Tag: Outer Hebrides

The ten best things in the Outer Hebrides

We have just returned from six weeks in the Outer Hebrides. Also called the Western Isles, this archipelago of islands is one of the remotest areas of the UK and at this time of year the tourists have gone home and it is even bleaker. The winds are wild. Daylight hours are short. Why on earth would anyone want to stay there? I can give you ten very good reasons

1 It is incredibly beautiful.

You can drive through Lewis and Harris, get a ferry to Berneray, drive across causeways to North Uist, Grimsay, Benbecula, Soouth Uist, Eriskay and a short ferry to Barra. Around every corner there is something beautiful to take your breath away, from inland lochs, to dramatic cliff edges, to awesome views.

2.. The history is fascinating

We saw Iron Age brochs, prehistoric standing stones, a ditch of blood where the MacDonalds fought the MacLeods in the seventeenth century. We saw a ruined temple which is claimed to be the oldest university in the UK. And more modern history such as the Iolaire monument in Stornaway, overlooking the bay where hundreds of soldiers returning from the First World War, lost their Iives in a shipwreck.

3 The locals are friendly.

Because the tourists have largely gone, we were treated as part of the community, attending the local firework display, chatting in the pub, and even going to a travelling show abut Hercules the Bear, who escaped and roamed the islands for weeks in the 1980s. The Hebridean accent is soft and the people are friendly.

4 The shellfish is wonderful.

Some of the best shellfish in the world is landed in the Hebrides. We had a wonderful lobster lunch off formica tables in a cafe next to the fishing boats. I also had the best langoustine eggs benedict breakfast that anyone could dream of.

5 Rainbows

I am not sure why. Perhaps it is the ever changing weather combining rain and sunshine, Perhaps it is the time of year with the sun so low in the sky. But I have never seen so many rainbows. Stunningly beautiful.

6. Sunsets

It was not every night. We also had cloudy skies. But when the weather was right we had amazing sunsets and sunrises. We also got to see the Northern Lights

7 Sculptures

I think the remoteness must attract artists to the islands. I wrote in a previous blog about the pile of peat in an art gallery. I much preferred seeing the sculptures, scattered around the islands, set into the landscape

8.. You can hunker down in front of the fire

And when the rains turned horizontal, the properties we stayed in had wood burning stoves to keep the cockles warm. I settled down to read the latest Peter May book about murders in Lewis. Nice.

9. The wildlife

I am not a patient man. There are hides you can visit where people sit for hours waiting to see the rarest wildlife. Not for me. But we still saw two golden eagles, a sea eagle, black kite, deer, otters, coos on an uninhabited island, sheep swimming across a loch. It was pretty impressive.

10 The Outer Hebrides have the best beaches in the world.

Famously, West Beach n Berneray was used for a Thai tourist brochure. It is a lot colder, but the Hebridean beaches are empty. There are so many of them, and they are so dramatic, that after a while you think they are normal. White sands formed from crushed sea shells. Miles and miles of empty beaches.. Wonderful

So now we are back home. Six weeks is less of a holiday and more of an adventure. I would encourage anyone who enjoys peace and beauty to visit the Western Isles. Simply gorgeous.

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Not special – just me

In my random meanderings through the Internet this week, I came across this song from a chap called John Gill, who grew up in Matlock, Derbyshire just a few years before me

https://johngill1.bandcamp.com/track/superman-3

It’s a simple little folk song with a catchy tune but I found myself with tears in my eyes as I listened to the lyrics. Here’s just a bit:

I’d like to think that I was Superman
Giving all the world a hand
Oh what a super man I’d be
I’d like to think I was invisible
I’d be invincible
Invincivisible that’s me
Oh but I’m very unextraordinary
And I’ll never be any of these things I dream about
when I’m alone and lights are out
I’m just me

I think we did a generation of children a disservice by telling them all they were special and were capable of anything they could dream of. I am a massive fan of positive thinking but the danger is that people think they have not achieved their potential because they are not an award winning author or prime minister or CEO of a massive company.

I live a very lucky life. I know that. This week we stayed in a Blackhouse crofter’s cottage on the Isle of Lewis. We saw sunsets and eagles. We slumped in front of the fire watching a film, while the rain lashed down. We went on adventures to seek out places from the Peter May Lewis books, and to see Iron Age houses and standing stones.. It was amazing.

The black house village where we stayed this week

It was a very special week. But does that make me special? Does it make me superman. Nope.

I’m just me.

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Can you have a community when houses are miles apart?

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.

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Can you relax by being busy?

We were talking to our son Rob this week, who is about to go on holiday. He has been working very hard recently and is pretty stressed. His question to us was how best to use the holiday time to relax. Mandy’s answer was to do as little as possible. Maybe sit by the pool and read a book. My answer was that you can relax by being busy. Go on adventures. See some historic places. Explore the island. I then realised that that is exactly how Mandy and I have been spending our time in the Outer Hebrides.

Mandy has been mostly sitting in the cottage doing cross-stitch sewing or completing jigsaws. I have been dashing around, either with our guests or by myself, seeing new places and discovering new things.

For instance I mentioned in a previous blog the road end sculptures which you can find in some of the most out of the way places in North Uist. This week I went to see “Sanctuary” which is several miles down a road to nowhere. The sculpture is a metal tree on top of a rock on a small hill surrounded by tiny lochs. From the sculpture I could see a small cairn at the end of a peninsular in one of the lochs. I decided to wander out for a closer look, and to my surprise, on top of the cairn was a tiny version of the same sculpture.

This tiny sculpture is not mentioned in any of the guide books, not signposted, and is not even very accessible, requiring a bit of a scramble across rocks at low tide. And it made my day.

But are these adventures what I should be doing? Mandy is often asking why I can’t just chill out and do nothing. After all, I have been retired for nearly five years now. Shouldn’t I be finding my pipe and slippers?

My answer is that this is my way of relaxing. There is nothing better for me than going to bed with new memories to take to my sleep.

Am I wrong?

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Are the Outer Hebrides the most beautiful islands in the world?

Week two of our long trip to the Western Isles, and the weather can best be described as mixed. We have had beautiful sunshine, torrential rain, strong winds and complete stillness. The only consistent thing has been the beauty we have seen.

We have had our son, Tin, and his girlfriend, Cheryl, with us this week. Last week we were joined by Mandy’s brother Stephen. Perhaps because we have had visitors we have made the effort to get out every day, and we have been well rewarded.

When the rain came in to replace sunshine we had the most stunning rainbows.

When we were stuck in the rain we discovered a roadside seafood shack, serving the best lobster, crab and prawn rolls.

When it has been dry but cloudy we have still found the beaches to be pristine white.

And when the sun has come out, our visitors have made the best of the invigorating cold waters.

We have met bears in the forest,

Peacocks by the cottage,

And wild Eriskay horses in the roads

We have seen sunrises, sunsets,

And wonderful night skies.

And we are just two weeks into our six week break.

I do think the Outer Hebrides are perhaps the most beautiful islands in the world.

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Is this art or just a pile of mud?

We are away for a few weeks in the Outer Hebrides. More on that in future blogs no doubt. One of the things we have done this week was to go to the visitor centre in Lochmaddy, North Uist. It’s a nice place to go, with a small shop, a café that does excellent soup, toasties and scones, and a museum that is currently exhibiting everything you could want to know about the Scottish ferry company Calmac. It also has a small art gallery and that is what confused me this week.

Most of the floor of the gallery was covered in peat, with some sheep’s wool in frames around the walls. I like to think I am open to modern art installations, particularly the physical ones. I love The Tate gallery, and the Pompidou in Paris. I have climbed inside enormous human forms by Anthony Gormley, and tried to understand the blue pictures of Yves Klein.

But is this art or just a pile of mud? I love peaty whiskies so maybe I should have just rolled around in it to try to get closer to the artist’s meaning. Or perhaps I should have just filled my pockets and taken it back to the holiday cottage to put on the fire.

As we have driven around the islands this week, we have come across many areas of moorland peat that have been cut away for islander use. Piles of peat cuttings are drying in the autumn wind. For me, I have got more from looking at them, situated amongst incredible views and rugged countryside, than I have from this example, sitting in a sterile gallery.

Just to show I am not a complete philistine, here is a Hebridean art installation I do like. It is called “Reflections” by Colin Mackenzie, and has been created to sit amongst natural rocks overlooking the island of Baleshare. It is both dramatic and quirky.

But that pile of mud? Hmmmm.

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Eight reasons to love the Outer Hebrides

We are coming to the end of our month long visit to North Uist in the Outer Hebrides and it seems to have gone so fast. I would very happily stay for another month or even longer. In some ways I do not want to encourage more tourists because the island might become spoilt in the same way that Skye and the North Coast 500 routes have, where locals are squeezed out and the tiny roads become blocked with queues of camper vans. Nevertheless, it is such a great place that I really want to share eight short reasons that I love these islands.

1. It is so peaceful. Particularly in North Uist, the population density is tiny, with a few little villages, and most people living in crofts, situated in small landholdings.

2. It is so beautiful. I have previously shared beach photographs. The beaches are simply amazing. But the moorland, lochlets (baby lochs) and mountains are equally stunning. Awesome views await around every corner.

3. The history is incredible. Not quite as jaw dropping as Orkney, but there are still multiple standing stones, chambered cairns, and ruined cottages. I have been particularly moved by so much evidence of the clearances between 1750 and 1860, when thousands of crafters were thrown off their land by largely English landlords, who wanted the islands for hunting and shooting.

4. There is no-one here. In the summer no doubt the islands are busier, but at this time of year there are very few tourists, and most days we find a space with no-one around. Maybe a deserted beach. Maybe a walk in the woods. Maybe at the end of one of the windy single track roads.

5. The food is very good. Although many of the restaurants are closed for the season, we have had some really delicious food. I recommend Langass Lodge, where we had a wonderful Halloween themed evening; the Hebridean Smokehouse, which makes unbelievably tasty smoked salmon and smoked scallops; and Kallin Seafood café, hidden at the back of a chandlery for trawlermen, next to where the fishing boats come in. We had the most perfect lobster one lunchtime, fresh from the sea, served with chips and a Marie Rose sauce.

6. The skies are so clear. I don’t mean they are cloudless. As well as sunshine, we have had days of sideways rain. But we are so far north that the skies have a lightness about them, the same light through the day that in most places you just see at dawn or dusk. When it is sunny, the skies are a deep blue directly above, and fade to almost white at the horizons.

7. Nights in the cottage are cosy. There is no light pollution here so it gets very dark. We have an excellent multi fuel stove. So most nights we have hunkered down with the warmth of the stove, and watched a film on Netflix or Disney Plus. Despite the remoteness, mobile broadband means that we have surprisingly good internet here.

8. Being here has been so good for my mental health. I don’t know whether it is the peace, the light, the quietness, but it has calmed everything down in my head, and tomorrow I will be returning to the mainland feeling properly refreshed.

It’s such a great place to be.

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Are these the most beautiful beaches in the world?

We are nearly half way on our Outer Hebrides adventure. Two weeks in and two weeks to go. We have already seen all weathers, from torrential rain, to bright sunshine; from gale force winds to total stillness. I have been out every day and have been astounded by so many brilliant beaches, most of them completely empty.

I think the sun being so low in the sky helps, giving a dawn/dusk light throughout the day, and giving the seas a lovely turquoise colour. I love the peace. All you can hear are the waves, and an occasional bird. It feels as if being here is just perfect.

West beach on the island of Benbeluca is so perfect that a photograph was once used in a Thailand tourist brochure. It is a little colder here though!

I wonder what new vistas are in store for us in the second fortnight. I love these islands.

Near Lochmaddy
West beach, Berneray
Hougharry
The isle of Vallay (only accessible at low tide)
Barry Airport runway (yes, really!)
Vatersay
Askernish
Eriskay, where the AM Politician was sunk in 1941., inspiring Whisky Galore
Creagorry
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Why is my dog on a lead?

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.

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Should I take a Scottish Ferry in a storm?

As I write this, storm Babet is arriving in Scotland where I live. It is forecast to bring unprecedented levels of rain, falling onto already saturated ground. When the last storm came, two weeks ago, it broke through part of our roof and through the kitchen ceiling. That has not been fixed yet and so we have buckets at the ready. This time, we are on the edge of an amber warning for rain and wind, and just a few miles away is a red warning, meaning likely loss of life. It would be tempting to hunker down and wait, but on Saturday morning we are planning to drive up to the Isle of Skye to get a ferry across to the Outer Hebrides where we will be living for the next month.

The big question is whether we should postpone for a few days till the weather calms down. The Outer Hebrides are off the Northwest coast of Scotland, and while they have some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, they are also famously wild and windy, exposed to the Atlantic Ocean. The crossing is likely to be pretty bumpy.

There are three reasons I think we should go ahead. We are fairly seasoned travellers. A few years ago we took a ferry across the Bay of Biscay in a storm. Pretty much everyone took to their cabins as the ship rocked from side to side, bow to stern. Even many of the staff were feeling unwell. But my son and I stayed up, had a couple of drinks and watched a Fast and Furious film.

Secondly the ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne has not yet issued a warning on this crossing. Many of the ferries on the east coast of Scotland have already been cancelled but so far, the west is looking rough but passable.

And thirdly it will be an adventure. We spent a month in Orkney a couple of years ago, and one of the things I enjoyed most was watching the weather change from sunshine to storm in the blink of an eye. When we finally get to our cottage this Saturday night, we can light a fire, cook something warming and hunker down.

One thing I am nervous about is whether there will be a storm during our return trip towards the end of November. The port of Uig in Skye will be closed at that point, so instead of a two hour ferry, it will be five hours across the open sea to Ullapool. I am hoping for sunshine.

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