North Uist – Pete's Blog

We felt very lucky this week to be invited to join the local people at a bonfire night celebration.

North Uist is a sparsely populated island, and the cottage we are staying in is in one of the remotest areas – Balranald. It has a church, a few houses, quite a few cows and a bird sanctuary. In the summer it has a campsite that looks as if it would be pretty busy but at this time of year that is closed and there is no one here.

That suits us very well. Whether on Narrowboat Thuis, or at home, we are comfortable with our own company and have had a very relaxing time here. The nearest proper village is Bhaigh (Bayhead) which is four miles away. It has about 40 houses and a shop. It also has the High School for North Uist, and every day about twenty minibuses carry the children to school from all around the island.

On bonfire night they bring together the local community to eat burgers, drink Irn Bru and watch fireworks. It was a great night. Not the most impressive display I have ever seen but still a very good one, complemented by the bonfire, the full moon, and the reflections in the sea. But what really made it was a couple of hundred people from toddlers to ancients gathered to enjoy it together.

The Hebridean accent is probably the softest of all the Scottish areas and I could hear it in the excitement of the little ones, the bickering of the teens, and the conversations between farmers and other locals. They had all arrived in their pickup trucks from miles around to be together.

One thing that did amuse me was hearing a father telling his child how good it was to celebrate the foiling of a Catholic plot, five hundred years later. Until the five mile causeway was built between the islands in 1960, there was very little mixing between Catholic South Uist and Protestant North Uist. I guess some views remain pretty embedded.

It was a lovely evening and it was good to be able to join such a distant but close community. Thank you.

Narrowboat Thuis is back at the marina in Stone for the winter and we are back in our house in Lancashire. As always, we are a little sad at the end of this year’s adventure, but we will be back on “the cut” next year, and can look forward to the next few months of bricks & mortar life.

And I can engage in my favourite pastime of making plans. I get bored very easily and the idea of a quiet retirement fills me with dread. So we will have a couple of weeks at home, seeing family and friends and doing jobs around the house, and then we will be off to North Uist for six weeks.

North Uist is a small island in the Outer Hebrides. We have stayed there before and it will be very peaceful at this time of year. The tourists will have left and restaurants & attractions will have closed. But what will be left for the locals is simply stunning scenery and amazing nature. The weather will either be sideways rain, in which case our cottage with the open fire will be very welcome, or it will be clear and sunny with the best light in the UK. My brother in law is joining us for the first week and he is unconvinced. I can’t wait to take him to see some of the beaches and see what he says.

After the Hebridean trip it will be Christmas and maybe skiing in January. And then, all too soon, it will be February and we will be back on the boat. Come the end of this year I will have been retired for five years. Is it time to go back to a job? Not yet!

We are staying in North Uist for a month. North Uist is possibly the most beautiful of all the Outer Hebrides islands. It is nearly 50% water, with lochs and rivers. It has moorland and hills, and many many really stunning beaches, with white sand and blue sea. There are few other tourists at this time of year and very often we are the only people on a walk. It is an ideal place to have dogs. So why is one of our dogs on a lead?

On Monday, I took the dogs for a run on Crachan Sands, a really lovely quiet beach. They are usually off lead on a beach because Lulu and Ziggy love to play in the sand, pouncing and rolling each other over. So I had no hesitation in letting them go. In woodland I am more careful because Lulu likes to chase rabbits and squirrels. What I had not realised was that the dunes we had just crossed were one massive rabbit warren, and as soon as I let Lulu off, she rushed across the beach and into the long grass and bushes.

The dogs are Cairn terriers and while Ziggy will always come to call, hoping for a treat, Lulu is a typical terrier and has a huge prey drive. Over the next three hours I occasionally heard an excited yelp but I could not find or recall Lulu. Ziggy was also very upset as she helped me search, and cried for her sister. I began to panic that Lulu was stuck down a rabbit hole.

Eventually, three rabbits dashed across a field and I saw and heard Lulu following. Ziggy was on her in a flash, telling her off, and I managed to catch her. She was subdued because she knew she had been naughty, but I was just so relieved and delighted to have her back.

But since then, while we have walked many many beautiful beaches, Lulu has stayed on her lead. Understandable.

Tag: North Uist

Can you have a community when houses are miles apart?

No more narrowboating this year – so what is next?

Why is my dog on a lead?