Glen Crabhadail

The gusty offshore wind blew this old buoy, from its resting place high in the machair...


... down onto the sands of Camas Crabhadail.



Our kayaks were lost in the empty space of Glen Crabhadail.


After a second breakfast, we made our way over the machair and into the heartland of the Glen.


Over a rise, we came to the fresh water Loch a' Ghlinnhe. This looked like a very fine place to fish for sea trout.


We came across these neat lazy beds and knew that these lands of Harris were not always empty of human habitation. Photo JLW.


Soon we felt the call of the sea again and made our way back to the beach. Photo JLW.

04/06/2008

Cartwheels in Loch Crabhadale

From the mouth of Loch Reasort we turned to the SW and entered the beautiful Loch Crabhadail (Cravadale). The wind was very squally, with heavy gusts lifting the surface of the water. A tow was set up for one of the girls and some of the others were having problems with lee-cocking, finding it almost impossible to keep their bows into he wind.


The quality of the Hebridean light was simply stunning.


The head of Loch Crabhadale is fringed by two cresents of dazzling white shell sand.


After our exertions against the wind, it seemed like the perfect place to stop.


Not long after this photo was taken, a gust of wind caught Jennifer's kayak and sent it cartwheeling, end over end, down the beach. I was lucky to catch it in the shallows, before it was blown out to sea. Several strips of duct tape sealed the bashes in the gel coat and promised a weekend of repairs once home!

04/06/2008

Loch Reasort, a long time in the making.

Our first day back on Harris dawned with a freshening SW wind but wonderful clear skies and sunshine. It was good to be back on the water as we left MV Cuma at her mooring. We would rendezvous with the Cuma at the north end of Scarp later in the day.


Cuma had anchored half way in towards the head of Loch Reasort (Resort in English).


We now made our way down the loch towards the Atlantic.


A glacier cut a U shaped valley though the ancient rocks of Lewisian gneiss.


Ahead lay the distant island of Scarp.


As we paddled below the rocky slopes of Taran Mor, 303m, we were looking at rocks that are about 2,500 million years old. Even in this now desolate place, lazy beds betrayed past settlements that are now long forgotten.


Our route from Loch Reasort to Scarp.

04/06/2008

Empty beds on Scarp.

The steady thrum of MV Cuma's diesel did not miss a beat on the 105 km trip back from St Kilda to Loch Resort, Harris.


We made landfall at Scarp. Scarp was inhabited from time immemorial until its last inhabitants were evacuated in 1971.


The low sun showed off the abandoned lazy beds on the north coast Scarp. Generations of back breaking work (without machines) created these beds and fed the families of Scarp.


Leaving Scarp, Cuma slipped below bold mountains and into the fjord-like recesses of Loch Resort which cut deep into the hinterland of Harris.

03/06/2008 pm

Farewell to St Kilda

Cuma now made her way down the east coast of Boreray. As we entered the shade of her high cliffs, a chill descended on our mood. We knew we were shortly to return to Harris and leave the enchanted archipelago of St Kilda in the middle of the dreaming ocean.


In reality, the St Kildans lived brutally tough lives there was little romance about their survival or their eventual evacuation. The whole island history has been viewed through the rose tinted spectacles of Victorian tourists. Because the islanders were the remotest community in the British Isles and their economy was based on shared labour without money,they were seen as a utopian curiosity. As a result, their decline and fall was well documented but any seakayaker who has spent time exploring the Scottish coastline will have found dozens of other abandoned settlements. Their residents have no history, no names, no photographs and no rows of books on library shelves dedicated to their lives and times. The only testaments to their existence are a few piles of moss covered stones.

Both my wife and I, who are urban Scots, have ancestors who lived in the isles. My mother's family abandoned their croft on a Scottish island and came to Glasgow in the 1860's, before the stone cottages on St Kilda were built and 70 years before it was evacuated! The reason the St Kildan's survived so long, was the birds. The harvest of the sea fowl made the St Kildan's lives easier than those of many of their peers on the Hebrides and remote mainland coasts.


Cuma now turned her bow towards Harris and slowly...


... the jagged cliffs and peaks of the St Kildan archipelago...


... slipped away below the western horizon.

We could, of course, choose to return any summer and I am sure we will. For most of the St Kildans, who were evacuated on that day in 1930, it was to be different. Theirs' was a final farewell, as the peaks of their island home were swallowed by the empty flatness of the Atlantic Ocean.


Soon the only evidence, of this land at the edge of the World, were the gannets. They all flew in the same direction, back towards distant rocky ledges and their hungry chicks.

03/06/2008 pm

Winter

No seakayaking today!

Stac an Armin

Cuma made her way north up the west coast of Boreray and we came to the giant Stac an Armin, at 196m, the tallest of all the British sea stacks.


Stac an Armin is the norther outlier of the St Kildan archipelago looked SW to distant Levenish, Stac Lee and Hirta.


The St Kildans built about 80 cleitean on Stac an Armin.


After rounding the north end of Stac an Armin Cuma made her way SE down the east coast.


The Cuma kept well clear of the rocky channel between Boreray and Stac an Armin. We got a good view of Stac Lee, Hirta and Soay through the gap.


Leaving Stac an Armin in our wake, we looked in awe at the great horns of rock on north cliffs of Boreray. Our visit to the archipelago was soon coming to an end.

03/06/2009 pm