Day thirty-four - Saturday

Had a fairly light breakfast at the hostel – cereal and toast. Packed up and set off by 10ish, although having learnt the lessons of yesterday I stopped off at the hospital to pick up my walking boots and waterproof trousers! First stop on the planned tour of the west coast was the “Clach an Truiseil” – the tallest standing stone in Europe at over 6m. In a strange position, with a house right next to it and surrounded by dry stone walls. Great views down to the bay at Siorrabhaig, which we then walked down to. The sea was incredible, churned up with big waves coming in from the Atlantic.

The tallest standing stone in Europe

Incredible sea down at the coast, straight in off the Atlantic

Back in the car we headed south to the Blackhouse museum at Arnol. Looking at the village on an OS map it’s a blur of black lines, dividing the land into small crofting areas. The museum described the traditional crofting house next door, where a central fire kicked out loads of smoke that waterproofs the roof, preserves the timbers and supposedly fights infections... The warden described how the sphagnum moss that makes up some of the peat has medicinal properties – this part was true, as it was used as a dressing in WWI for this purpose. Not sure however about these properties remaining when it’s burnt into smoke and then inhaled! The residents were meant to have lower rates of TB due to its therapeutic cleansing effects. Down the road is the whalebone arch at Bragar, the jaw bone of a blue whale that washed up on the beach nearby and is now propped upright in somebody’s garden as a local landmark.

Next stop was the blackhouse village at Garenin – restored traditional blackhouses with a small museum and excellent cafe. In one of the buildings a film was playing showing the process of weaving traditional Harris tweed and cutting peat, the only fuel out here. As there are no trees nowadays the only local fuel source is peat. It burns with an incredible amount of smoke, and not very much heat! Not sustainable at all, despite being traditional. In one of the larger buildings they’d just opened a very well equipped hostel, would be a great place to stay, can accommodate up to 16 people. The rest of the blackhouses were self-catering accomodation. Nice bay at the bottom (Geodha Ruadh), would be nice to swim in, weather permitting. Pretty isolated place!

Onwards to Carloway Broch, an incredible building which functioned both as a house and a defensive structure from which to shelter from marauding hoards. The thick double walls contain staircases used to gain the upper floors, some of which were still preserved and were fun to explore. Sadly a lot of the stone had been ‘recycled’ by the local community before the structure became protected – the broch would have been much more impressive if it was more complete. Understandable that they wanted to re-use the precious stone resources, but perhaps lacked the foresight to realise that one day the building would have the potential to bring money and jobs to the local economies – easy to say now when not such a struggle for survival.

Carloway Broch

The crown jewel of the west coast archaeology tour, also the last stop, was Calanais stone circle – a set of very atmospheric standing stones in an incredible position on the coast. Originally a stone circle, after the arrival of Christianity the layout had been added to, converting the pagan site into a symbolic cross with offshoots of more standing stones. We briefly toured the mini visitor centre before calling it a day and heading back to Stornoway.

Showers all round at the hostel then into town for a meal. Had envisaged going to Digby Chick, where I’d been earlier in the week, however they were fully booked, along with a lot of the other restaurants with it being a Saturday evening. We decided to check out the local Indian Balti House which turned out to be excellent, good food at good prices with friendly staff. A whiskey at An Lanntair on the way back to the hostel capped off a great day of sightseeing! Back to the hostel I chilled out in the common room with May and got chatting to two London lads doing a week’s cycle tour of the Hebrides. One of them had spent time in Barrow so there was plenty to talk about!