By way of Comparison...

View from the cottage on a lovely spring evening.....Eaval clearly visible in the background.



View from the cottage this morning - the white mist has descended and one of our hills appears to be missing...!

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

Merry Christmas!

Todays photos are brought to you courtesy of Auntie D - or at least courtesy of the money she kindly gave us for Christmas that today took us across to Barra on the ferry for a thoroughly enjoyable day out! We had hoped to do the flights across, landing on the beach runway at Barra Airport, but unfortunately the tides didn't work in our favour this time round so the timings were too tight - too much risk of getting caught on the wrong island! Instead we booked us and Gracie the Renault Clio onto the ferry this morning and back this evening - leaving from here at 8am and ambling down through the islands to Eriskay. The light at that time of the morning was fantastic - we stopped briefly at Loch Bee......



...then headed on, arriving on the beautiful Island of Eriskay in plenty of time for the ferry. Excellent - time to walk up the road and get a shot of a lovely beach...



...That is "Princes Strand" or in Gaelic Coilleag a'Phrionnsa - believed to be the place where Charles Stewart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") first set foot on Scottish soil. Be that as it may it's a most beautiful place and always nice for a quick walk if you've time. No chance for that today though as CalMac ferry Loch Alainn pulled up to the jetty and on we went. It's always fascinating getting an inter-island ferry - a lot more than just cars and people is carried - today it was the post for Barra (the flight times were wrong to allow the post to fly in directly, so it will have been flown to Benbecula and then transferred on to Barra via van & ferry), as well as a parcel from the South Uist Ambulance Service to the Barra one, via a helpful van driver! It was a quiet crossing, only about 5 vehicles going across and one fewer than than on the way back.

Barra is a beautiful island, and you also have Vatersay to explore as they are linked via causeway. We sat and ate lunch on Vatersay on the most amazing beach - it was incredibly warm, the sand was so white it almost hurt the eyes and the sea was a perfect shade of turquoise! Bliss! We then went for a look at the wreckage of a Catalina plane which crashed on the island during the second world war - incredibly it still lies where it fell, there is now a small memorial for those who lost their lives which is nice to see. Anywhere else if it hadn't been removed by the council ('Elfen Safety you know!) it would have been stolen by treasure-hunters, but on Vatersay it is treated with respect and left to lie.



There is a circular road running around Barra so the easiest way to see the whole island is to drive around that. We walked around it once - it's 14 miles, and our feet were fairly sore by the time we got back to the starting point! Today though Gracie took the strain, obligingly stoppoing time and time again for us to look at something, or take photos, or identify birds. We saw a pair of Linnets which was a first for both of us, and, on the crossing back, masses of Great Northern divers just changing from their winter plumage - I'll leave you with one of those!




Robyn

Deer deer......deer! (Or, "Oh deer" if you prefer)

As we drive down the islands, there are several places that we almost *always* stop at, as we know that interesting birds can sometimes be seen there. One of these is what we know as the "School Loch" at Carinish on North Uist. Handily enough oposite the school buildings there is a turnbing circle for the bus, along with a few parking places, gving plenty of space for us to pull in for a few moments to see what's about. Regular inhabitants are Tufted Ducks, sometimes a few Teal, and Mallards. We've also seen Wigeon and on one occasion a Little Grebe there (Ben still looks for it each time but it's never been back!) however on this occasion more interesting than what was happening on the water was what was happening on the land to the side of it - a good sized group of Red Deer grazing, suprisingly close to both the road and the house nearby. We're used to seeing deer on the road out to Locheport, where we stay, and on one notable occasion one crossed the road in front of us on the western side of the island having just cleared the 8' high deer fencing along that stretch with ease. Seeing them so close to habitation though is unusual, so we sat and watched them for quite a while, and it would have been simply rude not to grab the camera too...

Tomorrows photo may be recognisable to any of you who watched the recent "Island Parish" series on TV - as we are off to Barra for the day via the ferry from Eriskay. I haven't decided what the photo will be yet - maybe Kisimul Castle, Maybe Father John-Paul's Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea. Maybe something else entirely. we'll see!

Robyn

Day Off...

...have another bit of cow...


Robyn

Here's to dry feet!

This is the "South Ford" between South Uist and Benbecula. We sat and ate our lunch today and looked out across the ford, as you can see it was a gorgeous afternoon again (this morning wasn't quite so cheery but as it brightened up so nicely we'll forgive that) and there were people out on the ford walking dogs, or just walking. It wasn't until 1942 that, if you wanted to cross from one island to the other you had no choice BUT to walk, as it wasn't until then that any form of crossing was put into place! Now the causeways are commonplace - the longest being the North Ford Causeway beween Benbecula and North Uist, via Grimsay, however it took nearly another 20 years for that one to be built. Prior to that you could, at high tide, take a boat from Carinish to Gramisdale, or at low tide in good weather the crossing could be made on foot with the assistance of an experienced guide - however there was 4 miles to cross, and was only open for one hour each side of low tide!

The most recent causeway to be built links Eriskay to South Uist, and was only completed in 2002 - isn't it incredible to think that prior to then, this fairly well populated island was entirely reliant on a ferry service. Thanks to the "Spinal Route" consisting of roads, causeways, bridges and ferries (Crossing the Sound of Harris and between Eriskay and Barra) it is now possible to travel by car in a single day from Ness at the North of Lewis, down to Vatersay to the south of Barra. We think little of popping down to Balivanich on Benbecula for diesel as we did today (although when we got there, at 154.0 per litre we thought a bit more!) and it's incredible to believe that relatively little time ago that simply wasnlt an option.

Robyn

MV Hebrides again...

...but from a slightly different angle. it is effectively the polar opposite of one of yesterdays pictures, which was looking down on Lochmaddy pier from North Lee, at MV Hebrides coming in to berth. In the picture above you will notice the point we were sitting when yesterdays shot was taken can be seen just above Hebrides port side bridge...!

We came to be there to meet her this evening as the handpump problems at the pub turned out not to be immediately easily fixable, and parts were required. The parts of course were on Skye at the brewery, but a simple call to the brewery confirmed that they had the right bits, and a method was found of getting them brought across on the ferry this evening meaning we simply had to meet the ferry, collect the bits, and then take them to the pub to complete the repair job. Ahh, but things are never that simple are they? You're anticipating a story of how it all went wrong! Do you know, it didn't - over here, things like that are surprisingly simple. Sadly the days of Calmac being happy to take stuff on board to go over without prior arrangement and forms in triplicate are long gone, but there is usually a friendly van driver coming across who is happy enough to have one more item added to his load. People here are used to such things, it's the way life is, and how things continue to function. We usually bring across any bits and bobs from the brewery for the pub - we'll be going there in any case so it's no hardship, and it saves the risk of them getting mislaid by a courier. (The pub is currently missing a door - it's over here *somewhere* but nobody seems quite sure where at the moment. It'll turn up though.... eventually.) From our perspective, we had a nice meal while waiting for the ferry, met people we knew whilst waiting for her to arrive and had a good chat, then collected the bits and got given beer a reward! What more can you ask?!

Robyn