This trip kept changing before it began. It began in the Clarendon pub, after Alan helped me deliver three budgies to their Christmas retreat. Sans birds and a few pints later, we had sketched the plan – three days in the Hebrides. Were we budgie-brained? We changed the timescale to a week, then longer to take in the last May bank holiday. That week wouldn’t work because the ferry timetables are very respectful of specific dates. So we changed it to a week including two weekends, or eight Sundays, which is what it all began to feel like in the timeless spray freedom of the Outer Hebrides.

We changed everything except our minds; we would go there in one or two cars, as four or five persons, in meteorological suspense. Elusive and beautiful the trip was to be.

DAY 1 (Saturday 19 May 07)

Shortly into the journey, Maggie forgot her new digital camera instructions. This led to a rapid return to Leicester from Groby. Second thoughts? Then Chris chose the high road, i.e. Glasgow via the peak district.
On the ensuing picturesque journey with Chris and Maggie, we passed through the the Derbyshire village of Earl Sterndale. We saw a pub sign there, ‘The Quiet Woman’. It was of a headless C16 woman. Maggie and I wondered if we would be silenced by the 3 men on the trip, namely: Alan, Chris and Dave!

The other side of this sign read, ‘Soft words doth turneth away wrath’.

Maggie and I got a bit car sick in the peak district , so much so that I felt inclined to run down a hill and for a few minutes to join a lone female runner training for the marathon.

Tissington was dressing wells but we didn’t see them. But it might be worth remembering this event for a YHA local culture expedition next year.

On the outskirts of Glasgow, Maggie saw rather than heard bagpipes.

When we arrived at Glasgow’s 4 star West end hostel, Dave and Alan had got there first. Alan found he had to rewrite the trip because all our bookings had apparently been cancelled since 22 March by the central bookings in Stirling! Our trip had been deleted! We could have slept in a shallow grave! Alan had to renegotiate seven nights’ accommodation. He set about this business in true chairman style.

We then all went walk-about in Glasgow, where we saw a vivid green statue of Donald Dewar outside the National Concert Hall. It bore the inscription ‘there will be a Scottish parliament’. It was a bit too green to be taken seriously.

In Glasgow, we saw plenty of four- stretch limousines crammed with kids, a building that looked as if it had been covered in tinfoil or was pretending to be a stretch limousine and the tea rooms designed by Charles Rennie Macintosh.

All of us went for a ‘meal deal’ in Wetherspoons, where there were shelves of outdated hard volumes, Alan and Chris got buried in a book that described a machine for extracting metal out of people’s eyes, similar to taking metal out of horses’ shoes. But nobody was wearing contact lens for them to demonstrate the principles of this extraction.

DAY 2 (Sunday 20 May 07)

We drove round Loch Lomond – the longest lake in Scotland to the port of Oban. In and out of the winding mountain shadows, we listened to the crackling sound of Radio 4, or Sue Lawley interviewing Greg Dyck on ‘Desert Island Discs’. It sounded like an appropriate topic before we set off for the islands of South Uist, Berneray, Lewis/ Harris, Skye. The former Chief Executive of BBC said two memorable things:

1. I didn’t have the imagination to consider what failure would be like.
2. It’s easy to live through the good times, It’s how you cope with the bad times, that’s a real test of character

Maggie remembered that she had left a pair of shoes in Oban youth hostel, seven years ago. She is confident they would still fit, if SYHA is committed to retaining memorabilia.

We had fish and chips with black napkins – death to diets – on Oban pier, I watched a large woman in a bottle green fleece feed the Eider ducks, swans and gulls from a plastic bag full of goodies. They swooped, shrieked then soared again, replete and indifferent to her anonymous gesture. Our ferry resembled a red and white Disney shark. Cars entered separate lanes for the island of Barra or the port of Lochloisdale (our destination on South Uist). We were taking the longer (approximately 7 hours’ sea journey through ‘the minch’.

We landed at Lochloisdale port on South Uist Island and eventually found Howmore hostel near a small graveyard. It was darkening now at 10.45pm, such is the long stretch of island light in the summer months. Alan peered into the stone floored, communal dormitory and said, ‘there’s people in beds in there, but no warden!’ We didn’t care, we clambered into the steel comfort of rickety top bunks without ladders.

The SYHA Hostel Guide 2007, describes Howmore as: Traditional thatched croft houses near the machair and extensive beaches on the ocean side of South Uist. Easy access to the mountains on the eastern side of the island. But there is not easy access to anywhere else!

DAY 3 (Monday 21 May 07)

We first went to the post office and parked the car. The red headed woman who sold me stamps came from Donegal. All five of us then climbed Beinn Mhor ( Mhor = ‘big’ in Gaelic and it did get rather big the more lost we got on it). We realised that we had forgotten all walking maps, but the mountain looked fairly straightforward, just up and down, so off we went.

Close to the top of Beinn Mhor, there were force 6 gales. Going up I fell into a sphagnum moss bog. Further up, Dave and Maggie were almost parachuted off the lower ridge.

The mountain is still worked for its peat. We admired its carefully hacked ridges and scaled one to find the road again, through horizontal rain and unwelcoming mist.

We were soaked through, and then drove across the new causeway to Berneray island. Obviously, either the EU or the Scottish parliament has pumped money into building new roads.

Berneray youth hostel didn’t disappoint us. It was whitewashed and thatched and heaving with damp cyclists, a younger romantic couple and their buckled tandem. It had the smell of peat and tired socks coming from the kitchen stove. Dave regretted that the 78 year old twin sisters (Annie and Jessie) had recently retired from their wardenship duties at Berneray. And the hostel looked sad without their regular maintenance of it. Its thatch was thinning, its rafters weeping.

I cooked a communal Tesco vegetable pasta. Then we found some much coveted bunks in the two dormitory outposts that constitute Bernerary, and like a lot of people slept with all our clothes on through gales, with men and women wondering if the SYHA wound do some thing about the fragile roof, the exposed timber, the neglect that feeds the ravaging sea.

DAY 4 (Tuesday 22 May 07)

Surprisingly, I woke to sunshine at Berneray and walked the glorious beach at the threshold of the hostel. Somebody had wedged an armchair into the rocks of the newly renovated, privately owned boat house.

The description of Berneray (one of the SYHA affiliated hostels) (ibid) reads: Traditional thatched croft-houses situated right on the beach overlooking the sound of Harris. Ideal position for walking around and exploring the much-acclaimed island. It is, but tradition needs support and finance and these simple croft-houses require some immediate attention.

Dave tried to find out if Annie and her identical twin sister were still around. They used to be joint wardens of the hostels. According to Dave, ‘the only way you could tell one from the other was that one had been married and the other hadn’t’. But Dave could find no news of them, even on this eight mile island.

While Alan and Dave rose early and energetically in search of the only shop and tea room, Maggie, Chris and I set off to walk the island, in particular its four mile beach. Chris soon left us as the rain became more treacherous and the friendly seals better company for a keen photographer!

Maggie and I traversed, bog or ‘the machair’ and some seriously well fed cows to reach this beach. It could have featured in any Robert Louis Stevenson tale. We had it to ourselves, purple and turquoise sea dreams colliding on the shore. We then got lost crossing the island, up hills through bogs and barbed wire to find the others in time to catch the ferry from Berneray to the port of Leverburgh on Harris.

We left Berneray reluctantly for Harris on the one hour ferry crossing. From Leverbrugh, we drove onto Lewis via Tarbet (where Harris and Lewis converge).

My first impression of Kershader SYHA is of a woman leaning out her bungalow window in the early evening in a dressing gown, ‘is it the key you might be wanting?’ There was no want for lots of clean bed linen in neatly ironed piles, tea towels, hot showers. But Kershader is a dip in the road, lacking the panoramic views that the Hebrides soon make you greedy for: for me, it was a hot shower comfort zone after the rugged simplicity of our earlier hostels.

DAY 5 (Wednesday 23 May 07)

Alan had book-marked a very good pub for lunch in his Blue Guide to the Islands. Stornaway is a depressed looking port, where I bought a pair of sandals in a Muslim shoe shop. The shop seemed to be stuck in size 6, the veiled woman was very convincing that the size didn’t matter, and did it in a shoe shop fitted with souvenirs such as shell ashtrays, plastic sea urchins and 1950s style wedding hats.

The lunch idea fell through, the pub seemed to be off the map; solemnly, soberly Dave and Alan adjourned to the Callanish Stones and Visitor Centre on Lewis, while the rest of us had fish and chips. As the holiday included rather a lot of fish and chips, I tried to guess when it had been caught.

The druidic Callanish stones have something more significant to say than Stonehenge. They have not yet been over protected as a response to tourism

The day improved by dropping down into the lunar landscape of Harris. Here, we enjoyed Seilhost beach. I asked Alan and Dave to model on the sand as anthropomorphic seals that the camera could play with. Unfortunately, the pictures didn’t come out. This beach has a small school right on it with football playing fields marking goals right into the horizon.

Lewis joins Harris as you approach Tarbet. You can see why Harris Tweed comes from here; it’s knitted into the contours, the hues and cry of the salty lunar stones and the warm promise of peaty bogs. We saw a letter in a shop in Tarbet, from Princess Margaret requesting ‘a white tweed suit’. Styles remain unchangeable, while other items such as the CD collection in the Callanish Visitors’ Centre selling ‘Red Hot Chilli Pipers’ embrace parody and popular culture.

DAY 5 (Thursday 24 May 07)

We left Kershader hostel and took a ferry from Tarbert to the port of Uig in Skye where we visited a potter’s studio. It was as wet as can be, so we drove to the Cuillin Black Houses Museum, north of Uig and next to Flora Macdonald’s grave.

The black houses were full of tinkers’ riches: tools, weaving utensils, explanations about how the Harris tweed is produced from the black faced highland sheep.

We learned that Flora MacDonald is the historical Skye heroine, who helped Bonnie Prince Charles (Charles III, the last Stuart king) to escape from George II and the Hanoverian troops by rowing him from Skye to South Uist while he escaped and ended his days in France under the protection of the French king Louis XV. Flora MacDonald then spent eight years in the Tower of London. She was later released, married Robert Ballantyre and emigrated to Minnesota, only to return to Kileyr, Skye, after her two sons had perished in the American War of Independence. James Boswell and Doctor Johnson applauded Flora MacDonald when they visited Skye in 1773. Charles Stuart and the Scottish Highland chiefs were very badly defeated at the battle of Culloden Moor in 1746. Whereas Charles’s title and royal ambitions came to nothing , the story of Flora Macdonald is enshrined in the minds of primary school children on the island.

On Thursday night, we stayed at Broadford hostel, on a loch full of midges . Alan and Dave went to a Celtic music concert at Portrigh. They heard a female harpist singer, the Gaelic harp (clarsac) accompanied by vocals in Gaelic and in English.

DAY 6 (Friday 25 May 07)

From these lessons in feminist narrative, we proceeded to Elgol and the arty teashop on the pier. According to the lady running the ‘wild life boat trips’ from Elgol pier, there are 19 children attending the school at this harbour, and a staff of peripatetic teachers meet the requirements of the national curriculum.

We left Skye by driving over that eyesore Skye bridge. But a rainbow flanked each side. Dornie Castle emerged in the water, iconic, moody, and ruined.

On to Ratagan youth hostel: the smell of peat, the cooking of fried beet, garlic and lemon juice, and the relief of red bottles of wine. Nobody used the shelves in the hostel kitchen, so the food items went as far as the stove!

Norman was a robust apparition drinking wine in Ratagan kitchen. He had absconded from his all-male and masculine motorbike itinerary to this meeting of ‘Leicester strangers’ at Ratagan. There he was in a baggy, boggy coloured sweater, bearded by his windswept motorcycle days, glad to have dinner with us and compare island experiences!

Ratagan , one of the most beautiful hostels I have ever stayed at, is on a sea loch, framed by the Kintail mountain range. It had a blooming pink rhododendron bush outside its front door. The otter were supposed to get up early to devour the kelp and crack open shell fish . We weren’t up early enough to see or hear them.

At the hostel, there were also 32 individuals from OUP on an ‘outdoors weekend’ which seemed to include discussing The Aeneid, tiring themselves out on the Kintail mountain range and listening to ‘Mr Claptrap, Laptop’s views on ‘The Guardian’ and Princess Diana, and conspiracy theory, he and his laptop had opinions, no matter what part of the youth hostel you found yourself in. (Readers who survived the trip will no doubt remember Mr Claptrap!)

DAY 7 (Saturday 26 May 07)

In the morning, we went back to Skye from that little palindrome (Glenelg) The ferry was very simple, four men operated it. It was like a large wooden raft and brought us across the estuary waters to Kylerhea to the otter spotting haven. I saw porpoises and seals as the ferry docked at Kylerhea. The bluebells and fuchsia and sea thrift and broom and gorse smiled all the way up the hill, past the larch and conifer trees. The otter hide was not midge proof, but had some useful posters informing visitors that otters holes are called ‘holts’, the otter are members of the same family as weasels and badgers and pine martens (Stellidae). Their tails serve as a rudder and are essential for propulsion

Then, we went to Gavin Maxwell’s Skye homeland called ‘Sandaig beach’. This is the setting for his famous book about an otter family, Ring of Bright Water, which was also made into a film. We scrambled down a woodland walk and crossed a shallow river to Sandaig. Sadly, Maxwell’s cottage was destroyed in a fire, but there is a shrine in his honour and another one commemorating Edal his pet female otter on the edge of the shore:

Edal – the otter of ring of bright water 1958-1969. Whatever she gave to you, give back to nature. (Gavin Maxwell)

The second stone reads:

Beneath this stone, the site of Camusfearna are buried the ashes of Gavin Maxwell, 6 July 1914, died 7 September 1969

Later on Saturday afternoon , we went to see 2 brochs, namely Dun Troddan, and Dun Telve. They were well preserved and had the same inscription and more or less the same parts missing. The brochs were defence forts for local communities to shelter from invaders, about 2000 years ago. They were about a mile away from Ratagan hostel, and were the last bastion of history or local culture on that sultry afternoon. We had dinner in Cluanie Inn on Saturday night Dave risked haggis and a Glen Turret malt.

DAY 8 (Sunday 27 May 07)

Departure from Ratagan youth hostel. Chris drove Maggie and I home, all the way from Ratagan (about 500 miles), via Gretna Green. We stopped at Tebay Services for some refreshments. This organic shop had a really good range of home produce and interesting, healthy choices on its canteen menu. The drive took about nine hours We returned to Leicester rain.

Here are some post trip reflections:

Alan

The trip was the only one in my life organised in half an hour at Glasgow SYHA reception desk. No hostels had been booked in fact some were cancelled, the booking a week after I booked by head office (can you believe it, the YHA must support homelessness!!). It went OK after that . Arrived 5pm, all new hostels booked for all of us by 5.30pm.

Dave

Except for witnessing the above, the trip offered my first sighting of the white-tailed sea eagle on Skye.

Chris

1.300 miles of driving , 700 photographs and a totally unforgettable week in the wilds of Scotland.