Travels in 2016

After coming back from France in March we spent a couple of days with our friends Jacky and Rob Black in Shoreham by Sea. Jacky had been very ill and was coping with a course of radiotherapy, while Rob had also just discovered he too was ill. Despite this they both insisted that we carried on with our planned stay with them, but we kept it very short, as we did not want to cause them any extra work. We headed north then, spending a few days on the journey, and visited Ju's mum again in Kelso before heading home.

Ardfern took our attention again for a couple of months, then we were off again to visit the Western Isles, in June. We took the ferry from Oban to Castlebay in Barra, and found an excellent new campsite on the west side of the island, which even had broadband! We took jack for long walks along the machair (grassland full of wild flowers close to the sea), and enjoyed good weather, before heading to the north of the island to the airport, which has the only runway in the world where planes land on the beach, at low tide. At high tide they can't land. We waited for a while to see the plane from Glasgow arrive, which it eventually did, so we took a photograph and went on our journey, to the ferry which would take us north to Eriskay.

The car ferry to Eriskay dropped us off t the southern tip of this lovely island. We drove round to the natural harbour An Acarseig which we knew well from our voyages on Little Else. It was great to see it again, a small bay with a few houses around it, and a fishermen's pier. To be continued

.................

We spent a while on South Uist, starting off at a new campsite near Ledaig, the old ferry pier. It was excellent, with a cafe on site. Heading north we enjoyed long walks on the deserted and beautiful sandy beaches on the west coast. On North Uist we wildcamped beside a loch with a fish farm in it, for a couple of nights. After a crossing to Harris delayed by tidal conditions we visited the ancient chapel east of Leverburgh, before heading up to wild camp again along a single track road beyond Tarbert. At Hushinish we camped near a beautiful beach, although the beach at Luskentyre was really hard to beat.

We rounded off the trip to the Western Isles by visiting Callanish at the crack of dawn, before the tour buses arrived, but not before the happy backpacker campers, who had stayed in their tents close by. To be continued.