Why be like the other sheep?
Memories of one of the best day trips ever.
This week’s Friday Flickr is the last in my series of reminiscences from my travels through the Outer Hebrides.
Just before my trip ended I achieved one of my major goals and managed to get to St Kilda. It was only for a day, but at least I got there. Continue reading “Friday Flickr – Outer Hebrides: St Kilda”
I actually made it to St Kilda AND got to see a shoal of tuna along the way.
When I first thought about going to St Kilda I didn’t think about a day trip. In the absence of having my own yacht and not having the kayaking abilities to paddle my way out there (yes, some people do) I’d decided the only way to get to St Kilda would be to join a National Trust for Scotland working party and go for a week or two. However, in spite of these being quite expensive, they are still allegedly very popular and hence difficult to get on to. What makes it almost impossible for me though, is the time of year. The working parties are pretty much finished by the time English schools break up for the summer holidays.
Not wanting to let a simple thing like fixed holiday times get in the way of my ambitions I looked around for alternatives and after meeting someone in Unst last year who’d been for a day, decided that maybe a day trip wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.
During my time in the Hebrides I’ve been trying to get myself booked onto a tour with one particular company. It’s always a bit touch and go whether the trips go ahead or not, because they are very weather dependent. If one trip is cancelled the people booked on to it get taken out the next day meaning no free spaces for other people. A spate of windy weather seemed determined to prevent me from going. But then another company said they had room and the chances of actually going were pretty good on the day they were offering me.
The night before I drove out to the small pier at Miavaig in the Uig area of Lewis. I set up camp beside the office which conveniently had a toilet and wash basin round the back. I got everything ready for the next morning and settled down to sleep. I’d not been asleep long when I woke feeling a bit headachey and queasy. Not the best feeling at any time, and certainly not before such a big day.
By morning the headache had gone but I still felt a bit sickly. Hmm, what to do for the best when feeling a bit sick? Stay in bed, rest and relax? Or get on a little boat and spend 4hrs being tossed and churned as you crash your way across the Atlantic? Of course the only choice I really had was the latter. If I didn’t go today, I wouldn’t be going at all.
 |
| Before it got rough |
The other passengers arrived, about a dozen of us in all, and after re-arranging cars on the pier we boarded The Lochlann.
I strapped myself into a seat and prepared for the worst. Once out at sea the roller-coaster started in earnest. The boat felt as though it was being plucked up high and then being dropped from said great height. Each time this happened the ‘BANG’ as the boat hit the sea and the reverberations through my body lifted me out of my seat. If it wasn’t for the seat belt I’d have repeatedly hit my head on the roof.
I tried to sit with my eyes closed willing the horrible feeling in my stomach to go away. No chance. I’ve never been sea-sick before and I have been on some tiny boats on some pretty rough water. But then again, I’ve not got onto a tiny boat on pretty rough water whilst already feeling sick.
My guts had no chance of recovering and at one point I had to stagger to the deck to lean over and throw up. I wanted to rush, but it’s a bit hard when you’re getting thrown from side to side and have to plan each move to ensure at least 3 limbs are firmly planted at all times. If I didn’t have sympathy for people who suffer with sea-sickness before, I certainly do now.
One highlight of the otherwise dismal trip was seeing a shoal of tuna leaping and swimming in front of the boat. Even I stood up to get a look and watch them for a while. The tuna were dolphin sized, and look nothing like they do in a tin. Having seen them, I can understand how the nets used to catch tuna also manage to snag dolphins. I don’t understand how the dolphin friendly tuna nets work though – how do they manage to keep the dolphins out? As a veggie I don’t buy tuna anyway, but have wondered why next to the ‘dolphin friendly’ label that can be seen on some tins of tuna, there isn’t another label next to it saying ‘tuna unfriendly’? Apparently it’s quite unusual to see tuna so close like this so we were very lucky.
 |
St Kilda slowly came into sight and we could make out people sitting around on the jetty. These turned out to be students who were on some kind of placement on the island. We decanted ourselves into a dinghy and travelled the last tiny bit to the pier. Once we were all on dry land we were met by the warden who gave us a chat about dos and don’ts and told us about what there was to do on the island.
 |
| This would have been someone’s living room |
I set off for a wander, still feeling queasy. I had hoped to walk up to at least one side of the cliffs but didn’t really feel up to it. Instead I wandered round the derelict village, poking in and out of the old houses. They were mostly laid out in one main street and in between the derelict building were a few restored ones which were used for accommodation and a museum. I spent a while in the museum finding the exhibits and the information provided quite fascinating.
The MOD, as part of a long-running arrangement, have workers based on the island and their accommodation and offices are in green painted buildings near the pier. Maybe these could be said to be an eyesore and spoil the antiquity and isolation of the island, but the MOD have played such an important role on the island I’d like to think that in future years these buildings and their role will be seen as just as relevant to the history of the island as the remains from the St Kildans are.
A helicopter landed and took off whilst I watched. The unique St Kildan sheep roamed around, birds flew or skittered across the ground, the sun shone, a perfect day. If only I could have enjoyed it more.
We had a stay of a few hours on the island and this was plenty of time to have a really good look round the village and museum and would also have given me time to go for a bit of a walk had I felt so inclined. Just before the boat was due to leave, the warden opened the shop which sells souvenirs of St Kilda as well as a range of books. Next to the shop is the restored school (one classroom) and church and I had time to have a look round them.
 |
| The Museum |
 |
| The Church |
 |
| The School |
Once back on the boat we circled the island and went out to a couple of the stacks to look at the birds before heading back for Lewis. It was much later that evening before I started to feel alright again.
I managed to enjoy my day on St Kilda even if I wasn’t feeling great. It’s such a special place and felt like such an achievement to get there, that even an upset stomach couldn’t put too much of a dampner on things. I doubt I’ll ever get back, so I’m glad I didn’t decide to give it a miss, as I now have memories that will last me a life time.
The Details
Company I travelled with: Seatrek
Cost: £180
Depart: 7.30am
Arrive back: 8pm
Time on Hirta: approx. 3.5hrs
Here are a couple more posts on St Kilda:
and one on Mingulay – an island that found itself in a similar position to St Kilda.
Here’s a copy of the press release Seatrek issued regarding the tuna we saw. I’ve copied it in rather than just linking to it, in case it later disappears off their website.
Shoal of Tuna off Lewis
| Press Release 30th Aug, Seatrek
Tuna Sighting West of Lewis On one of our regular day trips to St Kilda on the 24th of August 2012, our Seatrek vessel, the motor cruiser Lochlann, sighted an unusually large and concentrated flock of diving gannets.
We decided to go over and investigate, fully expecting to find the usual dolphins feeding on a shoal of herring. We told the passengers to get their cameras ready for the spectacle of diving birds and jumping dolphins and possibly minke whales. We very often see diving gannets in a feeding frenzy as they can spot the fish from a great height. The gannets are helped by dolphins, which herd the fish to the surface.
The leading edge of the diving gannets was unusually fast moving at 5 knots, and as we closed in we could see the fast moving splashes among them. We were amazed to see the characteristic upright, thin forked tails of tuna darting through the water.
Some were coming to within 10m of us and you could see they were about 6/7 ft long, maybe more. The sight was amazing. The furiously diving gannets were accompanied by fulmars, skuas, manx shearwaters, sooty shearwaters, black backed gulls and herring gulls, all looking for a piece of the action.
We watched them enthralled for some time and thought they were possibly Bluefin Tuna; such an unusual wildlife sighting we had never experienced before so close at hand.
The next shoal was moving much faster, say 10 knots to the SW and zigzagging with birds showing their whereabouts when near the surface. The tuna were about the same size.
Earlier in the day we had seen a handful of smaller Bonito type, 2ft long, just East of Gallan Head, Uig, Lewis. These were fast moving along the surface just beside the boat but were unaccompanied by birds.
The rare sighting of tuna so far north of their normal habitat was a memorable experience. Unusual also was the distinctive spectacle of the exceptionally large number of gannets that were following the shoal of fish. We have never seen such a large flock in such a small area; they could be seen from many miles away.
|
I’ve seen it from afar, read all about it and booked myself on a trip. Now I just have to get there.
A steep climb led to my first sighting of St Kilda!
I climbed Heaval after a day walking on Vatersay. It had been hot and sunny all day and with barely a cloud in the sky and no haze the opportunity to ascend Heaval and see up and down the chains of the Inner and Outer Hebrides and possibly all the way out St Kilda was too good to miss.
I parked in the car park up the hill from Castlebay. At the side of the car park is a stunning house. Most houses in the Hebrides, as I’d also found in Shetland, are not particularly nice to look at. You wouldn’t go to either place to wander round quaint villages as you may do in the Cotswolds. On the whole the houses are functional boxes, often pebble-dashed.
But this house is something completely different. It has a stunning, uninterrupted view over the bay and the castle that sits in the harbour, and the house has been designed with the view in mind. The side facing the bay is almost all glass, with a soaring double height ceiling over the living room. Around the outside overlooking the bay is a large decking area. If I was to move to Barra, this would be the house I would want to live in. Actually, even though I have no thoughts of moving to the Hebrides at all, if I was offered this house, I think I’d move anyway.
Enough of the view of a house from the car park. I was here to see the view of the islands from the top of Heaval. By starting at the car park I was already part way up the 383 metres to the summit. The hill looks like a mini Matterhorn and seems to rise to a distinct point. It looks steep. Very steep. Just below the summit is a statue of Our Lady of the Sea which can just be made out as a tiny white speck from the car park.
Striding out from the car park, I crossed the road and came to a standstill. There was a barbed wire topped fence seemingly all the way along the side of the road. There was a gate but that just led to another layer of fence. Supposedly down the road a bit was a stile. As I was looking the guys from Kent who had been on my trip to Mingulay arrived, along with a girl from their hostel. Four heads are better than one and together we wandered up and down looking for a way over the fence. We did find a stile but it was so rickety it didn’t seem safe to stand on, let alone use to climb over a fence. Eventually we decided to go over the fence near the gate as there was a bit without the barbed wire.
Once over it was onwards and upwards. It really is steep and there is no set path, just lots of slightly beaten down bits bearing footprints that show which way people have gone before. Of course, following these can give a bit of false hope, as they could have walked that way only to have to turn back when they could go no further.
Ever so slowly, I picked my way through bog, heather and moss. I scrambled over rocks using my hands and poles for support. Eventually I got to the top and the view was amazing. I could make out Mingulay and the other islands to the south. Skye was clear to the east. But best of all, way on the western horizon, I could make out the islands of St Kilda. My first ever view of them. Now I want to go there even more than before.
Photographs taken, view admired, I started to descend. It was too windy and a bit chilly to stay at the top for long and I knew it could take me a long time to get down. It seemed almost like a vertical drop. I’m sure it would have been easier to abseil down. I detoured slightly to the statue and then continued picking my way down using my hands and poles again and sometimes sitting on my bum to get down the bits I knew would jar on my knees if I jumped down them.
Very inelegantly I got to the bottom. I had wondered how I’d fare getting back over the fence with no-one to lean on for support. The other three were much faster than me and I could see them getting back into their car whilst I was still mooching around the statue. The wire was quite wobbly to stand on and so it had been good to have a shoulder to lean on when crossing to go up.
Just before I got to the bottom I spotted another gate further down. This was a proper big wide gate, which if locked, would be easy to climb over. I headed for this and was able to open it and walk through. There was a little ditch to jump over, but that was it. Easy-peasy. I walked up the road and back to the car park where I stayed for a while looking at the hill I had just climbed, the view of the bay and castle, and of course my dream house.
I’m surprised to find out that St Kilda mailboats are still sent out today.
St Kilda is an island (actually a small archipelago) out in the Atlantic way west of Scotland. It was abandoned in 1930 when the way of life become unsustainable for the remaining 36 inhabitants. It’s now owned by the National Trust for Scotland and one of the best ways to visit the island (and one of the only ways to spend more than a few hours there) is to take part in one of their work parties. So far it hasn’t been feasible for me to do this, but one day I will.
Until their evacuation, the residents of St Kilda lived in almost complete isolation. The only way they had of communicating with the outside world was with the aid of a St Kilda mailboat. These mailboats were small wooden boxes in which letters and money for a stamp would be placed. They’d be sealed up, an inflated sheep’s bladder would be attached as a float and the mailboat would be launched. They usually landed in Scotland or Scandinavia where the finder would hopefully post the letter inside.
Today I saw an article on the National Trust for Scotland’s website about a mailboat launched by one of last summer’s work parties being found in Norway. Although there are other means of communication now, each work party launches a mailboat as a way of re-enacting the tradition. Until I saw this article I hadn’t realised they did this.
I wonder who’ll find the one I launch when I eventually join a work party there?
A journey to an island shrouded in mist.
I seem to be getting to more and more remote British islands, but my ultimate goal is St Kilda. This is a small collection of islands (how many does it need to be to count as an archipelago?) way off the west coast of Scotland. It was abandoned by its remaining inhabitants back in the 1930s as they could no longer sustain their way of life there. It’s now owned by the National Trust for Scotland and is extremely tricky and expensive to get to.
The nearest I’ve managed to get so far is Foula, another remote island off the west coast of Scotland. This has come close to being abandoned in the past, but currently has a population of about 30 and seems to be surviving quite well. Foula is the island used to represent St Kilda in old films about the last days on the island.
The journey to Foula is either by a small mailboat or a tiny plane. The island is known for its fog and so the plane is often cancelled. The boat can also be cancelled due to bad weather and so although I was only intending going to Foula for 2 nights, it could have turned out to be longer. The man in the shop in Walls, where I departed from, warned me about this and so I packed a few extra days’ food supplies.
I left my car and walked round to the ferry terminal in plenty of time for the 1.30pm departure. However, we didn’t leave until about an hour later as the captain had got stuck in fog on his way from Brae. The journey was expected to take about 2.5 hrs which was fairly accurate. There were a few other passengers on the boat as well as a crew of four. The other passengers consisted of a family of four who were on their way to visit the man’s sister who’d moved to Foula a year or two before. They’d been booked to fly, but the plane had been cancelled because of the fog.
 |
| Foula appearing in the mist |
The journey was good, the sea was so calm, no waves at all, though there was quite a big swell. I stood out on deck the whole time hoping to see whales but wasn’t lucky. As we got nearer to Foula it started to rain a bit and the weather really closed in. When we first came in sight of Foula it was as a vague shadow in the mist and it was only when we were almost there that I was sure that it was land I was seeing and not just a trick of the light.
We docked and had to climb up a ladder on the side of the pier. Luggage, post and shopping deliveries were piled into a crate and lifted out with a crane. Whilst waiting I watched a couple of seals playing about in the harbour. Then I walked about a mile along the road to the airport where I’d decided to camp. The fog was so dense that although it wasn’t far and the airport is in plain sight of the road I still had to get my map and compass out and navigate my way to it. I couldn’t see it until I was actually there.
 |
| My tent is to the left. Abandoned cars to the right. |
There was one fire station building and a tiny waiting room with a toilet and wash basin with cold water. A few abandoned cars were parked in the car park alongside the runway. I wandered around for a while over the boggy ground trying to find a slightly less boggy bit on which to pitch my tent. There only seemed to be one bit and that was quite close to the runway. I was no closer than the cars though, and it wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world if I had to move my tent next morning before the first plane arrived.
Lots of curious sheep watched me pitching my tent. They were all over the runway – I don’t know what happens when a plane is due? – does someone have to chase them away? Once my tent was pitched I sat on stone seat and finished my flask of coffee. It was a mild evening and was lovely to be sitting there so alone in the mist, staring at the sheep who were staring right back at me. Apart from the odd ‘baa’ it was completely silent.
After a while the mist seemed to be lifting a little so I walked to the far end of the road and back. It was really eerie walking along and seeing shapes looming in the mist. Not knowing if they were houses, sheep or abandoned cars until I was quite close. I could hear a few sounds of life, but saw no-one. On the way back to my tent the mist lifted even more and it started to rain. I gave up my walk as it was getting a bit late anyway, and hibernated in my tent for the rest of the evening.
