AS FAR BACK as I can remember I have always wanted to go to St Kilda. I have difficulty in explaining exactly why. Something caught my imagination when I was a young lad about the voluntary evacuation of its remaining population in 1930 after thousands of years of the archipelago being the home to human beings.
For those who might not know, St Kilda is the western most group of islands in the United Kingdom, lying 40 miles further into the North Atlantic off the coast of Harris in the Outer Hebrides.
The main island, Hirta, is where the population was concentrated. St Kilda was often cut off from Harris and the mainland for months on end because of the fierce winter Atlantic storms and gales. It was by all accounts a very isolated existence, but not necessarily an unhappy one.
Anyway, I had this long-held fascination about the place – how did people get there in the first place, how did they live when they were there, and what finally persuaded them to leave? And in addition, the whole mystery of living in such a far-flung and seemingly (to an outsider’s eyes) inhospitable place appealed to me.
And so it remained, a pipedream over many decades, whilst I was involved in the whole marriage, children, mortgage etc. things that many of us experience in the middle part of our lives. Until I just happened to mention my long-held ambition in passing to an old friend.
It transpired that she too had long wished to visit St Kilda, and in a flurry of talk we decided that we’d go together before we (well, me actually) got too long in the tooth.
And so we set out for the edge of the world. I mean there’s remote and then there’s remote, and St Kilda falls into the latter category. Not quite like canoeing up the Amazon on your own, but adventurous enough for me. I volunteered to do the driving and she offered to do all the admin and planning, which suited me down to the ground!
What gave my proposed visit added relevance was that one of my erstwhile comrades-in-arms in my regiment, the 4th Royal Tank Regiment (Scotland’s Own), named Murdo McLeod (of course he is, he hails from Stornoway), casually dropped into a conversation that his mother had been born on St Kilda.
“What?” I thought to myself. This is real history brought home.
So Murdo and I corresponded about my proposed visit and he was full of good insight and advice. Plus he has let me use this wonderful photograph of his Mum as a wee girl, shown in the black and white dress on the left (main photo above). Apparently his grandfather brought it back from Stornoway for her, having rowed (yes, you read that right) there on one occasion.
We were going to catch the ferry from Uig in the north of Skye to Tarbert on Harris, which is a bit of a long drive from Edinburgh but compensated for by the magnificent scenery and, fortunately, decent weather. The only hiccup was a hold up at the Spean Bridge Commando Memorial, where there had been a road accident.
After waiting for two and a half hours while clearance and recovery efforts proceeded at a snail’s pace, we naughtily ignored police advice and jouked through the Memorial car park, after which we had a traffic-free road in front of us. We made the ferry, just.
Now, I have been rude about the management of CalMac in the past, particularly in relation to the farcical acquisition of the two ferries from Ferguson Marine, an ongoing saga with seemingly no end in sight. But I have absolutely no complaints about the Uig to Tarbert service, which I found to be flexible, helpful, competent, and professional. So there you go!
We arrived in Harris on Saturday evening and had the Sunday spare before our planned trip to St Kilda on the Monday (with Tuesday as the back-up day). As we had expected, nearly everything was closed on the Sabbath, although I was mildly surprised to see a ferry from the mainland arrive.
I asked one of the locals about this, and she replied: “Yes, we now have a ferry on the Sunday after a long, long debate on the matter. But Heaven help you if you hang out your washing!”
It felt almost inevitable that we got the call from Angus the boatman on the Sunday evening to tell us the trip planned for the next day was off because of the weather forecast. When Monday morning came the sky was blue and the sun was shining, and we wondered why the trip was off. An hour later and we understood why perfectly; wind and by all accounts a big swell out to sea.
Sadly, the same thing happened on our back-up day, but this time there was no doubt that venturing 40 miles out into the North Atlantic would not have been a good idea at all! I might even have refused to soldier if Angus had said we were good to go, but happily he did not. Phew!
All was not lost, however, because there is a myriad of things to be done when visiting Harris and Lewis. I won’t bore you with a long list – and deny you the pleasure of discovering them for yourself – but I can certainly recommend the Iron Age village at Bernera, the Gearrannan Black House Village at Carloway, and the Museum nan Eilean at Lews Castle, Stornoway, probably the best small museum I have visited anywhere.
Outer Hebrides’ beach; Black House Village, Carloway; Lews Castle, Stornoway; Kirk sign for English and Gaelic services.
We did not achieve our primary aim of getting out to St Kilda, but our journey was far from wasted. I’m pretty sure I’ll have another attempt soon and write about what it reveals before I’m too old, and I look forward to that immensely. And if you haven’t made it yourself to the Outer Hebrides yet I wholeheartedly recommend that you add it to your future itinerary. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
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Photograph of Murdo McLeod’s mother courtesy of Murdo McLeod; photo of ‘The Street, St Kilda’ by Joe Gough from Adobe Stock, all others from the author.
