Thursday 28 April 2011

Dun Carloway...



Usual "Second week" day trip up to Stornoway yesterday, hence no blog entry last night as by the time we got back here we were shattered! The fridge is now full of black pudding, smoked cheese, and kippers among other goodies, and there is a large number of packs of Stag Bakery's excellent biscuits lurking in the spare room.....

We headed bvack down via the western side of Lewis, hence passed by both the Calanais Standing stones and the Broch at Carloway, where the picture above was taken. No sooner had we arrived there than it started spitting quite insistently with rain - making taking photos quite tricky as needless to say the rain was blowing directly at me! Managed to grab a few shots though, including this one which I think shows the fantastic and intricate construction of the broch fairly well. Amazingly you can not only go right up to the broch and walk around the outside,but you can go in and walk and climb through the remains also - astonishing and refreshing in this day and age. It means you can get a very real idea of how it would have been to be there in the past when it would have had floors and multiple levels. It's effectively a double skinned construction - the gaps between the walls have the stairs up to the various levels. Very clever and the workmanship is amazing. There is a good number of the remains of these Brochs around the islands but this is by far the most intact one.

Robyn

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