Outer Hebrides trip April 2022

I am just now finding time to leave a post here about the most wonderful trip we took for 3 weeks of April to some of the Hebridean islands.

It was the most beautiful, relaxing and inspiring holiday we’ve had in many years.

We hired a motor home from a firm in Glasgow and drove up to Loch Lomond for a night en route to the ferry at Oban.

When we awoke on the first day and saw the sunrise over Loch Lomond we knew we were in Scotland – there’s a special light, the skies are large and there’s usually a body of water amplifying it’s beauty.

Our first island of the Hebridean chain was Barra – we only stayed one night as the ferry crossing from Oban is 4+hrs and we were keen to get going. But we’d do it differently with hind-sight and explore it.

This was our first taste of the awesome beaches we would find – this one completely made of shells. I was in beach-combing heaven.

We moved onto Eriskay next after a short 25 min ferry transfer and cut our teeth on a few nights rough camping in the motorhome. It was our first time in one – it took a few days to orchestrate the dance needed to both move around but never be in the same place. But we settled in well and got to like the simple life a lot.

Lottie came too and it took her longer to like the van especially when it moved to the sound of clanking objects. Once she realised the payoff to moving was a new place to run about and smell rabbits, she knuckled down and endured!

The peaty landscape of North Uist en route to Lochmaddy.

We did have a diesel scare when all the pumps (there are only 3 on the island) were dry. It’s true what they say about island life – it comes when it comes and luckily for us it came the next day but it did make for a nail-biting night.

We also struggled to buy our back-up Calor gas as apparently there was a national shortage – again we struck lucky but after some perseverance. Where you can have contingency, do!

The landscape of South and North Uist was very appealing to my artists eye – very peaty and full of rich browns and carmine hues. It’s also threaded through with numerous lochans so there is always a glint of silvery, grey-blue water.

I did paint and draw most days. I had packed (too much) art materials expecting less rain and to be able to work outside. On the occasions that I did, rain or mizzle came in quickly and wet the page.

It was just hard to set up quickly and work fast and I didn’t have an easel and couldn’t put things anywhere to hand – hence this photo of me dropping my new tin of pencils on the ground.

I could set up in the cab if we had parked up with a view and one day it was fine enough to stop for an hour and sit on the ground.

I found that my iphone had no O2 coverage almost the entire time. Wi-fi and electric hook up was one reason why we booked into campsites every few nights. It made looking things up on the fly difficult- so go prepared.

We then somewhat controversially went off Uist and onto Skye. Honestly I didn’t think about it much when planning – it does add extra cost and time travelling to Skye and back onto Harris again. The plus side was a little bit of bigger island life: with Skye being connected to the mainland now, it felt less cut off from amenities should we need them (which of course we didn’t)

The North of Skye is breathtakingly beautiful to look at and windy to rough camp in. The Quiraing is a mountain ridge of the Trotternish peninsula. The walk along was it was four seasons of hail, wind, rain and sun in one stretch but totally worth the weather and the nail-biting winding road up to the car park.

Skye was the only place where we got a parking ticket or saw other motorhomes with them. It’s worth reading the complete small print of the parking charge info board – slipped in is the phrase ‘vehicle modified for sleeping’ so if you’re scanning for the word ‘motorhome’ like we did, you’ll get caught out too.

We enjoyed stopping whenever we saw the words ‘coffee’ and ‘Gallery’ – some were very homespun and not all were open. The advantage of going in April slightly ahead of season was to avoid the midges and lots of tourists but it did mean that some places weren’t up and running for the summer season. We also like coffee but didn’t find all that many places serving it outside of towns.

We found loads of lovely places to walk on Skye; my fave being a lovely 30 min walk to a beach made entirely of coral and shells. In one handful you can capture hundreds of beautiful, tiny metalic shells.

We then ferried back to Tarbet, Harris and camped in the West Harris Trust campsites ; my favourite being the Seilebost School one which was literally a walk over the dunes to Luskentyre beach. This beach has two bays to it and when we arrived the pink and purple shells were glowing in a delicate lilac light as the sun set. Everything you read about this beach is more than true; in fact it would be in this area that I’d choose to live after all I’ve seen so far.

South Harris has an interesting landscape which either looks like a moonscape with deep pools of dark peaty brown water or wide open beaches edged with machair that looked Caribbean.

The drive up north to Lewis gave us our first sight of the change in landscape as the central section is numerous broken pieces of land and water and is very flat and somewhat bleak. We headed to Uig sands which is beautiful and gave us the last taste of what we were used to.

We enjoyed seeing the Callanish stones and the Gearrannan Blackhouse Village and discovering Borrowdale, or more accurately The Blue Pig studio where we were met with such a warm welcome (and fresh coffee and rock cakes) that we felt like part of the community that had gathered to celebrate together.

Our remaining time was impinged by the quietness of Easter Sunday followed by a bank holiday and also the most rain we’d had for the whole trip. It’s here that a motor home comes into it’s own – you can get togged up (take nylon everything) go out and get wet but come back in and dry your clothes while making a cuppa and reading a book.