Five Favourites...

This time round, five favourite beaches, unsurprisingly these all seem to be in the Hebrides - whoever would have guessed that, eh?! In no particular order...

Luskentyre. This gorgeous and huge beach on Harris is a regular in "Worlds best beach" type features so it seemed only right that it should feature in mine, too! Access to the beach itself is via a long, twisty, turny single track road, not for the faint-hearted, but well worth the drive. A regular stop of ours as we drive from Lewis to get the ferry back across to Berneray. The view above, by the way, is taken from the main road...

Clachan Sands, North Uist. Often a first, or last day beach this one - we do like to start and end our holiday with sandy feet, and this wonderful stretch of beach ticks all the right boxes. Manouevering the car to the parking area can be a little interesting...through the field with the cows, up a badly rutted track...there's always a slight concern than one day, we might get stuck!

Balranald, North Uist. This beach features on our regular walk around the fantastic RSPB reserve. (As an aside, it's always entertaining when in conversation at reserves down here to be asked which is our favourite one to visit....when we reply with "Balranald" jaws frequently drop and phrases like "OOH! I've always wanted to go there!" get uttered!) This fabulous sweep of sand forms part of the waymarked walk round the reserve, but also makes a lovely walk on its own, right round as far as you can see on that photo - wind in your hair and waves crashing!

West Beach, Berneray. Now we're in good company with counting this one as a favourite - apparently HRH Prince Charles feels much the same about it. There is a full three miles of sand to walk along should you so choose - and we have! We've also walked a good stretch of this beach, AND all the way back again, without seeing another soul!

Finally, Hosta, North Uist. I know I said that these were in no order, but this one might actually be our absolute favourite beach of the lot, and I think this panoramic shot (remember you can click on it to see it larger) might show why. Over the the right is an area of lovely flat rocks, just perfect for sitting on to eat lunch. The rocks also form an area of rockpools, cleaned constantly by the stream flowing through them. On a warm day this is a spa-like place to paddle - with the water warmed by the sun and trickling over your toes... when you're bored with paddling, then there is a nice curve of sun-baked sand to wander along - leaving your shoes discarded where you were, they'll be perfectly safe.

There are so many more I could have mentioned - the almost tropical-looking bay on Vatersay, Shawbost on Lewis, Kilpheder on South Uist. Culla Bay on Benbecula is beloved of many keen birdspotters, and Uig sands (Lewis) is great for watching kitesurfers. Maybe I should do another "favourite 5" on the same theme?!

Robyn

Ooh! I know where that is!

That's the phrase our front room has been echoing to this evening, as the "Blighty" TV channel have been repeating the "Monty Halls Hebridean Escape" so we've re-watched the whole series today! Great fun place spotting - the pub appears, although sensibly Alastair & Elisabeth stayed well out of view! of course we've heard lots of stories about what he was like while he was there - the dog - Reuben - really *was* as daft as he appeared seemingly, not least as he had a complete inability to get to grips with the door in the pub, and spent a good deal of time on each visit with said door coming back to clobber him!

Anyhow, as a result I thought I'd take a look back at some of my Hebridean pics, and the first set I hit on were from the walk on Berneray, which was one of the walks he set up the way-marks for. In fact, notice in this first shot.....

See that right in the foreground? Yep - one of his way-markers. Actually, make that "the" way-marker, as pretty much ALL the others seemed to have vanished again! We did the walk just a matter of months after he'd been there, so clearly his sledgehammer required a little more oomph behind it!

Missing way-markers notwithstanding, it's a lovely walk - we generally do it every few years and always enjoy it - there's one decent hill which gives good views....

...there you can see a sheep standing sentinel, probably muttering under its breath about having to keep posing for visitors with cameras! From that hill you can watch the ferry coming across from Harris - and on a clear day you can see right across to Leverburgh itself.  From there we dropped back down until we ended up on the beach you see down below....

Birds galore, including these Oystercatchers! This was also the day we saw the White Tailed Eagle - which probably explains the reason why these other photos didn;t get processed through at the time - there were more interesting things on our minds when we got back! Oddly enough, the pics above were always intended to be put on here, so it's fitting that they have made it at last!

Robyn

Don't Panic!

It's been a mixed day today - this morning was grey and a bit gloomy, it rained for a while and we were in no hurry to get ourselves ready to go out, however once that had blown over there was clearly some brightness waiting to get out from behind the clouds. it finally made it mid afternoon - and was perfectly timed for a walk on one of our favourite beaches on the island of Berneray - 3 miles of perfect white sands and often not another soul to be seen. (Today there were two other souls, but hey, that's not bad for 3 miles of it!).

A regular feature of many of our beach walks are the huge flocks of various different types of wading birds that can be seen. Today we saw Purple Sandpipers, Ringed Plovers, Sanderlings, Oystercatchers and also a Dunlin, as well as the Turnstones pictured above. Funny little birds - they can be quite happy one moment picking their way along the shoreline turning over bits of seaweed and - funnily enough - stones, to see what tasty morsels they can find. Then, with no warning at all something startles them and they all take flight and land again some distance off down the beach! Sometimes in fairness it is one of us trying to creep up unnoticed with camera in hand that alarms them, but on most occasions it's something completely unknown!



There you go - just for Auntie D - West beach, Berneray. Now wouldn't you just LOVE to be walking along there?!

Robyn

A last minute change of heart....

I had my blog photo for today all settled in my mind - knew which shot I was going to use almost as soon as I'd taken it, and had even started piecing together ideas for the text in my mind. We'd been for a walk on Berneray - walked on the beach, seen some birds, then climbed a hill for some superb views of the island - plus across to Harris, Skye and the Mainland. We'd narrowly escaped being soaked by a heavy hailstorm by taking shelter under a ledge of rock, and had thoroughly enjoyed a nice afternoon out in (hailstorms notwithstanding) glorious sunshine, so what better picture to put up than a lovely landscape, bright blue sky and lovely white clouds......? Then the chap above flew overhead and those plans all went straight out of the window.  We are currently waiting on confirmation on whether it is in fact a Golden, or a young White Tailed Eagle, whichever it was though it was truly massive, and flew above us closely enough that we could practically feel the downdraught!
Robyn

A job well done....

As I think I mentioned, we had an invitation from Alastair and Elisabeth to go and visit the Blackhouse that Alastair has been restoring - the three pics above show what an amazing job he's done. The first shot is Alastair himself making tea in the kitchen - above his head is the upper level (not altogether authentic but it would be a shame not to make use of the surprising amount of headroom inside) which is reached via a fold down ladder and a trap-door.  The second is the other end of the main room - Ben sitting on the sofa and Elisabeth on the window seat looking out at the amazing view across Bays Loch, and the third shot shows the outside of the cottage along with the neighbours.  The 4' thick stone walls keep out the weather marvellously - while we were there it was blowing a gale and yet once inside you would have no idea....
Robyn