Doing the Uists (and their neighbours Benbecula and Berneray)

After the little van experience on Lewis / Harris, we decided that a similar exploration was needed on the southern Outer Hebridean islands. The captain called the local hire car folks, Laing Motors who also run a garage and a van rental and light haulage / plant hire business. Yes, when you live in the main settlement on South Uist and that only has 300 souls in it, you have to be flexible.

It was a good job that the captain called as the nice helpful man’s accent was rather broad and local (remember, this is a Gaelic speaking area!) He kindly collected the captain from the harbour and drove the 3 minutes to their workshop / storage area / junkyard / whatever. It was a throwback to the 1960s with a nice workshop, 3 lifts, cars in various stages of dismemberment, a scruffy office and lots of tins of useful stuff like grease, brake cleaner, exhaust repair tape etc etc on the office shelves.

The hire car paperwork was interesting. A single sheet of locally prepared and copied A4 with a few typed lines on it where you (yes, the hirer) filled in information like name, address, driving licence number etc. As I completed the form, there was no attempt to check the licence was mine, valid or in date. The DVLA code to allow them to check on penalty points history was, of course, not asked for. We chatted about running a workshop, the captain dragging back things learned from his early years with Ford and BMW as a field service guy. A brief chat to one of the mechanics as well, then off to cause chaos in a little Nissan Micra:

No terms and conditions signed, no nothing. The simplest and friendliest car rental process ever – sorry Stornoway, you are now second! Of course, one could question the legality of it all but let’s not.

We duly zoomed (not really, that main A road is single track with passing places job) around South Uist, Benbecula, North Uist and Berneray. What were the highlights? Well, Flora MacDonalds birthplace was duly marked by a rock pile:

And a little plaque explaining some of her history:

For those of you who are not familiar with the Bonnie Prince Charlie story, look at Wikipedia. Of course, Nicola Sturgeon the SDP leader might take over from her soon as the national heroine when Nicola forces another independence vote.

There are some more nicely renovated crofters cottages (Blackhouses) here as well, mainly turned into holiday homes of course:

The houses on these islands are, on the whole, much more interesting than the drab rendered boxes on Harris / Lewis. However, they have the same propensity for dumping old tractors, vans, agricultural implements, baths etc everywhere and anywhere, even in ruined houses:

We feel that rusty life expired Sherpa vans don’t enhance the landscape much.

Heading to the east coast and the glorious loch area, we pulled over and were “mugged” by the local semi-wild ponies. Firstly, as soon as the window was down, they tried breaking and entering with a demonic look in their eyes:

Then the crew went all soft and got out to feed them a biscuit which resulted in her being surrounded by hopeful ponies with very bad teeth:

Once they finally gave up hoping for more food, they groomed each other a little, showing off the aforementioned teeth that could do with the equine equivalent of Dentastix:

The lochs and hills are quite something:

As are the many ruined old stone houses:

The west coast has a quite strange spot where some local fishing boats are moored. These guys were sitting on buoy moorings with no sea wall, rocky outcrop or anything to protect them from the prevailing westerly winds. As you look out to sea, the next serious landmass is the Americas! No idea where they hide the boats when it is stormy out there:

On the roadside, there were plenty of creels. Somehow we view them as pot markers that we will not have to dodge and so it was a welcome sight:

The islands are linked by causeways where you literally drive across the Atlantic Ocean. The views on either side are amazing at both low and high water. On the most northerly island, Berneray, there is a ferry to Harris and then not much else in the way of housing, shops or anything bar great scenery.

We visited the local shop and tearoom, chatted to a very English guy who ran it and who admitted  that he was not from the area but assured us that he did not commute to work. Wonder how many times he has used that line?

The folks in the north of the island chain have an amazing lifestyle  – not one that we could contemplate though. The nearest shop of any size for food is on Benbecula and there you have one excellent local store and a Co-op. For the kids, well, not a lot really. One café come coffee shop come deli (again on Benbecula) and the hotel in Lochmaddy (North Uist where the ferry terminal is). No idea what else they do as they grow and want to spread their wings. As Morris, the Stornoway man said, "anyone young with get up and go has got up and gone". Then they sometimes return for their retirement. Kind of a remote version of  Eastbourne but with harsher weather and much nicer scenery perhaps? Not really, much more life here!