Highland Explorer Isle of Skye & Outer Herbrides Tour Day 3 and 4

Rich had been wise to take us to the beach on the previous day because when we woke up the beautiful weather was gone. The itinerary stated that we would spend the day touring the cultural attractions on the Isle of Lewis so we donned our raincoats and headed out.

Our first stop did not disappoint. We found ourselves at the most interesting stone circle we have ever visited. The Calanais Standing Stones were erected over 5,000 years ago which makes them older than Stonehenge. They stand on a ridge above Loch Roag.

Although perfectly ordinary life proceeds on the other side of the fence surrounding the stones, the place still manages to feel mystical.

It was easy to imagine Claire Randall, the "Outlander" character, touching a stone like one of these and being transported back in time to her Highland lover.

Each stone was uniquely beautiful.

We were able to enjoy the ambiance of the stone circle in relative peace until a very large busload of boisterous people descended upon the site.

Our next stop was Dun Carloway Broch. A broch is a circular stone tower found only in Scotland. This particular broch was probably built around 200 BC, and it was used intermittently until as recently as the 1870's when it served as a family home.

You can see some of the features of a broch in the pictures below. There are two concentric stone walls with a gap between them. Small rooms and storage areas exist within the gap, and steps lead upstairs to the place where a wooden platform would have existed.

The kids clamored up the steps, but I admired the view from the ground.

We traveled on to Gearrannan Blackhouse Village where we were welcomed by a very, very old man who sang us a song. He looked like he wouldn't have minded singing all day, but someone else stepped in and gave a little talk about the village and aspects of life in the area when it was a thriving croft back in the 17th Century.

No one knows the precise origin of the word blackhouse. The design consists of one room divided into two sections with a packed earth floor and a fire in the center. There was no chimney. The smoke just made its way through the thatched roof. The family lived in one side of the room, and their farm animals lived in the other.

The village is on a hill overlooking the ocean.

There were no modern conveniences in the blackhouses on the Isle of Lewis so the number of people living in them declined in the 20th Century. Electricity and running water were not available until 1945. When the town's last elderly residents finally moved into more modern homes in the 1970's, it looked like the village would be left to crumble, but a local trust decided to preserve these historic buildings.

I thought, at the time, that Gearrannan Blackhouse Village was like the Highland Folk Museum, but, much to my amazement, as I search the internet to find out more details about the places we visited, I have discovered that 4 of the buildings can actually be booked as holiday accommodations. The largest building is a sort of hostel, and three other houses are intended for 1 - 5 people.

Our final stop of the day was the Butt of Lewis - the isle's most northerly point. It is reputed to be one of the windiest spots in the United Kingdom.

I spent most of my time at this location wishing I had worn my heavier jacket and my Irish knit hat, but Rich always seemed comfortable in shorts no matter how cold it was.

Determined not to inconvenience our B&B hosts again, we headed out to find dinner around 5 PM. We were hoping to dine at a nearby Thai restaurant that had turned us away the night before for arriving too late. No luck. This time they told us the restaurant was booked all night for a special function. Fortunately for us, there was an Indian restaurant practically next door that was very welcoming.

We were finding that it is sometimes difficult for a tourist to find food in the Outer Herbrides. In fact, Rich warned us that since the next day was Sunday we should all pack ourselves a lunch because almost all the stores and restaurants would be closed - not an easy task when you don't have any access to refrigeration. We obediently purchased some fruit and some crackers at a grocery store that evening, but we planned to rely mainly on our ample Scottish breakfast at the B&B to get us through to dinner.

We began Day 4 with a visit to a bleak spit of land where there is a momorial to the 201 men killed in the Iolaire disaster on January 1, 1919. The men had been returning from the First World War and everyone in the town had been looking forward to a joyous reunion, but the ship floundered on rocks and sank at the entrance to Stornoway Harbour.

Next stop was the Memorial to the Heroes of Lochs which commemorates an incident in November, 1887 on the estate of Lady Mary Matheson. Many of the local landowners, including Lady Mary, had been evicting their tenants who had farmed the land for generations because they wanted to pursue more profitable endeavors.She converted her land to a sporting deer park.Finally about 200 desperate, frustrated men entered the estate, shot some deer, and cooked and ate them. Six of the men were arrested, but they were later acquitted of all charges.

The incident brought attention to the problem, but, unfortunately, it still took many years to establish the rights of the tenants.

The monument was built in 1994.

A quick stop at a scenic lookout just before the rain started in earnest....

and a stop at St. Moluag's Church. There has been a church on this site since the 6th century although the current building probably dates to the 12th.

It was time to return to Stornoway to catch the ferry to the Isle of Skye. To get there we traveled on the infamous highway known as "The Golden Road". According to Rich, the local people didn't really want or need the road, but it was built anyway at an incredibly high cost, hence its name. The road is extremely narrow and it has many sharp turns. It is said to have some amazing scenery, but there was too much rain to appreciate it.

It would be another hungry night for us. When we checked into the small hotel where we were to stay for the next 2 nights, we were told that no dinner would be served in the dining room that evening. The hotel was supposedly a short walk from the town of Portree, but we had passed it on the bus and we guessed that it was about a 30 minute walk. We were also warned that the sidewalk was not well-lit and that a tourist the previous week had taken a bad fall in the dark so we contented ourselves with a couple of beers and some bags of chips in the bar.