The west coast of Harris – the jewel in the crown…

It’s a bit of a grey day so far today but, according to my wonderful Met Office app (which is usually pretty accurate) the sun will come out later in the afternoon.

So, the plan today is to go to Tarbert to put four days of blog on to WordPress.  I managed to get the coverage map for my ‘3’ dongle up on the iPhone eventually and saw that the only place with coverage is the Tarbert area and it looks pretty good.

Chickening out of the scary road to Flodabay which we took on Tuesday, we turned right out of the campsite (once we had negotiated the 45^o gravel track downwards this time) and headed off to Leverburgh the l-o-n-g way.  Then a trip up the west coast with me resisting the opportunity to take photos of the idyllic beaches along the way because the light was still not perfect.  Believe me, these beaches are so photogenic that they need to be seen at their best for the ‘wow’ factor (I hate that overused expression but I can’t think of a better one!).

We reached Tarbert after about an hour and a half (as opposed to about half the time if we had gone the scary way) and it was amazing how differently I felt about the west coast road from the day we arrived on Harris.  The huge drops to the sea were the same of course but there did seem to be a few more crash barriers than I remembered!

The coverage map appeared to be dead right and there was a fantastic signal just outside the school – and a car park to boot!  Two hours later I had put four days of the blog on – just, as my Macbook battery was down to 6% by the time I had finished.  My no.1 commenter, Sean, had already caught up with it by the time the final day went on!  We also managed to upload more podcasts on the smaller Macbook so our night-time listening will have a boost too.

We drove out from Tarbert onto the peninsula, towards the island of Scalpay, which we might see if we can investigate tomorrow as there seems to be a bridge, and then returned the way we had come.  I tried to take a photo that would show the steep hill out of Tarbert that I have mentioned before but it doesn’t really do it justice.

This, again, is Tarbert from said hill:

The views over Loch Tarbert travelling back to the west coast are flat at first:

and then the “lunar landscape” begins to appear:

The scenery changes again when you reach the coast and spotting a side turning to Luskentyre, we turned right into a coastal wonderland.

We were looking straight into the sun and the beach, with its shallow covering of water was shimmering.

We passed this little house which looks a bit like a nissen hut with a grass roof.

A feature of the islands has been the cemeteries – they are usually looking out to sea and in the most magical of scenery.

At the end of the road we found a sandy pathway leading invitingly down to Luskentyre beach with the hills of Taransay in the background (remember that programme ‘Castaway’ with Ben Fogle?).

This is what it led to:

How fabulous is that!

We reluctantly retraced our steps back to the main road.

Then slow progress down the coastal road, unable to resist stopping for photographs.

By this time, it was about 7pm and we found the Co-op at Leverburgh sadly closed so we wended out way back to Flodabay.  The sun was still shining but there was a definite nip in the air now.

We passed a woman cutting peat:

Tony sold us some steak and sausages and kindly gave us a little pot of rhubarb and ginger jam for our croissants in the morning (as we had missed the shop).  The campsite looked beautiful in the evening sun but the wind had got up by this time so we ate our barbecue in the warmth of Bessie.