The weather when we woke on Monday morning was a bit wet and miserable, so we made to decision to cut our visit to Eoropie short by one night and head over to Stornoway. As lovely as the village was, we were all needing to see a bit of life as we'd been in fairly isolated spots for the last 3 days. Tommy found us a site just outside Stornoway, so we packed up and headed up.
First of all, though, we took a quick visit to the lighthouse at the Butt of Lewis - it was just a few miles up the road and it seemed daft to come so far and not go right to the top of the islands. It's unmanned now but still just as impressive. Our drive from Uig Sands to Eoropie took us up the West coast of Lewis. Whilst on route, we passed Callanish standing stones, which was still open to visit despite it being a Sunday.
Friday and Saturday night we were staying on the Ardoil Grazing site at Uig Sands on Lewis. This is a community run site, where you pay £2pppn into an honesty box at croft number 6 (it has a red roof). There's a shower block (showers £1) with toilets and kitchen area too, I'm told, although we didn't use them. All we needed was the tap outside.
Uig Sands is a spectacular spot, where the sea retreats a full mile, leaving golden sands behind. It's near here that the Lewis Chessmen were discovered, although you need to go to Edinburgh or London to see them now. For us, it was a chance to try a spot of wild camping again, as there's no electricity here, nor toilet disposal either. Properly off the grid! Friday was a big travel day for us - we'd changed our plans slightly and were travelling straight to Uig Sands on Lewis, rather than stopping overnight at Horgabost on Harris. There was method to the madness - the original plan had been one night on Harris, four on Lewis then back to Harris for another night before travelling from Tarbert to Skye. When you look at the map, it makes more sense!
Anyhoo, we decided to start with our four days on Lewis then have two consecutive days on Harris - but first we had to get there. We left North Uist in more sunshine with fantastic views over some glorious landscapes to St Kilda in the distance. On arriving on North Uist, the rain that had plagued us up the 'long island' had cleared and the sun was beginning to make an appearance again. We seemed to be very fortunate with the weather so far. We stocked up on supplies at the Bayhead Community Shop before heading to our next campsite, Balranald Hebridean Holidays.
Balranald is well known as a RSPB reserve, where rare corncrakes have found a safe haven to breed. It's also known from its otters and wading birds, of which we saw very little, due to have the Tornado Twins with us. But the sun was now out and we were still having fun exploring the reserve and its spectacular beaches. Tommy's pictures do much more justice than mine ever could. After a glorious day on Tuesday, we awoke to mist and rain on Wednesday morning. In some ways it was lucky, as we were travelling anyway, but it did mean our views of South Uist and Benbecula were all a bit like this:
Our campsite on South Uist was on the south west coast at Kilbride, just as the road starts heading North up the island. It was aptly named the Kilbride Campsite and we were welcomed in the evening by the owner, DJ.
It was a lovely site, with a brand new facilities block that had good showers and a campers' kitchen, complete with fridge, kettle and washing up facilities for those under canvas. There was also a washing machine and loads of local information. The pitches were huge and level, which helped immensely when setting up. After the excitement of the plane landing and taking off at Barra airport, we made our way to the ferry terminal at Ardmhor to set sail for Eriskay and South Uist. We were sad to be leaving such a lovely island, but excited to be continuing our adventure in Hans.
The Ardmhor terminal has a fab otter statue hidden around behind the toilet / information block. It's worth searching out. The girls had a good look round before we were back to Hans to await the ferry crew finishing their lunch and allowing us on board. Our second day on Barra dawned wet and cold, a disappointment compared to the warmth the day before. We were due on the 15.40 ferry to Eriskay, but before we left we had something we really wanted to see - a plane landing on the beach at Barra Airport.
Barra Airport is the only airport in the world to run scheduled flights that land on a beach. At Kisimul Castle yesterday, we had met a couple who had flown into Barra and landed on the beach - a dream come true for them. And as we approached the area, we began to see why. Even the weather seemed cheered by the view. Our first morning on Barra was an exciting one - it was Tommy's birthday! After the cards and presents were out the way, we took a walk from our campsite at Borve along the machair in search of a beach.
The girls had taken a real shine to our binoculars and they were soon commendeered to look at flowers and bugs in great detail. |
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