The Other Hebrides

Harris and Lewis, Scotland

Some people—including my daughter whose mother comes from there—claim that Lewis is the loveliest island in the world.

She has a point—if you include Harris. The two islands are joined. The two islands are so different: Brooding Lewis with its bleak but beautiful treeless uplands and amazing beaches that no one sees, and Harris with its equally brooding mountains rocks and stunning scenery.

I suppose my view of it was tempered somewhat by my in laws, though they have long since gone to that great Free Kirk in the Skye.

Stornoway, the small capital of the island, has its own attraction. Its granite streets; its harbour lined with fishermen in yellow oilskins, heaving nets and chatting in Gaelic; its street signs in Gaelic.  Actually, my wife claimed she did not speak English till she went to school. I believe her. Since she learned to, she has rarely stopped.

The food: no wonder most of the locals look over fed; most anyway: my mother in law barely ate: she got her nourishment from the Free Church Bible. No wonder she was so thin. But the food? Ah yes! Smoked mackerel, scallops, salmon, herring and hake. Not much wine if those days, but it was there. Rather it was something called whiskey.

‘And what do you drink with your whiskey?’ I asked my father in law.

He glared at me. It was 11 am. He had started downing them two hours earlier.

‘You drink whiskey with whiskey.’

End of story. Which of course raises the issue of spelling. Whisky or whiskey? The Americans and the Irish prefer ‘whiskey’ and the Scots, Canadians and the rest of the world prefer ‘whisky’. Apparently this started during the 19th century when Scotch whisky was of poor quality. The Irish, who thought they had a better product, decided to differentiate theirs from the Scots especially given their close ties with and export trade to the USA; thus they added the ‘e’ to mark the crucial distinction.

Of course, today, Scotch whisky has become one of the world’s greatest spirits but the spelling still differs depending on who you are and where you are. On mass, Americans still spell their spirit with an ‘e’, though for importation and legal registration it is spelt ‘whisky’. But them Americans on mass is a horrible thought.

 But back to the islands. I will never forget my first drive out of Stornoway, west across Lewis. The road crosses vast bogs where peat is cut for fuel, reminding me of the peat-bog burials of Ireland and Denmark, where ancient people believed these water lands were a meeting point of Heaven and Earth. Perhaps they were right.

The road becomes a single lane twisting among lochs and hills to a wild shore—Uig Beach. This is where Britain ends. Next stop: Greenland. We park on the cliffs overlooking the sweeping sands of the loveliest on Lewis. I see a beach ball on the shore. The wind is howling from Greenland via Iceland. I am rugged up against the ice.

I shout in delight and race down the sand dunes. I tear across the beach.

I hear nothing but the roar of the wind and the waves. I am totally exhilarated. There is no one else on the beach: I am totally alone. My family are waving at me from the car—rather urgently it seems—but t my focus is the beach ball.

I kick off my shoes. I race to the ball. I take a might kick and fall over in intense pain.

It is not a beach ball. It is a beached buoy, and probably weights two tons of solid steel.

Being a quick thinker, I leap to my feet (actually, hobble, my toes were all broken) and stagger down to the ice—stagger down to the sea. I run in. Immediately the pain vanishes. My feet are frozen.

Amongst the terms my brother in law and other worthies used I detected what as I passed out sounded like ‘idiot Australian’, ‘nincompoop’ ‘fool’ and the like.

We tried again the next day on the understanding that I would not kick any more beach balls. We drove to the Butte of Lewis (actually, I did not drive. My toes were bandaged. Sore. Slightly.) We called in to visit relatives who still lived in the famous black houses. The brass piss pot still stood at the door for dipping the tartan in to ensure the colours stayed. The black houses look like Hobbit homes, half-sunk into the ground to escape the winter gales, their thatch held down by ropes.

There was peat in the hearth, and Bibles on every shelf. My aunty still made the tweed. She sat every day at the clattering monstrosity of a loom pedaling away.

Then off to the Butte to stare out over the sullen ocean from where centuries earlier, Vikings came on their marauding missions. It was so cold. We did not stay long.

There was far more interesting history back down the road at Callanish, where the grandest prehistoric site in Scotland rivals Stonehenge. High on a hill, above a lake ringed by sacred sites, Iron Age farmers built a magnificent stone circle 5,000 years ago. It is guarded by a line of granite slabs twice the height of a man. The stones seem to be twisted by the wind.

At its centre is a huge monolith. Beneath it is a pit. I climb into the hollow and look back up. I see the grey stones. I see the grey sky. In the distance I see Cailleach na Mointeach, the Old Woman of the Moors; a mountain so names because it looks like a woman lying asleep.

Leaving Lewis you enter a different world. Harris seems wilder and far more foreboding. Mountains squeeze the road into an even narrower track. We drive round a sea-loch and into Tarbert, the hamlet where we stop for a drink. Bonnie Prince Charlie also had a drink here. Goodness: for that reason it is a Royal House? At last: a reason justifying royalty.

We drive on past Leverburgh: Lord Lever of soap fame, once had ambitions to become the laird of these lonely islands. Leverburgh was his idea of Utopia. It actually looks as if it would not be out of place in Siberia. At least he left his mark in Stornoway Castle, now a technical college.

At Luskentyre, after checking for beach balls, we walk on a beach that may be the finest in Britain, if not the world. Some say Australia has the world’s best beaches. I have never forgotten, as an Australian, ho the beaches of Harris and Lewis amazed me. Beautiful but frigid.

A bit like the people.