Calm before the storm
Thursday 11 October
This was the day for exploring, because the predicted winds with Storm Callum were going to make much activity out of the car pretty much impossible. So, armed with suggestions from our Solas House hosts, Iain and Karen, we set out. The Nav in the car struggled to find places out on the west of Lewis, which was our destination for the day, and this in spite of the fact that we got a very nice upgrade in Inverness to a diesel Passat.
As an aside, I’m confused by the fact that neither of the cars we have hired have a reversing camera. I would have thought that a midrange car like the Passat would have had a camera as even the base model Golfs have them in Australia! I love the folding mirrors and the courtesy lights under them. I could sit and play with the remove for hours!
Our first stop was the Land Raiders Memorial, which introduced us to the politics of the Hebrides first hand. We were heading up the road to the “Bridge to Nowhere”, the end of Lord Leverhulme’s attempt to modernise the roads in the early twenties, when we cam across this striking monument. The story, as far as I can work it out without buying yet another book, is that Leverhulme, armed with his profits from the soap company (Sunlight Soap) and grand plan to vertically integrate fishing across both Lewis and Harris, arrived in 1919 and failed dramatically. The returning sailors and soldiers had been promised that their crofts would receive a proper title, but Leverhulme wanted them to work on his project. The result was years of small scale sabotage, until the magnate gave up and sold much of his and to interests more focused on stalking and shooting. He gifted Stornaway to the locals, but almost the only link left in the Western Islands to Mr Lever is Leverburgh on Harris – who knew? A little Sunlight Soap goes a long way.
This, of course, explains the Bridge to Nowhere, which we crossed and walked on across the moors following the planned route of the road to Port Ness. The ground is always trying to become a peat bog, so it was a slightly damp walk with water climbing up the sides of our boots. The views were stunning and worth the drive up the single-track road and the soggy track.
We had explored quite a lot of the northern part of Lewis on our first day, so our plan was to drive over to the west, to Uig,and have a good look at some of the historical sites over on that side. For a small island, Lewis and Harris have a surprising range of country, with the east being flatter and more fertile, and the west more rugged and higher. Neither come anywhere near Harris, and we could see the mountains of North Harris as we turned west from Stornaway.
The Standing Stones at Callanish are about 5000 years old, but that didn’t stop someone’s dog wondering up and pissing on one of the central stones. The age of the stones means that they are very important – so important that archeologists don’t know why there were important. I think the locals are probably on the money when they tell stories about petrified giants who refused to convert to Christianity. After all, do you know any giants who converted to Christianity?
The Carloway Broch is another ancient piece of archeology that the usual websites are completely unhelpful about. It’s far more interesting, apparently, for its medieval use in cattle rustling that its function as an Iron Age stronghold. I’ve put off buying books on the Western Isles, but at some stage I want to find out more, because this building was constructed by the Gaels and then used by the Norse when Lewis was a Viking kingdom.
We finished up at the Blackhouses, ancient village dwellings which were occupied until the early Seventies. Now a museum and a monument to the old life on Lewis, it’s quite extraordinary to think that people survived in this harsh environment in such primitive buildings – so old that no one knows how long blackhouse dwellings have been used in the island. They seem to owe something to the Norse, but modified to survive the storms that strike the west coast regularly.
So that was our day, pretty much, save for a drink at an isolated pub, a very pleasant dinner at a restaurant in Stornaway, and the pleasant surrounds of Solas Guest House. Tomorrow will be very different, and already the winds are rising. The storm is on its way.
By the way, if you are confused by the reference to Uig later in the blog, there are three or four in Scotland, and we will be staying in the one in Skye. But today was Uig in Lewis, and very nice it was too.
