August 15  -  Isle of Lewis and Harris

We docked today in the port of Stornoway, the largest city on the Island of Lewis and Harris, the largest of the Outer Hebrides.  This is actually two islands connected by a very narrow land bridge. They are part of an archipelago of Scotland and our last port before we sail west to Iceland.  They  have been inhabited for thousands of years as archaeologists have found traces of early settlements dating back at least 5000 years.  Through the millennia there is evidence in both language and artifacts of Scots, Gaels, Picts and Vikings.

I took an all-day tour which actually could have been a little shorter but it was still enjoyable.  The countryside is very interesting to someone like me who comes from flat coastal Virginia which is lush and green.  Here the hill sides are green but the vegetation is mostly scrubby grass with  patches of gorse and wildflowers and the flatlands are mainly peat bogs.   It apparently doesn't get really cold here because the weather is influenced by the Gulf Stream as it passes by northern Europe. For example they don't get lots of snow in the winter. Our guide Dora (who is a German from Bremen) told us that at one time much of the island was forested but the trees were cut down for fuel.  At some point one of the wealthy landowners started a reforestation project so there are patches of forest but for the most part it’s still treeless.  She told us that in the past before really good computer graphics were available, film crews would come to the island and take shots to be used as the surface of other planets.   They would just remove the color and perhaps add a little  brown or gray to the scenery.

Some nice bogs

The population of the island is around 20,000, and like many other very rural and undeveloped areas, the population is declining.  Young people have to go to the mainland for university or trade schools and many don’t choose to return.  Most of the population work for the local government or for oil rigs north and east of the northern part of Scotland.  The oil workers generally spend two weeks on the rigs and two weeks off.  Our bus driver Gordon normally works on a rig in the North Sea.

In times past people cut and dried peat to use to heat their homes and to cook.  As we drove along we saw the remains of some of those homes which are called “black houses” because they originally didn’t have chimneys and the peat fires burned in an open hearth in the middle of the house turning the interior black from the smoke.  (Not very healthy either!). Around 1910 the government began helping to build houses with chimneys and those are the “white houses.”  Many of the residents are crofters.  That was a term I’d heard of but wasn’t sure what it meant.  People  leased a strip of land, called a croft, from a large landowner and they could build and farm on it.  The only limitation was that it could not have something on it which interfered with neighboring crofts.  Most of the land that makes up  Harris was donated by a former wealthy landowner to the Harris Trust which benefits all the islanders.   Our guide told us that after she decided to live here she became a crofter.  Dora said she pays the grand sum of  £ 6 per year rent for her croft.

Our drive took us first to the Maraig Viewpoint which overlooked North Harris.  The island is very hilly and rocky and as I wrote earlier is mainly covered with scrubby grass and some varieties of heather and thistle.  The place is home to a lot of types of birds including several species of birds of prey, like golden eagles and sea eagles. In fact the raptors are pretty much the only predator on the island so I’m surprised they haven’t been overrun by rabbits.  As in  Ireland there are no snakes (my kind of place!).  The rocks of which Lewis and Harris are composed are primarily gneiss which is a very hard metamorphic rock similar to granite.  From the viewpoint we could see the many hills, mountains and inlets that make up the island.  One unfortunate thing we found though was there are lots of what the locals call “midgies.” These are small biting flies which are evidently common in Scotland.  They were upon us in an instant when we got out of the bus.  They bite but at least on me didn’t leave any bite marks. Also fortunately they don’t carry any diseases but they are definitely a nuisance.

The view from Maraig. What you can't see are the thousands, at least, of midgies that attacked us.

We proceeded south on the island and made a stop at a pretty beach on a protected bay. There were lots of wildflowers along the path leading to the beach.  I especially liked the ones that looked like some kind of thistles. From there we drove to the southeastern village of Rodel.  At one time it was evidently the capital of Harris. It is now known for St. Clement’s Church.  St. Clement’s was built on the orders of the chief of the MacLeod clan in the late 15th or early 16th century.  It’s built of local gneiss in a cruciform pattern with a tower at the west end.  It’s very rustic to say the least, but looks great in it’s setting with sheep grazing just outside.

This nice fellow was on his way to church.

I think this sheep was in fact a ham.  He seemed to pose for me.

That’s something I should mention.  We saw lots of sheep as we rode around.  Some of them were grazing right up along the edges of the road and those didn’t seem in the least bit bothered by us going by.

We next drove to Tarbert, the largest town we saw and the home of the Harris Distillery and Harris Tweeds.  We had a light lunch in the old Harris Hotel and then had time to visit both the Harris tweed shop and the distillery.  I didn’t buy anything.  The tweeds were nice looking but they’re pretty heavy and a little scratchy so I didn’t find them tempting.  As for the distillery, I just don’t like whiskey.

The Harris Hotel where we ate a light lunch

I don't think the fireplaces belonging to these chimneys have been used very recently.

Just a nice stone building in Tarbert

After our brief stay in Tarbert we headed back to the commercial port of Stornoway and returned to the ship.  As you can perhaps tell, there just isn’t a great deal to see here.  Our tour really should have been shorter, but that’s the way it goes.  Tomorrow we have a sea day and I’m looking forward to that. The weather was still good today after starting out pretty misty.  We've traveled considerably further north so it was cooler and I think any balmy days are past us.