Saturday 11th August 2018
Every day, as we drove in and out of Lochboisdale, we could see the lipstick-pink roof of the post-office which doubles as the local café. Our guidebook recommended the coffee, so we decided to try it out. It was indeed good, but as we’d just had breakfast we couldn’t face trying the delectable looking baking.
We had two walks in mind, the first being the peninsula of Rubha Aird a’ Mhuile. We parked at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church which we explored before setting off.
The walk took us past the remains of an Iron Age broch and a Viking settlement but, honestly, the photographs just look like stones in the grass so I’ll skip them! The trig point marks the most westerly point of South Uist.
I found the second walk more interesting, at Howmore (Tobha Mòr). Again, we parked at a church, this time Church of Scotland – the one Catholics were cleared off the land to build, as we had read in the museum a few days before. It’s also one of the few remaining churches in Scotland with a central communion table.
From here, we walked out along the beach and back along the machair. Stunning. Again.
On our return to Howmore, we explored its ancient chapels – no less than four of them, the oldest probably dating from around 1200. The site, next to the thatched youth hostel, is also a graveyard. I love the way nature is reclaiming the stones.
The day had a final surprise for us. The view from our hotel, which I’ve featured a couple of times, was transformed with another island clearly visible which we could not see before. I’m told this is Rùm.
Just one more day on South Uist. So far, it had been cold but reasonable dry. Would our luck hold?
Back in the car again, we made a quick stop at Scolpaig Tower, an 1830s folly in the middle of a loch.
This sightseeing is thirsty work – the next stop was the hotel in Lochmaddy, North Uist’s largest village, for a coffee, then a quick walk over a funny little suspension bridge to The Hut of the Shadows. This structure is Neolithic in appearance, but was created as an artwork in 1997 – inside it’s a camera obscura and an image of the loch lapping peacefully appears on its walls.
By this time it was half past 5 – and so much more to do! A circular walk would have taken in two ancient sites – the Neolithic tomb of Barpa Langass and the stone circle of Pobull Fhinn (Fingal’s People), but in the end we drove between them. It’s no longer possible to go into the tomb because of roof falls – relief from me, but John would have been game.
We finally got back to Lochboisdale about 10pm. “Our” view was still there and the ferry was in – once again, we were staying somewhere that we could watch the ferry arrive in the evening, and hope it did not wake us up with its early morning departure. This one serves Mallaig on the mainland so would not be the one we would catch in a few days time – we had another island as our destination.
We next stopped off at Flora MacDonald’s birthplace, she who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape after Culloden, although archaeologists these days think this may not be exactly the right place.
After the museum, we headed onto the east coast and Loch Eynort. One local man, Archie MacDonald, has planted over 100,000 trees here and provided 5 km of pathways through his croft, even lugging benches up the hill. We salute him!
As we followed the loch-shore path, it began to rain and we could see a glow ahead of us.
This led to one of the most beautiful rainbows I can remember seeing, with a ghost of a double too. Breath-taking.
Our itinerary today was not unique to us. We had one of those days, which I’ve mentioned before, where we met the same people all the time, in this case a Slovenian couple. They were at Flora MacDonald’s birthplace and the museum, and as we arrived at the Loch Eynort car park they gave us a cheery wave as they drove off. It reminded us of our 1989 visit to South Uist when we seemed to follow a Belgian car everywhere, a red Volvo from which four small faces peered out of the back window. Did this inspire a love of the Hebrides? Every time we saw a Belgian car on this trip I wondered if the driver was one of those children grown up!
The hotel first opened in 1882, so can be forgiven a few quirks. I rather liked that they honoured one of the previous hosts with this memorial in the carpark. He had a long tenure.
From the marina, we headed back to the hotel to pick up the car: destination Eriskay. To get there, we had to drive to the southern tip of the island. We stopped off at another old hotel, the Polochar Inn, and its nearby standing stone.
The next shock was that our B&B had gone. It was right next to the Ludaig ferry which (at the time) crossed to Eriskay. The picture of John with the cat is 1989, but the pictures of the ferry and the house below that were taken in 1993 from the Barra-Eriskay ferry. Further below that is the house which has replaced “ours”.
We have stayed in many lovely B&Bs and inns over the years, but somehow this one remains particularly magical in our memory. We remember so clearly the woman who ran it with such warm hospitality, and had a fantasy that she’d still be around and we might run into her. After the disappointment of finding the house had been replaced, John did a bit of Googling and discovered she died in April. I actually felt quite sad about someone I had only met for a few days nearly 30 years ago.
Then we reached another lovely graveyard overlooking the sea (I’m losing count of how many that is now).
A bit of road walking now took us to another beautiful bay. I liked this sign on the way. Na Pairceanan is the Gaelic name of this area, but to me it looked remarkable like Nae Parkin’, the Glaswegian for No Parking. Small things amuse me sometimes …
Continuing to the far end of the bay, we crossed the headland to another small bay on the other side. It was peaceful and pretty, but our walking map suggested there might otters and they resolutely refused to appear.
As we’d not been to Berneray before, we decided to take a walk here before moving on and chose the South Berneray loop. This took in machair (a fertile mix of sand and peat, often covered in wild flowers in summer) and both rocky and sandy beaches.
Our Lady of the Isles, at 
Sunday dawned wet. Bad news if you are looking for shelter on a Sabbatarian island where nothing will be open! We started with a walk round Tarbert, which took about two minutes, admiring the new distillery building (closed of course). There was nothing for it after that but to take a walk and hope for the best. In the end, we were lucky: the rain went off and we had a great day.
First we went to Scalpay, a small island to the east of Harris which, until 1997, required a ferry to visit, but which is now connected by a bridge. When it was formally opened by Tony Blair in 1998 this was the first time a serving Prime Minister had ever visited the Outer Hebrides, which seems rather shameful to me.
From Scalpay, we drove west to the Hushinish peninsula. A winding, up-and-down single track road runs for 14 miles to the end, with some surprising sights. First was a rather elegant chimney, the remains of a Norwegian whaling station built in 1912. Even more incongruous is the tennis court, the only one in Harris and, allegedly, the most remote in the world. It just wasn’t possible to stop on the road to take photographs of either of these, but the next day we visited the community shop at Leverburgh where there was a display of tapestries of Harris history which included them.
Even more exciting – I knew that Jessie took part in the post-box protests in Glasgow in 1913 (Suffragettes dropped ink or acid into post-boxes to destroy the mail). I’d read that this was in Kirklee, near where I live, but hadn’t given it much thought until I was asked if I knew which post-box it might have been. I now have access to a copy of Jessie’s unpublished autobiography in which she details some of the houses she worked in as a domestic servant, and one of them is just across the road from the current Kirklee post-box. When I looked at this box more closely, I found the insignia was ERVII – Edward the Seventh who died in 1910. This is probably the very box that Jessie used!
The next day was Sunday and we were still in Sabbatarian country. Nothing would be open, so we had to hope for good weather. But would we get it? Read on!
Next, we moved on to Traigh Iar (traigh means beach) and climbed a small hill to Macleod’s Stone, an imposing prehistoric standing stone.
After lunch, we went on to Luskentyre, home of Harris’s most famous beaches. A circular walk took as round a headland via the beach and back along a minor road.
