25th June – Harris and Lewis

 

During the short zigzag route taken by the small ferry, between the red and green buoys clearly marking a safe passage, we saw grey seals basking on rocks, gannets diving for fish, eider ducks, a few red breasted mergansers and a good number of black guillemots with white wings making them easy to identify. Arriving at Leverburgh on South Harris and travelling on the western side we noticed at once the stark lack of trees and rocky appearance of the land. We hugged the coast road on its periphery as sandy bays appeared on the far side of turquoise sea patches of different blues.

Turning down yet another single track road we kept stopping to admire more wonderful beaches on our way to one that we had been recommended to visit at Luskentyre. A large arc of pristine white sand, tiny waves and overlooked land on the far side. It was very windy and as my damaged ankle was still causing difficulty walking, we retreated to the sand dunes for a while as hardy souls took their dogs out. Two young men decided to swim, the air temperature was only about 16°,  I wonder what the sea would have been? Very cold!

Reaching Tarbert and parking up near the harbour, a visit to the Harris Tweed shop was on my radar and I wasn’t disappointed coming away with a very nice bag. The distillery didn’t have a tour available until late so we abandoned that idea and drove north out of Harris and into Lewis with some beautiful mountainous countryside with numerous lochs.

At Callanish we visited an excellent set of  Neolithic standing stones in the shape of a cross having a circle in the middle with a monolith at the centre. They were tall and imposing, in very good condition, originally there had been a tomb chamber which has now long gone. There must have been 30 people walking around the stones and one annoying drone circling and whining above, several people took objection to the intrusion and told the young man in no uncertain terms it was unacceptable; hurray for common sense! I managed to hide most of the people in my photo by moving my position until nearly all of them were hidden by stones.

At Geàrrannan we visited the famous ‘Blackhouse Village’, where the houses originally housed a family and their animals. They were built on a slope with the animals at the downhill end of the low, single storey building so that the animal effluent and rain water would run away. The roof was timber, overlaid with heather and topped by loose straw, held in place by a mesh weighted with stones. The low door and small windows made it dark but kept it warmer in winter and cooler in summer. There were only two rooms heated by an open peat fire, plus the area for the animals and workshop area.

Two single beds behind the curtains in a separate room and double bed in living area

Peat cutting has been present on all the islands we have visited and is still very much in use. The top 12 inches or so are cut away and preserved upside down in a naturally occurring water trench. Then a turf cutting blade is used to take two layers of turf off the section being harvested, each piece being placed on the side to dry. They are then turned and stacked, and restacked several times to allow air between in the drying process, this takes a number of weeks depending on the weather. The finished peat blocks are then loaded into containers and heaved into a trailer, and eventually a peat stack would be built near the homestead. The turfs that were placed in the water are then put back on the bottom of the trough to re-grow. All very labour intensive, handling each turf numerous times before it ever gets to a fireplace, but neighbours and friends help each other so it is a community effort for each family.

Top left: small scale shallow cutting   Top right: larger quantities being cut

A scenic drive up to the Port of Ness, the most northerly point of Lewis, lead us to find out the nature reserve was elusive, and when finally found it was too far for my ankle, undeterred we retraced our route and carried on to Stornoway. Before the ferry next day, we visited Lews Castle, originally built as a country house in 1844, it was used by the forces in WWII and student accommodation in the 1950s, before being recently renovated into a cultural centre, museum and luxury holiday apartments.

The large entrance door lead to a long hall way with gold coloured supports displaying the star covered ceiling, a new ballroom/function room had three chandeliers hanging from its delicate plasterwork ceiling and the dining room had hand painted floral designs on either side of its fireplace. An elegant stair lead upstairs to the private accommodation.

The museum was really interesting and well laid out having just enough information without overload. We walked in the surrounding grounds along meandering pathways with good views of the castle and over to the ferry port where we headed next on our way to Ullapool.