beboots | Jun. 13th, 2010

Jun. 13th, 2010

Originally written June 9th

Initial impressions of the Isle of Harris? Quite positive, actually, once we got here! I felt distressed earlier because I left my favourite sweater in the Belfast city airport lounge, only realizing too late that I'd left it behind. :( This is right when I need it, too! I'm determined to buy a souvenir sweater (preferably wool, but not too bulky), mostly out of necessity. I still feel like an idiot, though. That thing was comfortable, folded up well, was warm for it's thickness, and was very slimming on me. You don't get those things often in a sweater. RIP. :(

BUT the Isle itself is pretty cool! We flew into Stornoway in the North, on the Isle of Lewis (attached to Harris). Stornoway, besides having a really neat-sounding name, is the only real city on the island. (AKA it has things like tourist info centres and Chinese restaurants)

We took the bus down to Leverburgh, about twenty minutes past Tarbert, where we'll catch the ferry to Skye tomorrow.

I'll say this now: the scenery makes all of the hassle almost worth it. The village sits in a sort of bowl-shaped valley with a small lake at it's centre, and t faces the Atlantic. The sun is setting over the harbour outside my window as I type this, guys! :)

Furthermore, the Am Botham Bunkhouse has a sweet setup, and not just in location. There is a giant whale's spine decorating the front yard, a rowboat hanging from the ceiling inside, various fishing/hunting paraphernalia decorating the walls inside... And our attic loft room is designed to suggest the interior of a steamboat, from the shape of the bunkbeds to the door (a porthole type thing, which has a wheel you needto turn to get in). SO cool! :) I love it!

We ate supper down the road at a gorgeous little seafood restaurant which is far more fancy on the inside than the ouside suggests. I had one of the specials, a seafood salad with Italian sauce. It had delicious fish, mussels, and tiny little octopi. :) OMNOMNOM. :D

Current Location: Isle of Harris

Originally written June 10th

It turns out that my previous negative attitude towards the Isles of Lewis and Harris was totally unjustified. For all the hassle it took getting up there in the first place, it was actually nearly worth it!

... I may actually go back at some future date.

First of all, the scenery is gorgeous. There is also a set of massive standing stones, older and better preserved than Stonehenge that I totally missed because we had no access to vehicles beyond buses on set routes and expensive taxis. It's called Callanish, and until the mid-1800s, it was mostly burried in a five-foot layer of peat, preserving, well, the bottom five feet of the stones as well as the burial chamber, for thousands of years... At least until 19th century antiquarians and amateur "archaeologists" got their hands on it. ;P

The hostel we stayed at, the Am Botham Bunkhouse, was located in an idyllic little bowl-shaped valley on the seashore, with a little lake in the middle and lots of little fluffy lambs frollicking in the surrounding hills.

In fact, sheep seemed to outnumber human beings, which is rather peaceful after days in a big city like Belfast. You were right, guys.

On our only night there, we ate at a seafood restaurant down the way on the docks called "Anchorage". It looked kind of sketchy on the outside, but the inside was all recently renovated, tasteful hardwood and absolutely delicious, but cheap, fresh seafood dishes. I had a marinated Italian seafood salad, containing fesh fish, scallops, mussels, and tiny little (adorable) purple octopi. It was AMAZING. :)

The bunkhouse itself was great. I need to post photos of the eccentric decor. The front lawn had the spine of a large whale on it (by which I mean a row of old grey whalebones),and there was a rowboat hanging from the ceiling inside. The windows on the inner doors were portholes from sunken ships (specifically named, along with the fates of their crewmen - how many survived, drowned, or missing, on accompanying plaques. ) Our room suggested the interior of a steamship, from the shape of our bunkbeds to the door, which was opened by turning a little wheel. You'll need to see the photos. :)

We were the only people in our room, which was nice and peaceful. :) We chatted with a few of the other guests over breakfast in an equally uniquely decorated kitchen and dining room, including a retired Scottish couple and an Irish artist in her mid-forties, the latter of which was on her way to an even MORE islolated island.

Yeah, it turns out that there ARE more islolated British islands than Harris, despite the impression I gave in my past post. ;) For instance, I could have visited the ruins of the abandoned village on St.Kilda, once famously the most isolated inhabitted island in the British isles. Tourists visited it in the 19th century for bragging rights, just so they could say that they'd been to such a place. It was evacuated in the late 1920s after the market had declined so much that the islanders faced starvation.

By contrast, I like fresh seafood served on China plates next to a functioning ferry and bus terminal. Therefore, the Isle of Harris has a lot of things going for it. :)

Originally written June 10th

The Isle of Skye's landscape is very distinctively Scottish, or at least very much "not Irish", at least according to my not-so-expert opinion. It's less green, more rocky, but still breathtaking in it's own way.

Today, we rented bicycles in Portree, trusting that the idyllic Northern Scottish countryside would roll beneath our wheels with the speed of an old VHS on fast-forward, but with less skipping and snow.

These are not the rolling hills of Killarney national park, with tea shops hidden in cottages and men in horses and buggies around every corner. These are rugged, manly, northern, and above all SCOTTISH hills. We two, despite being from the True North Strong and Free, were unprepared for such steep and merciless crags, which would dishearten any out of shape or impatient person.

The cycle rental man recommended us visit a beach down by Braese (sp? Pronounced "Breeze", though the journey was anything but), and he expected that we could get there and back, with plenty of time to relax at the other end, in the half day/five hours we'd paid for our bike rentals. "Great!" said and thought we.

However... We were defeated by the steep hills. But even we of relatively feeble bodies may have been able to put up with such trials for the reward of beautiful panoramic views of Scottish lochs, mountains and countryside (peppered once more with the ever-present frollicking lambs), if not for one more added element of risk:

Cars.

This was supposed to be a quiet road. This means that a vehicle comes along, on average, about once every one to four minutes. Not so bad, you think, right? Here are some more things to take into consideration.

The road is a narrow, one lane, barely paved path. It serves two directions of traffic. There are actual signed "passing places" where cars coming from opposite directions have the space, and thus ability, to pass each other safely. (I took photographs of the signs in case someone doesn't believe my words and needs pictoral proof). All other streches of the road are alarmingly narrow.

This is where we biked for the vast majority of the time. Furthermore, a statistically significant proportion of cars seemed to like to cross paths in our general vecinity, leaving road space at an even higher premium.

I should also mention that there are many blind corners, and while we may be able to hear the cars coming, they cannot see us, and if they're coming at us at, say, 60 km/h, there's little we can do to get out of their way... Except jerk to the side, into the ditch, to avoid being splattered. Sheep and lambs, observing from behind fences calmly chewing their cud and staring, "baaa-ed" their laughter at us on several occasions.

Also, the hills are steep both ways, which means that we alternated between an achingly-slow snail's pace and dangerously attempting to break the sound barrier, if it weren't for the judicial application of brakes.... But we tried to use sparingly for fear of wearing them out and having them fail us at the most inopportune time possible.

So Sara and I, being safety-inclined wusses, pulled over to the side of the road after an hour or so of hair-raising biking, at the first scenic point we could find after making the decision to stop. We laid down our windbreakers as impromptu blankets, took out our lunches (consisting of bottled water, juice, apples, granola bars, and Oreo cookies) and had a lovely picnic, basking in the sunshine and staring out at the countryside (and the sheep).

And you know what? It was still a great day. We even managed to forget for nearly a whole hour that we had to bike BACK, too.

Originally written June 11th

Planning your journey to a foreign country almost exclusively through the Internet is always a little bit hit and miss. Now, I wasn't present for the planning of this leg of the trip (and due to time delay due to lack of teh internets, by "this leg" I mean the Isle of Skye), the Internet didn't quite indicate distances well.

Skye is gorgeous, and there IS a lot to see. I'm not contesting that fact. It's just really hard to get around without a vehicle of one's own.

Our hostel here in Armadale, where I'm writing this, is nice enough. The only problem is that it's not really IN Armadale.

It's a forty minute walk.

And I admit, it is along a beautifully scenic view of the harbour... But this journey translates to a two minute car ride. :P

The buses mostly run in association with the ferries, which mean that they run through town four times a day, and not at all on Sundays. We would actually be much better off staying in Broadford, which has more than the three giftshops, one petrol station, and two art galleries in Armadale. Broadford is about twenty minutes by bus away, but almost totally inaccessible to us as pedestrians. Even the local supermarket was one town over, luckily within walking distance, or we would have had to live off of nuts and granola bars until the bus came the next morning at 9am or so. (Breakfast isn't included at this hostel, p.s.).

Still, there's a respectable castle with 20,000 acres of scenic grounds and walking trails (lol, I almost wrote "trials"... but isn't that what they are?), which we shall check out tomorrow. That is, if we feel like walking even more than the one and a half long round trip it takes to walk there.

And on Sunday, we'll get our DRIVING tour of Skye. :)

That will be great, because Sara and I have pretty much lost our tolerance for hills and walking. My legs will be totally spectacular by the end of this trip - all toned and muscular.

I can also now personally appreciate our ancestors' habit of living close to home (living their whole lives within, say, a twenty mile radius of their home village): with only your feet as transport, I don't think that I'd get too far either!