Day 9 -- Friday, the 4th July
Breakfast! What do we want to drink? (apple juice or orange juice, tea or coffee) How do we want our eggs? (scrambled, boiled, poached)
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| In the undying words of Magritte: "This is not a cranachan" |
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| My soft-boiled eggs and soldiers |
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| JS's scrambled eggs on toast with smoked salmon |
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| adc's scrambled eggs on toast with smoked salmon |
We start with granola and yoghurt topped with berries. adc does not fancy it today, she will never be asked again, nor served it. She will also not ask for it, for clarity. My boiled eggs are boiled too hard for soldiers and I regret declining the smoked salmon. No drinks refill (perhaps if one asks), and water is self-service from the faucet. Meh. It tastes good, which is all that matters, surely.
Our host is very pessimistic about our excursion happening tomorrow (remember we received a text yesterday telling us it will not happen today). We shall see.
Today, we will head to Lewis: since it is Friday, we may even find things open that would be closed at the weekend.
The long drive through South, then North Harris is stunning. Turquoise waters, white beaches (or pale orange, for nit-pickers), then rugged mountains and lunar landscapes, with Tarbert as the sole sizeable human settlement in the middle. What a feast for the eyes. I immediately fell in love with it in 2000. Today, I can see why. The island is spellbinding.
Without a clear delineation such as a ridge, a loch, or a bridge, we move to Lewis. Strangely, despite the lack of physical boundary, the shift is fairly obvious: Lewis is rugged, yet we are in rocky moorlands, now, and it seems less-sparsely populated.
We make a left onto the A858 towards Callanish. The weather is not good, here. But surely, stone circles do not need sunshine.
The first and main site is where the visitor centre is. Annoyingly, it is closed and heavily under construction. We manage to park and walk up the hill to the stones. There is another car park there which we could have used. Bah.
Even the wind and the rain do not completely ruin our enjoyment of this solemn place. Not even the tourists do -- and there are more than I expected.
There is a shortish walk that takes on all eight stones circles (yes, eight), but the weather is too wet even for that: the fields they are in are very boggy, and we will not have a place to dry until very late in the evening. We drive to the second circle. From there, we walk across a field (the bog?) to the third.
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| Callanish II |
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| Callanish III |
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| Sacrificial chicken bones? Rabbit bones? Hare? Pigeon? Jellyfish? Minke whale? |
The other five circles are not marked, or not so clearly. We also grow increasingly soaked and frustrated by the weather. We call it quits.
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| Let me gather the sheep |
At a distance, I see a blue double-decker bus that seems entirely out of place.
Looking closer, I can read: 'café'. They might well have warm soup. Let us find out!
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| WTF!? |
It is, in fact, the alpaca farm of Callanish. Yeah, me too. We are given a tour of the farm. For animal lovers, it is heaven. Alpacas (obviously), pigs, ducks, hens, geese and devil-looking sheep. Soothing place. I almost forget it is raining. The radiant good mood of our guide helps too. I ask him how his American accent ended up here; he is from Massachussetts and has been travelling the world for four years. He volunteers at the farm in exchange for a trailer on site.
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| They have fourteen types of ducks, many I do not recognise |
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| Indian Runners never fail to amuse |
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| Geese? This three-horned demon scares me more! He (Leo) lost the fourth in a fight with his offspring. |
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| This one (Raleigh) had his horns tailored. It gives him yet another level of menace |
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| Another four-horned Jacob sheep (Dewi) |
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| The pigs too are something else (Humpty) |
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| And, of course, alpacas. Or Shoreditch camelids, if their shaggy mop-top is anything to go by |
They also have a café and a small eating room. And, indeed, they serve soup.
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| Lentil Soup and Naan (JS) |
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| Crème of Mushrooms and a pastie of sorts (adc) |
I take Tomato and Red Pesto soup. Bad choice: it is good, but the other two are better.
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| We end with a Chocolate Brownie, which is okay |
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| The ruminants with a hipster cut observe us with envy |
Around that time, we receive another text: as feared, our planned excursion will also not take place tomorrow, due to the weather. Time to explain myself a little bit.
For twenty-five years and for several reasons, a dream of mine has been to visit St Kilda. It is not a place one rocks up to on a whim. One of the very few places in the world to have double UNESCO status (for natural and for cultural significance), it is a desirable destination for more people than it can accommodate. It is also pretty inaccessible. As a result, the few companies that organise excursions there require to book long in advance (seven months, in my case, which is almost last-minute, in this context) and give loads of disclaimers. The deal is: candidates pick a two-day window, in the hope that the weather on one of those days will permit the excursion. For us, that window has now elapsed without the weather clearing up enough. As our host put it, in very English terms, last night [paraphrasing a little]: "The boat will be fine. The swells pose a bigger risk for the cargo. You. They would make for a very uncomfortable journey."
Later on, I will talk further with the operator, say I understand it is out of his control and ask if there is any chance of going on Sunday instead. He says he normally would do that, but he has a full private charter this Sunday... that is also at high risk of being cancelled, due to the weather.
So, with the realisation that twenty-five years of dreaming it and a year of planning just faced a brick wall, it takes the hearty food, the cute animals and a lot of determination to not slip into a well of misery and further ruin this trip for my travel companions and myself. To put it more succinctly, I am not my usual chirpy self. That St Kilda excursion is the only reason we are staying at Leverburgh, by the way, which is otherwise an impractical homebase to explore Harris and Lewis.
Fortunately, we have a busy schedule, this afternoon.
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| Only delayed by heavy traffic |
From the farm, we head west across rough terrain, rugged landscape and desolate roads (that should be singular, really) to Ardroil. There, we come head-to-head with the goal of our visit: Abhainn Dearg. We park the car.
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| A visitor centre at the forefront of technology and environmentalism. Also known as: a shed. |
"Tis the shop you're looking for, is it?" says a man eating a sandwich. "I'll be with you in a moment."
We walk into what I know to be an old fishing shed and embark on something "a little different," as some would say.
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| "Todays rain is tomorrows whisky" We will easily excuse the lack of apostrophes thanks to the ginormous Glencairn |
The bloke with a sarnie is Mark "Marco" Tayburn, the founder of the distillery. He spends less than five minutes explaining how he makes his whisky and where he sources his ingredients from (spoiler alert: all from Lewis, bar the yeast and the casks), then finishes with: "Right, so what would you like to try?"
There are only two expressions at the moment. A Bourbon-matured ten-year-old at 46% and a Sherry-cask matured at cask strength (63.!%? It is hard to read). We try both. To say they are the best whiskies in the world would objectively be an exaggeration. Yet, at this time, in this place at the end of the world, it feels logical and self-evident.
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| The current Bourbon cask at 46% |
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| The current Sherry cask at 63.1(?)% |
It is important to note that all bottlings of Abhainn Dearg are single cask. The distillery bottles on site, and does not have the equipment to vat casks. Cask numbers are difficult to decipher, as are the ABV: they are written by hand on each label. After so many labels, the hand is less steady. :-)
There is no visit per se: the harvest was bad, owing to the weather, so there is no grain to distill. The plant is currently not in operation.
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| Under the watchful eye of this creature |
I use the loo then thank Marco. He shakes my hand and tells me he enjoyed our visit and was glad to meet us ("you and your cailleach" are his exact words). Time to go.
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| Nature is taking over the car park |
This has been one of, if the not the best distillery experience I have had, because the most authentic. In that regard, I would compare it to our first tour of StilL 630. No-nonsense taken to a welcome extreme. Whatever I may write here does not faithfully translate it; Marco oozes dedication and communicative enthusiasm. It really has to be experienced to be understood.
To quote two people who have said it better than me:
Jacob Ayling-Ellis: "The tour felt more like a casual chat with an old friend than a rehearsed scripted mass produced money grab."
WhiskyLovingPianist: "In many ways, being here is the pinnacle of my whisky journey."
We undertake the long drive to Stornoway ourselves, hoping to be there before everything folds for the night. After our adventure in Ardroil, it is a return to civilisation of sorts.
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| A bustling metropolis |
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| Some are keen to display their convictions (it helps to know Trump's mother was from this very island) |
We book a table for later, then head to Lews Castle (no 'i'). It is closed, but the castle grounds and some signs provide some interest.
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| Especially this one |
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| The castle ground are inhabited by black rabbits |
We pop into The Island Spirit and find a much better selection than anywhere on Skye (including their last bottle of Poit Dhubh 21yo, which, we discovered recently, is now discontinued). They let us try things, but politely decline my offer to try something I brought. They should know better.
From there, we drive to the Butt of Lewis, which is not close by. En route, we pass The Wee Studio, the recording home of Peat & Diesel.
The Butt is a windswept, rain-beaten giant lighthouse perched atop impressive sharp cliffs. There is also an old man (or a stack, at the very least) and a beautiful, natural infinity pool.
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| Butt of Lewis lighthouse |
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| The stack in question |
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| The "infinity" pool on the right, a couple of metres higher than the ocean |
It is all stupendously beautiful. It is also wet. We try to find an RSPB hide near Loch Stiapabhat, but quickly decide it is too wet and late to watch three soggy ducks. We drive back to Stornoway for dinner at The Boatshed. We are early: I somehow remembered our reservation to be thirty minutes earlier than the actual time. Bah!
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Chargrilled Hebridean Scallops (JS) |
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| Charles Macleod Haggis & Black Pudding Tower (adc) |
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Hebridean Seafood Platter (me) |
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| Scottish Salmon Fillet (me) |
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White Fish of the Day (Monkfish) (adc) |
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| Hebridean Mixed Seafood Pot (JS) |
The food is excellent. I choose poorly once more: adc's starter is much more to my liking than mine.
A Belfast bloke at the table next to us asks me if I have eaten langoustine before and tries to teach me the right technique. I tell him that I have and thank him; my unorthodox technique avoids lacerated hands.
The drive back to Leverburgh is very long. In total darkness, with thick fog in the hills of Harris (especially in the south), it is quite the experience. Fortunately and astonishingly, we do not see a single car for the whole length of Harris, which is over fifty kilometres. We reach Leverburgh around midnight.
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