More Island Memories

As promised, here are some more highlights and images from our three month trip around the Scottish Highlands and Islands last summer. Well, you don't want to hear about our recent preoccupation with an ant invasion, and how we gained an even more intimate knowledge of the innards of our Airstream, do you?

When we returned from Barra to the conjoined islands of the Uists and Benbecula we spent a couple of days driving around them, taking in the strange, loch-pitted landscape. We would do the end-of-the-road thing that we love to do. When you're following the coastline, or on an island, you may as well follow a road to its end. You might find nothing. You might find a great view.

We were so lucky to have sunny weather in which to enjoy the openness of the scenery. With a landscape this flat, surrounded by sea, I bet you can get a right old pelting when the wind picks up. Mind you, makes you feel alive doesn't it?


We took in the monument at Flora MacDonald's birthplace, the statue of Our Lady of the Isles and a whole bunch of drystone ruins. Those old buildings must take hundreds of years to topple, even if you do borrow a few stones to build your new house. Typically, it looks like you build your new house next to your old one, move in and let the old one fade away very, very slowly.


On our second day of exploring we pointed ourselves northwards to North Uist and Berneray. We found a stone circle which had eluded us a few days before. Pobull Fhinn got an enthusiastic write-up in one of our Aubrey Burl books and so we had another look. You can walk from the Barpa Langass chambered cairn, or via a footpath next to the Langass Lodge Hotel.



I know these old stones don't touch everyone but believe me, they are pretty much always in a beautiful spot. Pobull Fhinn overlooks Loch Langass, which glistened on the day we were there, with hills beyond. And anyway, you have to savour and respect something that's probably been there for about four thousand years. And respect to the people of a place who just leave things be for all that time.


Further north we strode across the stepping stones of the causeway to Dun an Sticir, a broch in a loch. Then on to the Balranald RSPB nature reserve where we saw Lapwings, Terns, Oyster Catchers,




and we endured an overpowering stench of rotting seaweed, reminiscent of soiled nappies. Sometimes the sea air palpably fills you with the invisible life force, sometimes it makes you gag.

Here's a view to uplift and to end on a more pleasant note.



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Uig to Uist

Wherever we have been lately it has rained persistently (Cumbria, Dorset, Somerset). Most of the UK is dripping at the moment so it seems like a good time to reminisce about our Hebridean journey and some blue skies. So the following took place back in June.


We had decided to go ahead with our Outer Hebrides trip. We turned up at Uig harbour, got measured to see if they could squeeze us onto a fully booked ferry and made the crossing to North Uist. From the harbour at Lochmaddy we drove south to Benbecula where fellow Airstreamer Andrew was staying and had reserved us a pitch.


Within a week we would be back this way to explore the landscape and bronze age ruins more thoroughly but this time we were basically passing through and just beginning to get a taste of this unique part of the British Isles.

I hope I can do justice to these islands. I suppose I can just start with my first impressions as we headed down to Benbecula. I didn't know what to expect, but I hadn't expected this. It was pretty flat. In my English mind Scotland is hilly. Surely the Western Isles would bear some resemblance?


Hills were usually visible at some point on the horizon but mostly there were wide open spaces. And these adjoining islands are generously dotted with various bodies of water. Or is it that the stretches of land are just giant stepping stones? Roads have somehow been built across peaty bogs, islands have been connected with causeways, watery areas of all sizes from pond to loch to actual sea surround you. There appears to be more water than land. The land has holes in it. It's like a massive peaty doily.


In a nutshell it is open, flat, boggy, lochy, causewayed and spread out. Oh, and no trees. But there is plenty of peat. More about peat later. Bet you can't wait. No wait, it's good stuff. Come back.


Buildings look like they are naturally spaced apart where the land allows. So instead of villages of close-together houses there are settlements where your nearest neighbour might be half a mile away, or more. Except on Benbecula where you come across an airbase and an attached community. Somewhere in there is a supermarket but you would have to be smarter than me or Andrew to find your way into it. We did eventually figure out that the entrance was disguised as a bus shelter, obviously. It probably gets pretty windy around there and you would need a buffer between the outside and inside. A bus shelter fits the bill.

It was worth the sleuthing though because among other lovely things within we found clotted cream to go with the scones we'd already hunted down. And so afternoon tea would be ceremonially enjoyed later that day.

On another day Pete and I returned to Lochmaddy to check out the arts centre. We had a look around an exhibition of photographs by Erskine Beveridge, a textile manufacturer who had been a frequent visitor to the islands in the late nineteenth century. He was interested in the islanders' way of life and captured it in pretty stark and atmospheric black and white images.

There was also an exhibition of sculptures by Claire McNiven. Figures caught in motion were built from tangles of string and rope which the sculptor had found on her walks on the beach. In a long-ago incarnation I was a dancer and seeing these figures really captured and reminded me of the split second moments of off-balance transition between one shape and the next. It was truly lovely and all from bits of reclaimed string.



We had a quiet Sunday on Benbecula which included a walk on the adjacent beach. The sand was white, the sky blue with voluptuous clouds hovering on the horizon. The sea was pure turquoise. There were tidemarks of small shells, crab shells, seaweed. There was even the jaw bone of a sheep. Since there is water everywhere, anything can eventually get washed out to sea.

The sunlight, the shades of blue and the reflectiveness of the white sand are incredibly uplifting. And there was plenty more of that to come.


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