Short trip north...part 2

The second day of our “trip North” didn’t look too promising at the start – lots of cloud hanging around although it was warm enough.  By 10am though – just as we were packed up ready to leave the campsite – the sun did its job, burnt through the misty cloud and it was clear we were set for a lovely day! We popped to Stornoway to buy all our favourite goodies – black, white & fruit puddings from MacLeod’s butchers, kippers and smoked cheese from the smokehouse, and Stag Bakeries biscuits & Oatcakes, plus beer – slightly less attractively from Tesco but there you go! Then back round to the West Side of Lewis – we’d heard about “40 North” - a rather wonderful little deli/shop selling superb sandwiches etc so we decided to pop there to get lunch sorted – it was so good I’m going to blog about it separately at some stage!  So, onwards – to Carloway, and an absolute treat to see the place in sunshine!

We left shortly after the minibus full of overexcited teenagers turned up. One of the grand things about these sorts of places up here is that you can (carefully) explore them – Dun Carloway still has some of its staircases in place inside the double-skinned walls, so you can get a really good look at the place inside and out, as it were – but these were taking that freedom rather to extremes we (and the majority of others there) felt – Swinging on stone lintels, clambering up the walls etc…not great. We headed on to another wonderful place – Calanais…

The stones looking gorgeous in the sunshine, there! I’ve blogged about the history of the place plenty before – so if you’re interested, look back via the tag. To sum up though – ancient, they don’t quite know how old but it was there when the builders at Stonehenge were still scratching their heads over how to do their fancy tourist-friendly version, and predates the pyramids.  Due to the (for the Hebrides) quite high numbers of visitors getting photos can be tricky – I tend to be quite methodical – sort out the shot, get it all set up and the camera focused, and then just sit and wait for the right moment to press the shutter.

We left just as a minibus of overexcited teenagers arrived in the car park….good timing, that! Time to turn south again – with a stop at Seilebost for the annual “postcard shot” over the white sandy bay at Luskentyre…

…would have been a grand day for paddling I should think! No time to stop there this trip though sadly – we had a ferry to catch. Another glorious crossing too – sunny and even quite warm – unusual when you’re out on the water up here at this time of year. The Black Guillemots seemed to agree as they were sunbathing on the channel markers we passed…

…Fashion conscious little chaps too – they clearly understood that the red markers would complement their colouring far better than the green ones!

Robyn

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