Episode 16

Episode 16
By the following morning the rain had stopped and soon the weather was clearing nicely.
We visited the local distillery where we did a tour with a good guide who did a splendid job of explaining the processes involved in the production of a good whiskey. This distillery was started by the Stevenson brothers in 1794.
First you have to start with the barley which is needed to make the malt. Where it is grown and the type of barley it is will all have an impact on the flavour of the end product. The barley is let to sprout for a week or so then dried in peat heated kilns, then crushed, then put into vats and water added in 3 stages at different temperatures and allowed to filter through. The liquid is then put into the fermentation tanks where the yeast is added. We could look into these tanks and see them at various stages of fermentation. When it’s finished fermenting there it’s quite like beer. This liquid is then distilled in specially shaped ‘stills’. The shape of the still and the shape and angle of the pipes leading out of the still and through the coils all has an effect on the taste of the end product.
It is then stored in American white oak casks to mature for 14 years here. First though those casks have been used for bourbon, then they are brought here, cleaned and the interiors burnt then filled with the liquid that isn’t allowed to be called scotch until its been in the casks for 3 years. From the time its goes into the still until it ends up in the customers’ hands the excise men keep a very keen eye on it indeed.
This distillery and many others in Scotland are all owned by the same company now. This company also owns many other distilleries around the world including Bundaberg Rum. I don’t know its name.
Another sight to see in Oban is McCaigs Tower. This was the project of one local resident banker who decided to have a place built to resemble the Colosseum in Rome, and to have fountains and statues in the centre. The idea was not purely self indulgence but to provide employment for locals during the winter when many were unemployed. It was started in 1895/6 and work stopped in 1900 when the banker died. By that time the round building was completed but not the statues and fountains. In my opinion the lawns and trees in the centre are much better than statues and fountains would be. What we have now is a two story round building with open archways all the way round. The lower story arches are about 2m high whilst the upper ones are a bit higher. It has a diameter of around 60m and is built, like nearly everything else in the town in a dark grey stone. From a viewing platform one gets a great view of the town and the harbour.
Down in the town there are many tourists though the season is almost over and there are vacancies everywhere, goodness knows what it must be like in the summer. There is much activity on the harbour with plenty of small boats running about and ferries coming and going. Several sailing boats taking advantage of the light winds and cruising about: Swans, ducks and shags on the water, fulmars and gulls riding the air currents and the occasional seal comes to the surface to peruse the goings on.
From here we are heading to the Outer Hebrides, we booked on the ferry to Barra having got a combination fare that includes several ferries to different places but ending up back on the mainland. I won’t mention the fare, its mind boggling.
It was quite a pleasant day when we left Oban on the ferry; there were very few other passengers and vehicles. The cruise through the channels between the small Islands, Mull and Morvern was very pretty but when we reached the Hebridean Sea it got quite rough with the waves breaking over the bow. The castle on the little Islet in Castlebay harbour grabs your attention as the ferry almost runs into it whilst turning to reverse into the RO-RO facility.
Barra is only a small island, about 10k’s long and 3 or 4 k’s wide and can be circumnavigated by car on a narrow winding road with plenty of ‘passing places’. There are quite a few things to see if you make the effort. We started with a drive up to the north end of the Island. The road comes to a stop by a farm gate. Up towards this end there is the airport: It is unusual in the fact that the runway is a tidal beach so flights have to be timed for times when the tide is out far enough to provide a dry runway. At the time we passed the tide was still going out and the wind sock had not been put up so everyone knows that it’s safe to walk on the beach. This beach is one where cockles are collected as the tide goes out and we could see a few people out on the edge of the receding water digging for them. Above the high tide mark the beach is quite white with broken cockle shells.
Along this road too is the ruin of the old Catholic Church of St. Barr. In the church yard here was found an old grave slab that dates back to the Norse, it has a Celtic Cross on the one side and Norse runes on the other and is dedicated to someone’s daughter. The original is in a museum in Edinburg and the locals here would like it back, what we saw was only a replica. Not much of the church remains but the small north chapel was rebuilt to provide a sheltered site for the original and some other old slabs. Looking around the grave yard you can easily see that Macneil is the dominant name here.
High up on a hill side we saw a statue so climbed up to it, it is of the Virgin and child, and we continued on up to the top of this hill 383m, the highest on the Island and from there we had a great view over the entire Island and to others beyond. Driving around the road it had seemed like one continuous suburb but from up here we could see that the habitation clung to the road and the coast. On the way back down we found a stone shaped like a pulpit on the edge of a steep drop and beside it was a pool of water draining out of the peat of the hillside, it had some tannin in it but was good to drink. The slopes of the hill are covered in thick grass and spongy mosses with some small heather bushes, a few with flowers, and in places it is very boggy so that you can sink a couple of inches into black oozing mud, and there are outcrops of granite too. We saw one little buttercup flower, most unusual as this is a spring flower, just a few other little wild flowers too. Sheep and cows graze all over.
We made our way up another hill, not so high nor so far to see a standing stone. Now, where else in the world would you traipse up a hill through boggy grass and moss and clamber over rocks just to look at a bit of granite sticking upright out of the ground. The stupid things tourists do, we should have our bloody heads examined. There had been two stones but one lies broken on the ground. This one has possibly been standing like that for 6000 years.
A visit to that castle in the harbour too seemed like a good idea though there really isn’t much to see there. It’s called Kisimul Castle and was the home of the Chief of the Macneil Clan. It is still owned by the family and leased to Scottish Heritage on a 1000 year lease (that is definitely what the brochure says). To get there we went down to the little jetty and took a cover off the bright orange strip on the post, the ferry man can see this strip and came and collected us and took us over to the castle, all part of the cost of the visit. Most of the place had been rebuilt in fairly recent times: It was only ever a small castle with a three story tower, a prison cell in a damp cellar, and the kitchens on the opposite side of a small enclosed yard. Some battlement up top from where the place could be defended: As it is a couple of hundred metres off shore it would have been fairly easy to see the enemy coming. It was abandoned in the mid 18th century.
Barra has some lovely white sandy beaches too and a good surf, but I don’t think I will be venturing in this late in the season. I have no idea what the water temperature is, but it’s not warm! Kite surfing is said to be popular but we didn’t see anyone doing it.
Joined to Barra via a causeway is the even smaller island of Vatersay. Here, we came across a memorial to the crew and some wreckage of a Catalina flying boat that crashed here in May 1944. On the western beach of a narrow isthmus there is another memorial, this one to crew and passengers of the ship Annie Jane that came to grief off the coast here in 1853 with 350 people losing their lives, but a few did survive and they were taken care of by locals.
There is a lovely walk around the southern end of the Island and I walked around some of it, but didn’t find the standing stone or other ruins that were meant to be someplace. Still there is a limit to how many standing stones one can fully appreciate. Back on Barra we climbed up to look at and Iron Age wheel house. Again there isn’t much to see but the first couple of rows of stones on the outer walls that are perfectly round and inside that 7 evenly spaces small piles of rock, it does resemble a wheel. Looking down from this site we could see a distinct rectangle overgrown with grass on a small flat piece of land below us.
On yet another walk we saw some swans on a small lake that is supposed to be a good fishing spot for brown trout. Flying around overhead were a couple of groups of geese, both groups flew is a straggly V formation and after we left the lake they landed on it. Up the narrow valley we followed we came to the ruins of the Macneil houses. They left the castle in the mid 18th century and came to live here, I don’t know why but there is virtually nothing left of any buildings here so if this is an example of the workmanship here at the time then it’s not surprising that the castle fell into ruins. Iron and Bronze Age structures are in better condition. On a rocky promontory we came to an Iron Age fort, it certainly commanded a good view of the sea, but there isn’t much left of it. Overgrowing it are some lovely mosses, where the stems and roots were exposed they looked like miniature trees. Some are turning red with the cooler autumn weather.
To top off our visit to Barra we stopped and had a look at the rock that is supposed to resemble Queen Victoria in facile profile, who am I to argue? We did see a plane come in to land at the airport before we left the island. It landed on the driest stretch of sand but still sent a spray of water high into the air behind it. Don’t know what make, but it was fairly small, 15 to 20 passengers and wings above the cabin. It took off again 20 mins later after an extremely short run up. Not everyone takes any notice of the sign to stay off the beach when the wind sock is flying as the people out cockling near the waters edge didn’t take interrupt their business.
The sun was shining and it was fairly warm when we left Barra on the ferry, one of only 6 cars on that trip. We passes many small Islets on the 35min trip to Eriskay. On some small low islets we saw a colony of seals. They were just lazing about on the rocks as seals do.
We rounded a low rock wall and entered the tiny boat harbour on the south end of Eriskay, just a ferry landing really. This island is very small, only couple of k’s long and not wide. The only long road runs up the west coast to the main village at Baile. Like Barra though, there are houses all the way along. A large hill dominates the eastern side of the road.
At Baile we parked the car in a small picnic area near a rocky beach, then set out to do a walk that would cover quite a large section of the island. This walk took us along a lovely wide, white sand beach backed by green grassy sand dunes. Up in amongst the dunes there is a cairn with a small plaque commemorating the fact that Charles Edward Stuart (Bonny Prince Charley) first set foot in Scotland here on the 23rd July 1745. Our walk took us almost to the ferry terminal when we crossed the road and headed back on the other side past the edge of a small loch that is the islands water supply and skited round the lower slopes of the big hill but still got some commanding views over the area. I did consider climbing the hill but didn’t come across a gate through the fence. David had got his feet very wet from some boggy areas that we’d had to cross, my new boots have proved their worth and my feet stayed dry, but then I took my care when crossing the boggy areas. Near the car we stopped and patted several of the very friendly little Eriskay ponies. They are a bit bigger than a Shetland, similar in size to the Icelandic ponies. Ten years ago they were near extinction but a breeding program has boosted their numbers well.
Back near the car we called into the bar to see some photos of the Am Politician, a ship that was wrecked off the beach here in 1941. On board were 264,000 bottles of whisky: After rescuing the crew the locals managed to liberate some 240,000 bottles before the excise men arrived.
After the mandatory visit to the local church, just a nice little church sitting on the top of a hill overlooking the village, we headed off to the causeway that connect this island to South Uist, the next island to the north. Before crossing that causeway I took a photo of the sign ‘otters crossing’ but no otter obliged by doing so. The causeway was only opened in 2002.
South Uist is a much larger island. We drove around several miles looking for the supposedly large town, by the time we found it, the tourist office had closed and the supermarket was 5k’s away. Like the other islands there are houses everywhere like one big suburb. The wind got up very strong and it started raining.
On a gloriously sunny day we did some bird watching and saw quite a variety of different birds. There are some fairly tame lapwings that are fairly distinctive as their black head feathers stick well out at the back, you can get reasonably close to there birds too. Plenty of swans, they are mute swans here, still white in colour and occasionally some grey cygnets, 5 in one group. Often see sea eagles too, one landed on a rabbit warren but even when some bunnies were out it didn’t pounce on any just stood there surveying them. There seemed to be thousands of bunnies in that warren. Another bird we saw many of in a field of rye, was similar to the corncrake but we decided it couldn’t be that because they are supposedly very noisy and the ones we watched weren’t.
We walked along the beach in the sunshine and looked amongst the dunes and found the remains of an ancient wheel house, approx 200AD. Just a hole in the ground and lined around the outer edge with rocks: The roof would have been supported from a central pole: The beaches have a lot of rubbish washed up on them from boats. Fisherman seem to chuck everything overboard and we even found a fluoro tube and a light bulb as well as fishing nets, ropes, old buoys, and a vast array of plastic containers. All the above strewn in amongst the seaweed: On another beach we found the remains of a missile complete with bright orange parachute, probably from the missile range on the north end of the island. Came across some seals lounging on some seaweed covered rocks, about 6 of them:
Visited a small museum, most of the items were from the late 19th cent and up to the 1950’s but there were a few items unique to these islands. One was a sandstone carving from very early Christian times. It had been in the ruin of the church at Tobha Mor then had gone missing; a Canadian couple found it in their sons flat in London after he had died. They got in touch with the British Museum and were told that it came from here so they returned it. This happened in fairly recent times. Now it’s claimed their is a curse on it if its removed unlawfully as the Canadians son had died in his sleep aged 33.
There were two beds and some other furniture made from drift wood. The wood here comes mainly from the Caribbean, carried on the Gulf Stream so is well weathered by the time it arrives here. To go on the beds there are mattresses made from sea weed and from hay, and blankets hand spun and woven from the local sheep’s wool. An African wooden carving has been collected from the beach too. Special spades to cut the peat are on display along with one that was given to them by a local person but comes from Bangladesh where they also cut peat for use in cooking fires.
In the same village as the slab came from are some ‘black’ houses. These houses are not really black but the inside walls used to become black from the smoke of the peat fires. In the museum I had read that these ‘black’ houses had really been very unhealthy; cholera and typhoid and tuberculoses had been common diseases amongst the people who lived in them. They had dirt floors and thatch roofs and were very damp. One of only two in the village that remain in good repair is used as a hostel by the Gatlief trust. We went in to have a look as it was open. It too smelt quite damp despite the concrete floor; the thatch roof holds the moisture. A newer stone building next door is also part of the hostel and it would be the one to stay in, apart from everything else it also had an electric heater on that kept it a lot drier. As hostels go it was fairly basis and the fee was only £1 less than what we’d paid in Oban for a far superior hostel breakfast included. The other ‘black’ house is used as a private residence and is in very good repair.
© Lynette Regan 10th October 2007