Take a tip from the shrieking barnacle-geese
It’s hard to shake off a guilty feeling that this is cheating. I’m about to tell you about my five sublime days in the Western Isles in late November about to recommend implicitly the idea of such a trip — while knowing full well that what made the journey so stunning was the glorious weather. Tuesday 15 November to Saturday 19 November 2005 coincided with a high-pressure system which cleared the northern skies and kept the weather stable, bright and cold.
So I was lucky. We asked a native Hebridean whether such lovely days were common at this time of year, and he said, ‘Hardly. You should have been here last week. We had winds of 100mph.’ That was the week in which a Caledonian MacBrayne ferry had rolled around at sea for 16 hours, destroying all the cars on board.
But short spells of fine weather do occur in the Highlands and Islands in autumn and winter and they can often be forecast a couple of days beforehand. We should seize these moments, clear our diaries, and head for the north in November. Reaching the Hebrides we will meet visitors who have headed south: great flocks of shrieking barnacle-geese from the Arctic regions, arrived to winter in the comparative tropics of the Scottish islands.
I, however, did not fly, but took the Caledonian sleeper train from Euston to Inverness, just after nine on Monday night. There was a dining car and bar, good food, and haggis-flavoured crisps. Rocking through the night I awoke after eight as we rolled gently into Inverness, wisps of pink dawn cloud rising from the freshly sugared ridges.
We had 20 minutes to buy the morning papers before boarding the 9.50 train to Kyle of Lochalsh. What a journey! Across the middle of the top of Scotland: up, over and down, clickety-clicking beside wide valleys, tumbling streams and the tawny browns, reds and yellows of a Highland autumn. The larches were gold, the oaks still green, and even the ash trees — which unusually this frostless autumn have turned pale yellow before dropping their leaves — were beautiful.
Our little train brushed past briers. Beams of sunshine moved across the hills like celestial searchlights, the dark heather bursting into warm colour wherever the sun struck. Grey granite, breaking the surface in bald patches on the hillside, shone wetly as each ray passed, then went out like extinguished lights. Deer ran beside the track, grey herons stood among the slippery rocks in the shallows of a sea-loch, clumps of black seaweed all around. Dying bracken, deep red, was scattered across the fields like shavings of rust. Small houses stood alone, their walls mottled with damp and mildew, their yards strewn with broken machinery and their gardens unkempt. The untidiness of the Highland scene is part of its glory.
We clattered across the watershed and began the gentle descent towards the Atlantic, slowing for request stops at stations in the middle of nowhere, then gathering speed again as no new passengers appeared. Hazel and birch, brambles and Scots pine, white smoke from chimneys, light slanting across lumpy ground, throwing every mound into unreal relief — such are the impressions which crowd in on the passenger over the three-hour ride. Besides my two companions and me, there were only three others on the train.
We arrived in Kyle of Lochalsh in time for a coffee at a big, warm, empty hotel. ‘Real coffee,’ I said. ‘Scotland must be changing.’ But nearby was a public-health poster: ‘Clean hands – the most important ingredient in fine cuisine’. On second thoughts, maybe Scotland isn’t changing that much.
At 12.10 the local bus left for Uig, climbing the beautiful new bridge to the Isle of Skye (what was all the fuss about? It is a work of real grace), whooshing over the hills and round the bends at speeds justified, no doubt, by the driver’s familiarity with every yard of the road but which had us tightening our seat-belts. We sat right at the front — better views than from a car. At Uig there was an information office (shut) and a public lavatory (open, and staffed by a man whose job was to see that customers put the required coins into the automatic turnstile-machines shades of the old USSR). The bus was timed to meet the big ferry, the MV Hebrides, 29 crew and 12 passengers; and a few hours later we slid into Tarbert on Harris, in the dark. Another big, warm, almost empty hotel with venison and halibut for supper, and a fine breakfast of smoked haddock and poached egg, and a rushing stream outside the bedroom window.
It was hard to believe that there really would be a bus at 8.40 the next morning the sun had not risen — but there was, and the sun came up in a clear sky, the palest of blues, as we sped along a single-track road collecting schoolchildren from isolated houses (a blast on the hooter and a twitching curtain when a child was late). The beaches were of bleached white sand, the sea turquoise, the land not so much solid as a border of random streaks of dark brown between sea and sky.
The bus met an efficient little ferry, which took us over the water to the small island of Berneray, and a three-mile walk to a thatched crofter’s hut converted for hikers to stay, unwardened but cosy within its impossibly thick stone walls, everything laid out to be paid for as used, reliant on honour. We walked the whole circumference of Berneray, about 15 miles, all along its huge, empty beaches, the mountains of other islands hanging above the watery horizon like frosted buns in the sky. We saw St Kilda in the distance, got back to our hut at dusk, drank two bottles of wine, played Monopoly, stood out under a clear, freezing, starry sky, and slept deeply.
And, wonders never ceasing, the 7.45 bus turned up in the dark, took us over the new causeway to North Uist, and dropped us at the door of another, waiting bus, which took us at breakneck speed, along with many Hebrideans going one knew not where, to an interchange with a post bus, also waiting, which took us to Benbecula airport. With dawn, North Uist swam into view: not so much an island as a troubled miscellany of black rocks and peaty mounds in a waste of lakes, pools and creeks.
Why the airport? Because from here British Airways flies to the southernmost of the Western Isles, the island of Barra — 15 minutes — and the Twin Otter aeroplane lands on the beach. How much longer will this wonderful (and cheap) service last — and when will one have the opportunity again to touch down on a beach? The experience was remarkable: sand, cockleshells, water flying up from our wheels, a new island waiting to be explored ... and no room on the page left to tell you about it.
I have run out of space, but not out of islands. Go there if you can. And take a tip from the barnacle-geese: visit out of season.
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