The Island of Grimsay is a useful one hereabouts - it makes the inter island causeway from Benbecula to North Uist rather more practical because it’s positioning means that a chunk of the road can run as a normal road rather than needing to be a bridge of some description. It is a nice island in its own right too though - and for a good many years now we’ve enjoyed a walk right round it when we’ve been over - it’s a walk that works for either summer or winter trips too as with the circular road all the way round, it’s not constrained by being wet underfoot.
Parking at the harbour at Kallin works well - it means we are roughly at the half way point, so it doesn’t matter hugely which way we decide to go from there, this time we turned left though, which meant that one of the first views we got was the one above across towards another island - Ronay. If I blog about our planned boat trip then you might hear more about Ronay.
Nice views really aren’t in short supply on this walk - or indeed anywhere up here to be honest. At this time of year the purple of the heather makes everything even more scenic as well - Doesn’t it look wonderful?
Grimsay has a “boat trail” - the Grimsay boats are rather famous here, a quite specific style of boat perfect for fishing in the waters around the islands. The Stewart family were boatbuilders here and their boatshed is now part of the trail - a fascinating place although sadly seeming to now fall into a state of disrepair - you can see from the picture above I think that once the visitors have stopped arriving it’s evidently used as a roost almost certainly for some of the local Rock Dove population - a shame as this is such a key part of the island’s history and heritage.
Another view - across to Eaval on the neighbouring island of North Uist this time.
To the junction with the main road then and an old red telephone box has been rather brilliantly repurposed, needless to say my eyes lit up when I saw “books” - and yes, we found a Lee Child that as far as we can think we’ve not read before - a pound into the honesty box (no idea whether the books are there on a “take them” basis or whether the donation was required, there was nothing to tell us so we played safe!) and that got stashed into MrEH’s backpack. Then a right turn along the short stretch of the walk on the main island spinal road - the A865 - the only place we expected to encounter more than the occasional car. A quick stop for a photograph of this sign…
Lady Anne Wildlife Cruises run the boat trips we have often been on from Kallin harbour as mentioned above, and a few years ago when they revamped their website they asked if they could use some of my photos - of course, I said, and imagine my delight when they told me that one they wanted to use was an Eagle photograph which they used as a silhouette to turn into their new logo. Very exciting - and yes, I always smile when I pass their signs!
The direction we had chosen to do the walk in meant that most of the main habitations and indeed the only real township on the island - Baymore - were in the second half. The shot above is looking back down the road in the direction we had come from just before we reached…
You can see the houses further on. Baymore pretty much merges into Kallin so we’re close to finished by this stage. There is still more to see though, and for us yesterday one thing in particular was spotting the original Lady Anne boat - she who gave her name to the boat trips - moored in the little inlet just below the township…
A last view across heather and hillside then- the umbelliferous plants in the foreground there are Angelica we believe - and as you can see by this stage the weather had decided to be properly bright and cheerful - indeed that sun was HOT and we both ended up carrying our jackets.
Round the final corner…
Back at the harbour and my little car waiting for us. A fraction under 6 miles on my watch and a really nice walk. This one could be broken up with lunch or just tea and cake at the community centre cafe at Ceannaraigh - there is also a post office and toilets there, plus some locally made/local interest items available to purchase. There is also a cafe at the harbour at Kallin too which features a lot of locally caught seafood.
That is the track of the walk from the Strava app, you can see it does quite satisfyingly form a loop right round the island, and you could lengthen it a little by exploring along the road up to Gearadu with views across the eastern tip of the north ford. There are more bits of the boat trail to explore too - a small museum next to the community centre, and the Fisherman’s hut not far from Baymore.
Robyn.
