A Day At The Beaches

The Isle of Lewis and the Isle of Harris are both on one island, but where the mountains begin, so begins Harris. Harris is known for its Harris Tweed and for its incredible beaches. But we started today with a trip to an absolutely huge beach on the west coast of Lewis, near Uig.

In 1831, Malcolm MacLeod made a very interesting discovery, hidden in a small stone structure in a sand dune were 93 beautifully carved chess pieces, they are known as the Uig Chessmen. The chess pieces were carved out of walrus ivory, probably by the Norse in the 12th century. The large carving of one of the Uig Chessmen is recent.

Carving Of Uig Chessman In Oak

Ripples In The Sand At Ardroil Beach

Sand For Nearly As Far As We Could See

We could have watched the Atlantic waves breaking all day long. We were like a couple of kids, shouting when a large wave came in, we loved the roar and the roll of the waves. This is a great time of year to travel, we had every beach we visited today completely to ourselves. I have become a shell gatherer, much to my surprise.

The Water Leaves Interesting Patterns

After leaving the Uig sands area, we drove to Harris. The landscape is incredibly rocky, nothing like we have seen before. The beaches in Harris are huge as well, this was our favourite beach, it is not large but the waves were great. The sand is more of a yellow colour.

Traigh Lar

The MacLeod Stone Above Traigh Lar

I believe this is machair, it is a Gaelic word meaning extensive low-lying fertile plain. It is a type of dune pasture that has developed in wet and windy conditions and is one of the rarest habitats in Europe. Almost half the Scottish machair is found in the Outer Hebrides.

We drove down to far south of Harris to Rodel, there is a a medieval church there that was originally built in 1520 by Alexander MacLeod. It was burnt down and rebuilt and ruined and restored, the last restoration was in 1873, although the tower was struck by lightening in 1907 and partially rebuilt.

There are some very good medieval carvings on the wall and the church contains three tombs. We climbed a narrow stone staircase as far as we could in the tower.

Tur Chliamainn (St Clement's Church) Medieval Carvings

Uhm, Interesting Carved Panel On Outside Of Tower

Old Fence In Churchyard

Seaforth Loch

Harris Landscape

We decided to take another one of those roads on the way back to Lewis. The road was built in 1897 to link the small communities along the east coast of Harris which were previously only accessible by sea. It is termed the ‘Golden Road’ because of the cost of building the road in such difficult rocky terrain. The locals are used to the roads but they make us want to scream.

After getting through the Golden Road we decided it would be a good time to continue our pursuit of good single malt whisky so we stopped at a pub and ordered a couple of whiskies, since we are no whisky experts I just said we want something made on any of the Scottish islands. We tried Jura from the Isle of Jura and Tobermory from the Isle of Mull, both were excellent. The pub dog, Zak, a border collie, dropped a glob of wool at our feet for us to throw to him, he would then back up along the bar stools and wait for us to pick it up and throw it. This worked for a while until he chewed it into a dog slobber mess so the bar owner went and got a proper rope dog chew unit.