Steve and his sister’s family joined us for a great sail up the coast to Tarbert. We observed a large group of harbour seals at close quarters as well as lots of gannets fishing. After a very pleasant sunset and night Diomedea made a course for the Shiant Islands in the middle of the Minch. This stunning group is formed of basalt columns in parts similar to Staffa, only much bigger. More importantly tens of thousands of puffins call this home before embarking on their annual migration. These colourfully beaked birds are clumsy fliers but are great to look at. The anchorage was quite rolly and not all that sheltered. We chose not to stop for long and moved further up the coast to Loch Shell. The fishing village seemed almost derelict and abandoned apart from one boat that went out to tend the cray pots. Stornoway (steering bay in old Norse) provided a good venue to re-provision and do a day tour by car of all the historic sites of Lewis. Human habitation dates back a very long time in the outer Hebrides. Once the great ice sheets of the last Ice Age retreated, vegetation began, and animals and humans followed, probably around 8000 BCE. Because sea levels have risen significantly since then, just about all coastal settlements have vanished beneath the waves leaving little trace. A storm in 2005 unearthed an iron age village long buried in dunes on the western side of Lewis. Today one lovingly recreated dwelling can be visited. The smell of peat smoke from the centrally placed hearth pervades everything in the gloomy semi-subterranean interior so one can really get a sense of place from long ago.
The standing stones of Callanish were very impressive of course. No, we did not dance naked around them in pagan ceremony. It was cold and rainy and luckily the summer solstice was over.
A dun, or fortified tower house, remained in reasonable condition on a hillside. Often these were built on small islands in lakes with a causeway for access and the Western Isles are littered with ruins of same. The blackhouses of Arnol were in use up until the 1960’s. Double skin stone walls and roofs of peat and thatch, the accomodation at one end was for humans and at the other for the livestock. Again the central peat fire gave everything that smokey smell, but it probably suppressed all the other odours as well as the midges. The final leg of the trip was to the aptly named Butt of Lewis, the northernmost tip of the island, famous for its inhospitable coastline deficient of harbours and beset by tide rips. Our sole Christian experience was a visit to the well preserved 14th century church of St Moluag which is still in use today. It was first built in the 6th century as part of St Columba’s work. The church was famous for miracle healing of sores and wounds. However, often the illness itself prevented the victim from travelling the arduous and long journey to this remote place. The church then rather ingeniously introduced the first iteration of tele-medicine. It was quite acceptable for a likeness of the sore or wound to be reproduced, say on an artificial wooden limb and then sent to the church for the requisite prayers to commence the healing process for the distant person. A nice little earner? This process continues in the modern era. A notice board within the church contained hand-written appeals for divine intervention for living souls.