after this clearly momentous event in the island’s history, and we saw a bottle there, preserved from the ship.

Perhaps this is a little unfair on the Uists, as we didn’t have much time to explore the islands much. We stayed one night in Lochboisdale and then one in Lochmaddy in North Uist, in an incongruously modern hotel. Lochmaddy is quite lovely, a little harbour surrounded by a clutch of 19th century buildings, certainly tranquil, but somehow lifeless. The beaches are supposed to be spectacular, but the absence of roads makes them inaccessible to anyone on wheels, or at least I did not know how to find the places where I could park within my limited walking distance of anything worth seeing.

To catching the next ferry we moved on briefly to the little island of Berneray. We only had an hour to explore, so decided to chance a walk across the sand dunes to see what we could find. And it was worth it:

A gorgeous beach in pristine condition – in the South of England such a beach would be surrounded by hotels, cheap B&Bs, and the assorted paraphenalia of seaside resorts, but here, nothing but sand and sea. A shame that we could only stay a few minutes before dashing off to catch the ferry to the Isle of Harris…