A man (and a woman) with a van

Stornoway is far from the prettiest bit of the island(s) so we did the sensible thing and got some transport organised.  The cheapest way to do it is through Mackinnon self drive who unfortunately are planning to close down soon. A little van is cheaper than a little car and as we only needed two seats, a little van it was.

Rental arrangements are a little less formal than in most places and the battle scarred van was a little older too:

and higher mileage than most rental vehicles:

For foreign readers, the 15 in the registration number means it was first on the road between March 1st and the end of August in 2015. As for the nearly 83000 miles - yes, the van bore the scars and wear you would expect. The time on the instruments was right but the date was way out. Perhaps the van wanted to forget a few days of its hard life along the way.

No matter, it is ideal for the local bouncy / rough / interesting roads so we headed off to Tarbert, the other ferry port but a much smaller one. Why? Well on Mondays almost everywhere that serves coffee and food is shut but the Isle of Harris distillery stays open:

As tempting as the gin was, the little van and the low drink drive limits in Scotland meant coffee was ordered together with an unexpectedly superb blueberry muffin. If ever you visit the island(s), they are a must have. Tarbert has a new, small pontoon area for visiting yachts, there is no anchoring space as the ferry berth is the large structure just to the left of the pontoon:

Very exposed to easterly winds though and the only spots deep enough for us would be right on the outside where we would be part of the wave break. We left Tarbert in a happy cake fuelled haze and headed to one of the famous tourist places, Luskentyre beach. It is simply stunning:

and the weather behaved too. The crew picked up a couple of the dogs that were playing on the beach for some soggy sandy cuddles as well:

and you can see how crowded it is:

After an idyllic wander along the length of the almost empty beach, it seemed that life wanted to get even with us. On the way back, this happened:

The offside front tyre had a blow out and we had to pull off the road to change it. There was a rusty spare wheel with an OK(ish) tyre on it in the back of the van but we couldn't find any tools.... So, a call to the hire folks (luckily 10 minutes before they closed for the day) and a nice Londoner headed down to meet us - around a 45 minute drive from Stornoway so we had a while to sit in the van and enjoy the view from our little off road spot:

Tyre duly swapped we headed back to the boat and the next morning went up to the depot to have a new tyre fitted in place of the spare and to get a jack and wheelbrace just in case it happened again....

Day 2 was planned as a walk around the Calanish standing stones but when we got there, the visitor centre and path were closed for two days for "essential repairs". Nothing on their website about this of course. Never mind, we headed to the island of Great Bernera and planned a stop at the community cafe there. When we arrived we found how lucky we were: 

Yes, it was Tuesday - again the website had no mention of the restricted opening days. It was a proper community run thing too - the tablet device that operated the card reader and acted as a till was locked into the safe and the two nice ladies running the place that day didn't have a key. So, one of them had pressed her mobile phone into service which kept turning itself off as they tried to calculate your bill and take a payment. It was amusing to watch the reaction of some of the visitors.

Suitably refuelled, we drove to the tip of the island and the amazing Bosta beach:

with beautiful rock formations and a beach formed purely of sand and shell fragments:

We bumped into a lovely family who were travelling around in their camper van. The following day they were in Stornoway prerparing to catch the ferry back to the mainland so we invited them on board together with Maggie, the cavabichonpoo who is very very cute indeed:

Whilst we opened a refreshing bottle (and a can), she took over the saloon floor, showed us all the tricks she has learned and chomped here way through some of Izzy's treats. We have not confessed that to Izzy yet. As you can see, the eyebrows were almost as impressive as the trick repertoire:

and the whole "working for my treats" thing was clearly tiring for her:

During one of our outings we had a most out of body experience. The crew had decided that we should drive to the Edge cafe at Aird Uig, miles from anywhere. The area has an interesting military history too, look at RAF Aird Uig. Lots of decaying outbuildings:

which the locals are pressing into service as leaky storage areas for dead and dying vehicles.

The cafe is a one (Irish descent) lady operation and has a "Menu ideas" board - she will try to make what you fancy from the list of ingredients that she has. We arrived to an empty place, got chatting to her in the kitchen area that is open to the rest of the building:

and so the quiche and salad took forever to prepare. She could not chop and chat. Mind you, the salad was excellent, great mix of flavours and the home baked bread equally good. As was the view from the long table in the dining area:

Then a "rather portly" couple of ladies who live in Stornoway arrived, ordered and started telling us all about hotels they had worked in and the alcohol fuelled sessions they had enjoyed. We were amazed that they could recall anything about them to be frank.

Next, 4 visitors from Holland arrived, ordered tea and cake and added to the atmosphere. As it was a cash only establishment, the Stornoway couple were given the BACS details so they could "pay when they got home" - no mobile phone signal to allow phone banking here. The Dutch folks chatted to us about their holiday, the owner chatted about everything you can imagine and we finally left a couple of hours later. It was a bit like a lunch party in someone's front room with folks that you didn't know but ended up knowing way better than you perhaps wished to. Well worth a visit for the food and quirky nature of the place.

Back in Stornoway,  the harbour area seems to have three resident seals who get fed by some of the fishing boats. This one was very intent on following the little blue fishing boat as the guy on board was mooring it alongside another larger boat. When no fish was forthcoming, the seal made a splash, some noise and then when he / she was still ignored one huge splash that soaked the fisherman. He politely asked the seal to go away. Well, not quite as politely, he used two words so you can work out what he said for yourself:

More island exploring followed, with a trip up to the northern extremities of Lewis. The port of Ness was once a major fishing area:

but now has a few small local boats sheltering behind the big breakwater. After raiding the cafe there we went on the the local lighthouse at the Butt of Lewis. Nice location:

and a bit more overcast than we had become used to. Normally we take lighthouse pictures from the sea but this time:

Returning to the van which was parked up on the grass, the captain glanced at the offside front wheel which was more exposed than normal as there was some steering lock applied when we stopped. He was a little less than amused to see this:

After the nearside tyre had failed, we had taken a quick peek at the other three and there appeared to be plenty of tread on them all, However the inside of the tyre was in a dangerous state as you can see, the tracking must be seriously messed up to wear the inside of the tyre that badly.  So, a gentle drive back to the hire company where another new tyre was fitted. As you can gather, maintenance, safety and legality are not high on the local priorities.

Our good weather spell ended with a bang. Actually more of a whistle - the wind howling through the rigging of the nearby yachts that had come in to shelter from the tail end of a tropical storm that was pestering us:

High means 6 to 9m waves....... Oh no. The forecast undercalled the strength of the gusts as well.

We had 10 fenders rigged as the wind was pinning us to the pontton and the gusts made our big heavy duty fenders go rather flat. Here is how the plotter saw it:

For the non-nautical folks, 42.4 knots is about 49 mph or 79 kmh for continental readers. For everyone, it was wildly windy, plenty of salt spray in the air and walking into it was no fun at all.

We did take the newly shod van down to Tarbert to enoy their coffee and cake once more, then over to Scalpay to check out the island. They built this bridge for the 300 inhabitants who used to have only a ferry service:  

You do wonder how much the investment was per head to keep the tiny island with a few decaying buildings inhabited.

The trip back let us see some of the roadside lochs in a more threatening light, compared to the sun of the earlier journies:

Still beautiful though just in a different way. Quite an amazing place really.