Wednesday, 12 June 2013

A Short trip North...

**Should have appeared on 6th June...not sure what went wrong!**


We’ve made our usual trip up to Lewis and Harris over the past couple of days – early ferry on Tuesday, and early ferries (this one is 7.15am, leaves from the Island north of here which takes around 40 minutes to drive to, and you always like to get there a little while before the sailing time “just in case”) are never good, but do have the advantage of meaning you get to see lovely early-morning skies like this…


The ferry crossing is a lovely one too – I usually end of asleep for part of it after the early-rising but this time was so bright and with such lovely light falling across the water and the hills I stayed awake throughout! Once off the ferry at the other side we headed straight up through Harris and on to Lewis. First stop was our campsite for the night to get the tent set up – once that’s done our time is our own and we wasted no time in getting sorted out and heading off again – Stornoway first to get supplies for lunch, and then a gentle drive around that area – to a few places we both like. After lunch we decided to drive North – to Ness and the Butt of Lewis. Ness is an odd area – very remote indeed and almost not feeling like part of the same Island as Stornoway in many ways.  It does have the Eoropie Tea Room though (the owner of which makes exceedingly good cakes!) and also this stunning harbour right next to a little sandy bay…


The cliffs behind the harbour are home to nesting Fulmars – odd looking birds these, members of the Albatross family in fact, and quite happy to fly around having their photos taken – so we experimented for a while with our new camera lens…



No visit to Ness is complete without a trip up to the lighthouse at the Butt – dramatic seas even on a relatively calm day, as soon as you step out of the car you can hear the waves crashing…


Then back south again – with one brief stop – I just love this little Post-Office with it’s door and shutter painted phone-box red – it looks lovely open, but closed the colours make so much more of an impact, and with that sky…


Final port of call for the day – after we’d eaten a rather excellent Chinese takeaway for dinner – was Shawbost beach for a spectacular sunset. Hebridean sunsets are some of the best – and this one wasn’t bad at all…


More to come from this trip – and the sun kept shining for us!

Robyn

3 comments:

dreamer said...

I have enjoyed reading about your visit and your photos. There are just so many beautiful views there to capture but you have some stunning photographs of your visit.

Scarlet said...

Absolutely breathtaking!

Robyn said...

Thank you both! There will be more photos appearing on my website at some stage - need to go through them all yet though and, ummm...there appear to be quite a lot!