Luckily, we still made it to Uig in good time for the ferry. The weather was sunny and I spent the crossing up on deck.
We landed in Tarbert and began wending our way around Harris and Lewis. Harris and Lewis are in fact one island, with Harris being the rockier, more mountainous south end and Lewis being the flatter, more fertile north end. The total population is 20,000 and shrinking, the roads are almost all windy one-track roads, and there are many, many more sheep around than people.
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| Photo by Mila Tikhonova |
We spent the day viewing the rocky scenery, with one historical stop being Rodel Church. This is a rather inconsequential church, but is has the distinction of being at the very southernmost tip of the Isle of Harris. We also went to a blackhouse which has remained untouched in the hundreds of years since it was built.
One thing you might not expect about the Outer Hebrides is the beaches. If it weren't for the fact that the weather tends to be cold and windy, they could be tropical: white sand and clear turquoise water.
We stopped at this one. I took a dip! It wasn't as cold as you might expect.
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| Photo by Andrea Henkel |
However, I had to change out of wet clothes essentially in public. Tina and Kathy graciously held up a towel for me as I changed behind the van, shielding me from the view of the seven-year-old boy in the parked car behind us.
Then we went to our lodgings for the next two nights: another blackhouse, in Gearrannan on west coast of Lewis. This one had the modern amenities of electricity and running water, and is generally one of my favorite places in Scotland. It's basically in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the waves crashing outside for company.
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| Photo by Kathy Armstrong |
Dinnertime!
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| Photo by Kathy Armstrong |
The next morning, I woke up with a cold, which should not have been surprising given my dip in the northern Atlantic Ocean the previous day. We spent the morning exploring the blackhouse village of Gearrannan, and then set off for Dun Carloway Broch. This is an Iron Age circular fort. There are loads of them all over Scotland, in remarkable states of preservation. Stones aren't missing because they've fallen down: it's because people have removed them to build houses and fences and so forth.
Dun Carloway Broch (I'm the one in the black and red sweatshirt):
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| Photo by Andrea Henkel |
Then, we went to the standing stones at Callanish, where we had a lunch break. Scotland has standing stones all over the place. I visited no fewer than three sets on this particular trip, Callanish being the first.
In the afternoon, we drove up to the Butt of Lewis, which is the northernmost tip of the island. Having been to Rodel the previous day, this means that we spanned the entire island from north to south in two days.
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| Photo by Andrea Henkel |
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| Photo by Andrea Henkel |
Then we drove to Stornoway, the only town on Lewis of any significant size, for dinner provisions. I was feeling well and truly puny by this time, so I stayed on the bus. Derwyn was sick too, so at least I had company.
By the time we made our way back to Gearrannan, I had taken some Tylenol and copious amounts of cough drops and was feeling human enough to make the couple-mile hike along Dalmore Bay to the blackhouse, which about twelve of us undertook. I'm beginning to think it's my destiny to never have photos of this walk, because no one from the trip seems to have any. It's a gorgeous walk, and the sun came out for us while we did it. By the end of it, I was absolutely knackered and I think I collapsed into bed pretty soon after dinner that night. I'm sure my snoring was far more resonant than usual, thanks to the rapidly worsening cold. Oh well.
Cheers, y'all.
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