Wednesday, June 07, 2017

Lewis and Harris - Hushinish and Luskentyre

Another sunny day arrived despite the forecasts so we set off to explore Harris this time, heading for Hushinish.

The road is very narrow with passing places, some more realistic than others.  It descends at one point by a shallow river outlet that was very pretty:


And then passes through a walled castle and grounds, which is a bit odd.  Anyway we got close to the beach at Hushinish, stopping to let a cow amble on down the road and to take this picture:


A Dutch tourist eventually persuaded the cow to move so we were able to park-up and get onto the beach proper:


We also walked over to a much more exposed and windy bay with views back into the island.   There's a really interesting looking walk however we could see it rising on a sloping bank alongside the water, which is exactly my least favourite and doable kind of walking so we gave that a miss and just took in the scenery instead:


From Hushinish we drove towards the southern most point on the Island at Roder and the Churhc of St Clements:


We saw a seal colony close to Roder:


One thing we found rather bizarre was the fact that virtually every single cafe and restaurant was shut for Sunday.   We hadn't expected this and basically missed lunch.   You need to make sure you have lots of fuel too as the petrol stations are also shut.   There was one cafe open but by the time we found it we'd given up on the idea.  The hotel restaurants stay open apparently.   All a bit odd if you ask me.

By now we were heading along the coast heading for the famous beach at Luskentyre, passing some less famous but quite jaw-dropping beaches and landscapes on the way:




Luskentyre is indeed breathtakingly beautiful , heretically though so is the beach at Hayle in Cornwall, though Hayle lacks the hills and Luskentyre isn't covered in tourists.  We really enjoyed walking around the beach and over the dunes:





With the day marching on we headed to our booked hotel near Tarbert for a much anticipated gastronomic feast, passing Tarbert town on the way:


The food disappointed, the prices surprised,but we still enjoyed ourselves.  Given the great weather we'd seen everything we wanted to see on the islands and didn't fancy going back up to Stornoway to stay in a terraced house, self-catering, with a very early start for the ferry two mornings hence so booked ourselves on the afternoon ferry, which meant a long day and a long drive but it was all well worth it.  We really enjoyed our trip including our first visit to the Outer Hebrides (must do the Uists and Barra too at some point) and particularly the non-stop scenery and landscapes we travelled through. We'd seen a lot of birds too including Golden Eagles and Golden Plover amongst others.  Time then to head back as the rain clouds moved in, the temperature dropped (1c on our last night) and everything went grey:


Best get planning our next explore then....

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