Episode 18

Episode 18
On the dead end road that runs along the coast north of Stornoway we came to the ‘bridge to nowhere’ at the end. This bridge was built soon after WW1 at a time shortly after Lord Leverhulme bought the island in 1919, and had plans to develop it. Because of the trouble he had with the crofters and villagers wanting the land they had been promised for service in the war, the road was never finished and hasn’t been touched in more recent years either. It’s possible to drive over it and its a good solid bridge two lanes wide, a 4wd track carries on for some way. Here, too there is a good walk to the top end of the island and the lighthouse but it’s a very wet track at any time, you need wellington boots up to your hips after all the recent rain.
We did it the easy way, we drove round the road. The first few miles crossing the island is just passing across one big peat bog. All along the way you can see where the peat has been cut leaving ridges and gullies. A great many of the islands residents have a small allotment of peat each and in the spring time they can be seen out cutting and stacking the peat. It is left to dry out over the summer then taken home loose, or in bags, ready for the coming winter. At this time of year the grass, mosses and heather on the bogs is generally a browish colour, whether that is due to the tannin in the peat or the time of year I cannot say. All the streams are the colour of tea from the tannin.
At the top of the island stands the lighthouse overlooking a very rugged piece of coast with ‘sea stacks’ and rocky off shore islands. An icy cold, fierce wind was blowing and the rough sea breakers were crashing into the rocky shore and sending big bits of spume way up past where we were sitting in the car. Took us a few minutes to work out what these lumps of white stuff were that came flying past us. The cliffs are summer breeding grounds for gannets, puffins and fulmars, but none are here now. Don’t blame them, not a good place to be just now:
As we had to travel back down the same route we had driven straight to the top, we stopped off at all the points of interest on the way back down. The 12th century church of St Moluag was our first stop. It’s a very simple little church that was restored in the early 20th century. It has just one small stained glass window in the nave, so with the door shut its very dark inside. There were some stone circles that we tried to see, we drove through the flooded track to get to the parking lot only to find that the walking track was even more flooded so we gave them a miss, there are plenty more standing stones and stone circles to see.
The site of the Del waterwheel and mill was another stop we made. All that remains is the housing for the wheel and part of the race, where the water passed through to turn the wheel. This was a horizontal wheel, not a vertical one. The old mill buildings are there too but all boarded up. Some way further on we came to the ‘standing stone’ at Trusseil. This is just one lone stone that stands about 5m high, must have taken some effort to get it into position.
All along the way we went from one village to the next. Most of the houses were fairly modern, built with render coating and usually painted grey. Plenty of old stone houses left to decay at a fairly rapid pace in this damp climate and lots of old cars left to do the same, they can be seen all around in various stages of rusting away. Sheep wander the streets just like erratic pedestrians; even saw one being taken for a walk on a lead and none too happy about it either.
All through these islands the Gaelic language has been revived and most seem to speak it, all the signs are in both English and Gaelic, but it seems to be that they cannot agree on the spelling as each different map had the place names spelt differently, all are totally unpronounceable anyway. Here the word Gaelic is pronounced very similar to garlic the vegetable.
In the village of Bragar there is a huge arch. It is the jawbone of a mighty blue whale that was washed up on shore back in the whaling days. It had a harpoon through the jawbone, its still there, and when a local blacksmith tried to remove it, it fired and he was badly injured. Now it stands up vertically as a big arch beside the road. Must have been an enormous whale:
An old Norse Mill and kiln have been restored and a 10 mins walk along a wet track took us to it. These are referred to as Norse mills but I did read someplace that its more likely they were introduced from Ireland than from the Nordic countries. This one is in 2 separate buildings. Small stone bothies, stone walls with a thatch or turf roof: Inside one only the pit can be seen over which the kiln would have stood. It was mainly barley that was grown here, and oats, too wet for wheat; and the grain had first to be dried before it could be milled and this was done in this kiln house. Next door was the mill house with the wooden shoot over the 2 quern stones, the top one with a hole in it so that the grain went through it to be ground between the top and the bottom stones, then pushed out into an area where it would have been shovelled into some sort of container. This mill was driven by another horizontal wheel under the mill. Water to power the wheel was led through a race above the mill then dropped down into the wheel housing. It came from a small lochan about 600m away through channels that had been dug. This old mill had been restored in recent years.
A village of ‘black houses’ we came too next. This village, Gearranan, had been occupied until 1973, at which time only a few elderly people were still living in them and they were re-housed in new council houses with indoor plumbing. In 1976 a preservation order was placed on them and through the latter part of the 1990’s they were restored. Now, several of them are let out as self contained holiday cottages, one is an office and information room and another is a hostel run by the Gatliff Trust. This hostel is in much better condition that the one we stayed in one Berneray. They are all built of stone and the roofs are of thatch held down with stones around the bottom edge and with fish netting over all the thatch. It is believed that there has been a village on this site since at least 400AD, perhaps earlier. There was so many people living here in the early 1900’s that it got the name ‘china town’.
One of these types houses that we’d seen early but wasn’t open had been divided into two sections, one for the animals and one for people. From the notice board outside I had read that it had been occupied until the 1960’s and at that time the people had kept chickens and 1 small beast (didn’t say what sort of beast) in the animal side. In the centre of the living quarter had been a peat fire, originally sitting on the earthen floor but in more recent times in some sort of stove.
Carloway Broch was the next place we came too along the coast. A Broch is believed to have been a superior dwelling probably where the landowner lived. The walls are 2 concentric circles, one inside the other, with a gap between wide enough for a stairway to the top or a higher level. The one here is the best preserved one about, almost half of it remains and you can get a pretty fair idea of how it looked. Then the information board has a drawing of what the archaeologists think it should have looked like. An almost beehive shape structure, about 6 to 8m high with the walls gradually sloping inwards: The inner circle had a diameter of around 6 to 7m, and the artists impression puts a pointed roof with a central pole over the centre. A tiny door barely 1m high was the only access, a similar size doorway led to the stairwell between the walls; this was 800mm to 1m wide. It’s believed this one dates from around 200AD.
There are the ruins of many more smaller buildings similar to this, the smaller ones are generally referred to as ‘duns’ and were a small fortified house, now generally just a small pile of rocks. Some beehive houses too, but mostly just a shallow round hole in the ground is all that is to be seen.
Then we came to more stone circles going back 3000BC. These are the Callanish stone circles and the main one here is quite impressive. Most of the stones are still standing. Like the one we saw in the Lake District, the eastern side seems to be flattened, not a true circle. This circle had a line of standing stones leading away from it in each direction, north, south, east and west. The northern stones stand in two lines as though lining a wide roadway. In the centre is a large burial chamber. Archaeologists have found that this complex had been built over many centuries, the circle being the oldest. The burial chamber centuries later and the bodies entombed here had been cremated.
The people at the time the circle was built used to build their fields up high with drainage channels between, these were called ‘lazy beds’. Centuries later, after all the stones had been erected, the remains had been taken from the tombs and ploughed into the ground all around the stones. At this time the earlier raised beds had been ploughed and the channels too, then in more recent centuries the lazy bed system had again been used, but by this time the peat had formed. When the stones had first been erected there wasn’t the extensive peat fields there is now. In the mid 19th Century when James Matheson was having the stones excavated there was 1.5m of peat around them that had to be removed. Underneath the earliest lazy beds an even older drainage ditch has been found.
Two other stone circles we looked at here, one with only 5 stones still standing has a burial chamber in the centre, and the other is nearly a complete circle still standing but with nothing in the centre.
We drove across the bridge onto the little Island of Great Bernera. They call this bridge, the bridge over the Atlantic. Bit like calling the bridge to Bribie Island the bridge over the Pacific. Anyway, on the far side of the island we came to another ‘Iron Age’ House. This one has been constructed on the lines of several that were found in the late 1990’s when beach erosion unearthed them. They lie under the sand of this lovely little beach at Bostadh. These too are from around 400AD: They are excavated into the ground about 1m deep and have stone walls about 1m high. They are not round but more elongated and this one has been given a thatch roof but no trace of the original roofs has been found. Like the Broch it has a tiny entrance door about 1m high and you step down into the house.
Still on the lookout for those elusive otters but none have yet shown themselves:
On the Uig peninsular on the west coast we came across the place where the Uig chessmen were found quite by accident. We had pulled into a small parking area near a beach to have a cup of coffee when we spotted a wooden sculpture of a chessman so I went and read the sign and learnt that the chessmen were found right near this spot and that we could learn more about them in the local museum so we set off to visit it. That wasn’t as straight forward as one might think. When we found the museum it was closed but we could phone one of two people and arrange to see it with them so this we did. I phoned this chap Finlay and then we had to go 4 miles to pick him up and bring him back with us. He let us in and we had a look about.
The Uig chessmen were found in a stone cist covered by a sand dune in 1831 and they are carved from Walrus ivory. They are Norse in origin and probably were carved in Trondheim in Norway in the mid 12th century. Just why they were buried in the sand dunes of Lewis no one will ever know. There are 78 chessmen belonging to 4 different sets and 14 other pieces that are gaming pieces and one belt buckle 64mm (2.5in) long. The pieces range in height from 3.5cm to 10.5cm. They all have very dour expressions on their faces. None of the actual pieces are here still, all we could do was read about them and see some models of them. 11 of the pieces are in some museum in Edinburg and the rest are in the British museum in London.
The museum had quite a good display, an interior of a black house, one of the more modern ones with a fire place against the end wall. There were some seal skins on the floor too and they have quite coarse fur, not soft like some I have seen.
We thanked Finlay and took him home, then carried on our way.
This area is more sparsely populated than further north. It is more hilly too and it does have some lovely light sandy beaches with gently lapping water. They would be great if the air and water temperature were 10˚ to 15˚C warmer. Some nice little rocky islands just offshore: It is quite a pretty area but in winter I think it could be very bleak indeed.
David decided that he would like to see the Garrabost grain mill if possible, he had read about it at the other mill we visited. So we drove out to the village and asked directions from there. By chance we asked at the house of the sister of the man who now runs it. She sent us to see him.
His name is Angus Graham Morrison and he invited us in and told us about the mill. On the living room wall he has some old photos of the mill taken early last century, one with a t-model ford in it. From his computer he copied some material he had written about the mill and some of the photos onto our jump drive so David may put them onto the blog with this.
The mill started working in 1896 and at that time it was powered by a water wheel. Later an oil engine was installed in 1908 and it’s still there now and working. Graham’s grandfather worked in the mill until 1946, and his father from 1930 until he retired. He is now 91, and came down to join us when we went down to have a look at the mill.
Graham showed us the kiln and how the grain is dried first before it can be milled. The grain is laid on a drying bed with a fine mesh base half a ton at a time and the heat from the peat fired kiln passes through the mesh and dries the grain. Then it has to pass through a mill that removes the husk and the dust, next it goes to the other mill where it is ground into flour. The stones that mill the grain into flour must be dressed, when the mill was working full time this was about every two months. This is a major job, and a very exacting one. The top stone has to be lifted and worked on while its upright and the bottom one, it weighs one ton, is left in situ. By dressing I mean that a special design has to be chiselled out of the stone so that the grain is ground just right.
Here they mill barley into flour and it is sold in some of the local stores. They only do a small amount each season now; it’s not a business more of a hobby for Graham who is a retired physics teacher. He generously gave us a bag of the flour and some recipes to try when we get the opportunity.
As we were leaving Graham also told us that wild minks on the island cause havoc with hens. Introduced in the 1950’s to be farmed some have escaped and now are a major pest. They can get through a very small hole and will kill 30 hens overnight.
We thank Graham very much for showing us around his mill. The old photos of the mill, the engine and the name plate are all courtesy of Graham Morrison.
In the cafe in the Stornoway library we tried some ‘barley bannock’ made with the barley flour milled by Graham. It was round, about 1.5cm thick and brown, bit like a thick chapatti, and it had a bit of a malt flavour. It was served with thick clotted cream, just a little sour. Can’t say that I can recommend it, too heavy for my tastes and David wasn’t impressed either.
On our way back south to Tarbert to catch the ferry we took many of the side roads that twisted and turned around the hills and the lochs. We were still on the lookout for those otters so we stopped several times in places where we thought they might be but to no avail. Just aren’t meant to see them.
Just north of Tarbert we took the road along the loch out to the west coast where we came to another lovely wide sandy beach and finally ending at a boat ramp where we could look over to the island of Scarp, just off shore. Along the way we had passed Amhuinnsuidhe Castle. It’s more of a big stately home than a castle and it stands just back for the shore of a small bay. The road runs right past the front door, east bound traffic miss it by inches. A lovely lawn runs down to the stone fence along the shore, and there are stone walls on either side. On the western side we passed under a high stone arch and immediately passed 4 ‘row’ houses that were probably built for the employees. They are now a B and B, the castle though has a sign on the door that it is a private residence.
All the little waterfalls were still gushing over the hillsides and could have run a thousand water wheels with all the rain that had fallen over the past week. It has been too wet for us to do any walks really as the peat is sodden.
A last word about the islands before we leave them: One of the main industries here is the production of Harris Tweed. There are a lot of small places that still seem to be making it. Although named after the island of Harris, the main production is now on Lewis. Apart from this and some fishing there does not seem a lot for the people to do. The summer provides quite a lot of jobs in the tourist and related industries but by now the tourists are a bit thin on the ground and many things have closed for the season so I am at a loss to work out what people do to earn a living. The few sheep and cows most of the crofts have would perhaps provide a bit of a supplementary income but by no means enough to keep a family.
It was a cold windy day that we took the ferry from Tarbert to Uig in Skye, a crossing of less than two hours on a busy Saturday. The ferry had nearly a full load of cars, it is the end of mid term holidays for some schools, and there were many families on board.
First thing I noticed about Uig were the trees. On the outer islands there are no trees apart for a few planted pine forests and very occasionally people have some wind blown spruce in their gardens. Now, back on Skye we were greeted with a cluster of trees in the valley wearing their autumn colours. Up on the hillside overlooking the town we could see Frasers Folly a brick round tower two or three stories high, and on the skyline we saw another standing stone:
Flora MacDonald who helped Bonny Prince Charley escape from Eriskay and brought him to Skye dressed as her maid is buried here on this Island in a small churchyard a few miles north of Uig. There is a large monument topped with a Celtic cross on her grave, she died in 1790. Also in this church yard is an old grave slab of a knight in Mail. It’s on the grave of “Angus of the wind”, it is said that he stole it from another grave, possibly a kings and brought it here on his back ready for his own grave.
A small stone age cavern was found in this same area only a few years ago. It is narrow and about 7 to 8 metres long, low, and lined with stones. As it has a lot of water in the bottom we didn’t venture very far into it but it seems to have small side caverns off the main tunnel. It’s all lined with stones and archaeologists think that it was used to store dairy products. For want of a better theory I expect. Nearby are two round hollows in the ground that are the bases of two old round houses from the same period. The cavern was only found when one of the lentils collapsed and suddenly there was a hole in the ground where there shouldn’t be one.
Further up the coast we came to what remains of Duntulm castle. It was built on a high knoll overlooking the sea with cliffs on two sides. There really is much to see, a few walls are still standing but there are some big piles of rubble too. Much of the stone has been carted off to use in newer buildings. It was once the home of the Macdonalds but they abandoned it in 1732.
On this northern end of the island there are some very craggy mountains and steep bluffs, it’s a very picturesque area. Little tiny villages that are hidden then you come across them suddenly when you come round a bend in the narrow road. Often only three or four houses: The sheep here have the same attitude that they did on the outer islands too, they stand on the road or amble off to the side at their leisure, never in a hurry, and are often lying on the edge of the tarmac watching the passing traffic slow to almost a standstill as it negotiates its way around them. We have seen the sad remains of one or two that misjudged the attitude of passing drivers.
One day we did some walking in the Quiraing, these are those craggy mountains in the north east. A pointy pinnacle called ‘the needle’ is one; an outcrop is called the prison, and a flat piece ‘the table’. The sign at the start said 2.8 miles but we didn’t know what place was 2.8miles. The walk was a relatively easy one, some short steepish bits but no scrambling. Generally it was a steady climb. Some parts of the track were fairly muddy but they could be avoided and there were plenty of cow and sheep droppings all along the way, not always possible to avoid. We went first in one direction and after a few kilometres came out on a high peak with a great view and a vertical cliff edge. Seeing another higher vantage point not far away we made for that and nearly got blown off the mountain the wind was so strong but we made it to the top. The view over the whole of the northern part of the Island was brilliant, well worth the climb.
At a stile we met some young fellows with a map and found that the needle and the prison were off in the other direction so we made our way back about 2k’s to a junction of tracks and headed off up the ridge to the south. As we came over a saddle between the main range and an outcrop we found ourselves almost right below the needle though the view was better from further along the track. Another ½ a k brought us to another side track, this one up onto the ‘prison’ outcrop. Not that we could quite work out the ‘prison’ in this outcrop. I went on up this path by myself David didn’t feel as if he could do that bit extra, we still had several k’s to go back to the car but mostly downhill. Anyway I climbed up this track that eventually brought me out onto the edge of a drop off where I could look down on where I’d left David. Another cliff beside me was part of the walls of the ‘prison’ I think. In places on this track the wind was ferocious. When I got back to the junction David had already left on his way back down, he had got too cold just waiting for me. Back at the car he had the kettle just about boiling when I arrived. I needed that cuppa.
Someone we’d met had also told us that the track led from the car park where we’d parked to one at the top, and that was the 2.8miles. We had got to within 1 mile of that top car park. The whole walk would have been easier from it too as it was on about the same level as the higher parts of the main track. Still we got our exercise.
Further down the coast we came to Kilt Rock. This is a basalt formation in the cliffs over the sea. The vertical basalt columns are the pleats and the layers of silt stone and Jurassic sandstone are the cross coloured threads on the plaid. Well, that’s what the pamphlet says; just have to use your imagination. Between the viewpoint and the basalt columns there is an impressive waterfall. It drops straight over the cliffs into the sea, probably about 50m or so and the wind catches the water and blows it back up. This is Mealt waterfall.
A bit further along the road and right beside it is Lealt waterfall; it falls into a gorge that then flows a further 400m to the sea. Here we followed another path a short way and come to a notice board and learnt that immediately below us on the shore was the ruins of a crushing plant for Diatomite. This diatomite was mined 3 miles inland and brought to this point on some sort of rail wagon that people pushed along. Nothing to say how they got it down the cliff, we would have thought a shute of some sort but seeing as these Scotts were using human power, not horse or oxen to pull the rail wagon we’re none too sure that they were bright enough to think of using a shute to get it down the cliff. It was crushed at the bottom then loaded onto small boats and taken out to be reloaded onto ships, all by hand.
Diatomite is a whitish claylike substance formed from microscopic diatom shells and is used as an insulation for ships boilers, filters for beer, and in dynamite. It was mined on the edge of a small loch and we tried to go in there but the rough track was a bit much for the little car. We think that this track must also have been where the rail line ran as we could see no other alternative. The mine worked from 1896 to at least 1914 perhaps later, so you would think there would be some remnants of the line to see.
Over a hill top we came and looked down onto the neat little harbour of Portree. The quay side is lined with pastel coloured three story houses that are now restaurants and expensive little shops. Moored in the beautiful little harbour are many fishing and pleasure boats painted all sorts of bright colours. The lush green headlands and islands enclose the deep blue water of the harbour so that the water is always quite calm no matter how bad the wind is. On top of a hill overlooking the harbour on one side is a brick tower, called the watch tower, as this is where people come to watch for returning ships. I climbed up here and admired the wonderful view over such a really pretty place. Portree is the biggest town on the island but it is really only a very small place, Stornoway on Lewis was much larger.
© Lynette Regan 21st October 2007