An ambitious trip...!

Last week I made my first trip to the Hebrides without MrEH in tow as well - and also my shortest ever visit, as I was in the Western Isles for a grand total of 22.5 hours! Those of you who follow my Instagram or Twitter accounts already know that the reason for this trip was to see those RAF Red Arrows displaying in Stornoway - only their third ever visit to the Hebrides and the first time they've been there since 2001.

This one took a LOT of planning...right from when Red 10 first mentioned on Twitter having done the site survey back in March there was never any real question in my mind that I wanted to do it, the question was always how it was going to be possible. Flying straight up & back just proved too expensive and had to be dismissed straight away, it would also have meant that I would have had to lose two days work rather than just one - increasing the cost of the whole escapade even more. Thankfully as you know I do enjoy a bit of travelling so the thought of doing it in lots of stages wasn't as daunting as it might have been, and a bit of lateral thinking later and I settled on the following plan of action:

In flight on a Ryanair 737-800 o the way up...

On Saturday MrEH dropped me off at Stansted airport - it's at times like this that living close to a major hub airport comes as an advantage. I flew to Glasgow, where lovely Fay picked me up and drove me into the city to spend the night with another ace lady - Laurie, being able to combine the trip with seeing those two was a total bonus! Much wine was consumed and I confess to feeling a little delicate as I set off for Queen Street station and the next phase of the journey on the Sunday morning. Thankfully a large bottle of water sipped gently between there and Inverness sorted out the worst of that, and a fast-food lunch killed off any residual doubts as to whether my innards were going to behave or not! Good thing too as the next stage was one of my least favourite modes of transport - the bus across to Ullapool to catch the Ferry over to Stornoway itself. All went like clockwork and by 9.30pm I was happily settled in at the cosy B&B I'd booked, with a cup of tea and a book. Monday morning dawned with heavy grey cloud and light drizzle - just the sort of weather we really didn't want to see but with the boys not due to arrive until 2pm and the display not until 5pm there was time for it to change. Over breakfast I got my first surprise of the trip when I discovered that the display site has changed from the Airport to the town - all sorts of questions came rushing to the fore at that point - notably how on earth I was going to get through there in the first place, and then back to the airport afterwards in order to check in in time for my flight back to Glasgow - which was due to be shortly after 7pm! I know from experience that these things have a habit of working out though so stuck that one onto a mental back-burner for the time being.

Circus 2, aka James, aka "The short grinning Geordie" ;-) 

A few weeks previously I'd emailed the airport at Stornoway to enquire where they were planning on putting the jets while they were on the ground there - as I was hoping to be able to spend some time taking photos of the Circus guys at work I was hoping that they were going to be close to a fence-line where I could at least shoot through the fence. The reply came back asking me to call at the end of the week before, so on the friday beforehand I duly placed the call and spoke to the Airport Manager who proceeded to inform me that what they'd like to do was arrange airside access for me so that I could be on the ground to see the team arriving and get my groundshots too. Absolutely amazing - I definitely didn't expect anything of that sort and once again it reinforced my knowledge of just how fabulously hospitable Hebridean folk are. As such I reported to the airport at 1pm as agreed, was duly given my pass and taken across to the tower where it was agreed that the lovely Iain would drive me over the far side of the airport to the Hangar where the jets would be parked. It was also agreed that he would drive me into town for the display as well - which was fantastic!

Discovering the challenge of fitting the jets & fire crews and appliances into a photo... 

Bang on time as always the jets appeared - unusually in two groups rather than the more familiar "Big battle" V formation of 9, or the standard poor-weather fall-back of 3 groups of 3, and in short order they taxied round the airport and arrived on the pan in front of me. First to come over was Red 10 (Lingy) - he already knew I was there as I'd tweeted him when I arrived the night before (His reponse an astonished "You haven't...?!") and it was as always nice to see his cheerful grin! I took the chance to ask quickly if there was any chance I could grab a lift back from the airport with him after the display too and he agreed that he thought it was unlikely to be a problem but to go and find him and Martin when I got into town and he would confirm. Time then to deal with the official stuff - some photos of the team with the local Air Cadets, and a few more for the Airport fire crews, then time for getting stuck in to my first proper "Circus At Work" shots of the 2015 season. Fantastic to catch up with pals from last season Nicky & James, and to meet some more of the new guys on Circus for 2015 too - seems like we have another lovely bunch this year! After a couple of hours hard work...and a wee bit of time to play...

Duck! ;-)

...there was just time to grab a quick cuppa before Iain and I headed off into town where I bid him farewell with many thanks! Off to find Lingy and Martin then - which I duly did at the ferry terminal cafe - and confirmation that my transport back to the airport afterwards was sorted which came as a real relief! All that was left then was for the weather to play ball, which it REALLY didn't - all day it had been brightening up then clouding over again, and right on cue 15 minutes before display time the cloud descended again and visibility dropped right back to outside the limits - absolutely NOT what was needed!  Even five minutes before it was still looking doubtful whether we were going to get any display at all - but thankfully Hebridean weather did it's thing of changing in a heartbeat and the decision was made that at least the jets could come in for a first-half...in the event the clouds cleared back enough that we got an entire flat display much to the appreciation of the crowd! Standing with Martin for the display it was interesting to see how he worked - as Circus 10 his role at displays is to film the display so the team can use the footage to debrief later - without someone in place to film the display can't take place so he's a pretty important part of the operation! The unexpected positioning of a massive cruise-ship at the pier caused some difficulties for both of us AND the team - datum (the centre point of the display) had to be relocated slightly to take account of it!

Circus 10 (Martin), me & Red 10 (Lingy) on return to Stornoway airport after the display.

Once the display was over we wasted little time in getting packed up, the taxi duly arrived and the three of us hopped in and returned to the airport, all that was left them was to say my goodbyes and check in for my flight home - which ran slightly late ironically enough due to the aircraft being delayed earlier in the day due to the arrival of some Little Red jets...! From there everything ran like clockwork again which was a relief - the airlink bus to the city centre arrived as planned and my National Express bus back to London left dead on time. All in all it was a truly superb few days and I'd take the risk of undertaking a similar trip again should they display in the Hebrides in the future - of course it may well be that by the time they do, any journey would be substantially shorter!

Robyn

HMY Iolaire

In the early hours of the morning of January 1st 1919, HMY Iolaire, travelling from Kyle of Lochalsh on the Scottish mainland to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis ran aground on rocks at Holm just outside the harbour at Stornoway.   The real tragedy about her loss however, was that she was fully loaded (some speculate that she was in fact OVERloaded) with men of the island returning home having been released from service in the Navy at the end of World War 1. 205 men at least are known to have lost their lives - many within sight of their homes and with their loved ones sitting up eagerly awaiting their return.

Almost everyone on Lewis at that time was directly affected by her loss. Some villages lost a substantial part of their population. Mothers lost sons, husbands and sweethearts never came home, and an island which had already lost so many to the war, lost still more just when they thought they were safe to believe it was all over. The local people were faced with the terrible job of having to recover bodies from the shoreline over the following few days, and still others had to identify those found - a truly appalling task when the ravages of the rough seas are considered. To this day the tragedy remains close to the hearts of the people of Lewis

The loss of the Iolaire remains one of Britains worst ever peacetime disasters.

Car ferry MV Isle of Lewis passes the spot where the Iolaire went aground

Robyn.

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

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

Hebrides 2012

Do you know, it occurred to me the other day that I have LOTS of Hebrides photos from this year's trip that you've not yet seen, so I thought I'd do a sort of skip through the trip - with lots of pics and minimal text, so you can look at all the pretty stuff without me waffling on.....

It all started here..... well, no, it all started at home actually, and then RAF Scampton to watch a Red Arrows Practise session, and then a long drive north.....but in terms of actually heading across to the islands it started here - Mallaig...

I took that shot shortly after removing my shoes and socks and swapping to sandals as it was BLOODY hot. Seriously - short sleeves, cropped trousers and very definitely sandals hot. The feet stayed bare and the trousers cropped for the next several days in fact...as we wandered on beaches and admired some rather snazzy sun patterns in the sea....

One of the real plus points of being up later in the year was the sheer amount of flowers making an appearance...

...and the lack of internet signals across the Islands (the new lodgings don't have broadband) was but a minor inconvenience when you took into account that one of the places that DOES have a signal also has this view to look out while you're waiting for blog posts to upload...

There were masses of birds to be seen, including for the first time, one of these...

About time too!  We've spent years wanting to see one of those in the wild! (pssst! It's a Corncrake!)  

As usual we managed to fit in visits to some of the other Islands while we were across - as well as our base North Uist we spent time on Baleshare, South Uist, Benbecula, Grimsay, Berneray, Barra, Vatersay, Harris & Lewis...in fact we made it to the very top of Lewis - the Butt as it's known, complete with rather impressive looking lighthouse...

So thats "Below, looking up" dealt with - let's switch to an "Above, Looking down" - a shot from the top of Burrival (You remember, the little humpy hill next to Eaval) in fact...

Now as you know I don't do climbing hills just for the sake of it, for a view like that though I will quite happily tackle a bit of a steep scramble. Fabulous isn't it!  Also fabulous were these fantastic waterlilies we spotted on Grimsay - "Stop!" yelled Ben "You HAVE to go back at look at that Loch - it's full of waterlilies!" and so it was...

And then, before we knew it, it was time to start thinking about heading home. One last walk in the sunshine that had been with us almost all the way through our trip...

Then as dawn broke the following morning it was time to go to the ferry - with the hills still shrouded in mist just across from us...

...and then all too soon we were off across the water back to Skye to start the long drive home, with the hills of Uist rapidly vanishing on the horizon.

Robyn

4000 years old!

Amazing isn't it - this is a close up of one of the stones in the Calanais Stone Circle on Lewis - well in excess of 4000 years old and yet still with this amount of texture and vibrancy. Many archaeologists believe that Calanais ("Callanish" when translated from the Gaelic) is older than Stonehenge. For my money it's certainly more impressive. It's also far more accessible - here you can walk right up to the stones, in between them, around them. You can touch and feel the texture and look closely to see the rich colours in the Lewisian Gneiss that they are made of. Admission is also free - as is the case with pretty much all of the incredible archaeology in the Hebrides. Contrast that with the £7.50 admission fee to see Stonehenge at extreme distance - no chance of getting close enough to touch those stones! Add to that the near certainty of the A303 crawling to a halt in that particular part of Wiltshire (I overshot the turn-off for Calanais when we visited this time, but no matter, I just popped a quick three point turn on the main road and went back.....I wouldn't recommend trying THAT on the A303) and all in all I know which mystical spot I'd rather visit!

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

Quick Extra post...

Just because, as I said before, I like these. And this one - posing for the camera - was particularly endearing.

Robyn

Hebrides Countdown...

...If anyone can identify this plant we'd be most grateful! It was taken on last year's trip, growing in the wall around the Butt of Lewis lighthouse, and so far nobody has been able to identify it. We even put the picture into my horticulture-mad Aunt's Christmas photobook in the hope that she would be able to shed some light but so far, no joy. One thing we know for sure is that it's not a sea-pink as the leaves are too fine and delicate.

Just five weeks until we're off there again now. Time truly seems to be flying by this year - we still have ferry tickets to organise so those will get bought in the next little while.

Robyn