Friday 5 September 2025
Nido's parked up at the overnight camperstop provided by the West Harris Trust at Luskentyre beach. It's £10 to stay for the night. There's just toilets and bins here, but that's fine. It's been a windy day with the odd light shower, but that hasn't stopped us getting out and seeing some exciting things - more of that later! So now we've left Lewis and are on the west coast of Harris.
Yesterday I had a good chat with Angus at Croft 1. It turns out he was a physio/soigneur with many pro-cycling teams and toured with them, including several Tours de France! It was interesting to hear how it was in his day, before giant team buses, where they had to wash the riders' kit overnight in the hotel bath-tubs! We thoroughly enjoyed our time at Croft 1 and would definitely return.
We followed Jane's advice and took the road to Kneep beach, parking just outside the large (but well spaced out) campsite. This was a beautiful spot; there was little wind, the sun was shining and the clear sea was a brilliant blue against the soft white sand. If we'd known we'd have put on our swimmers and had the first dip of this trip. But I know they'll be other opportunities.
Moving on we drove to Gallan Head (the most north westerly point in the UK) along a narrow, winding single-track road to the quirky village of Aird Uig. This was an RAF base with 200 personnel until the 1970s and continued as a radio listening station until 2010, when the MOD abandoned the site, apparently leaving beds, fridges and all sorts of stuff! In 2016 it was bought by the local community and since then people have been buying up the dilapidated buildings and turning them into quirky homes, some of them painted bright colours. It has the feel of a hippy eco-community - probably why we liked it. Driving on through the encampment, past neglected portabins and buildings, we reached a pebble-dashed building at the top. This is the Edge Cafe, run by the Gallan Head Community Trust. We stepped through the door and and first I thought we had the wrong place and had walked into someone's home! We were in a room with a long, large table and chairs, with a few people sat at one end. At first I thought we'd disturbed a meeting but it was just a few customers. The lady running the cafe got up out of her chair and asked us what we'd like; we settled for some homemade lemon and coffee & walnut cake with a pot of tea and a cafetiere of coffee; all were delicious. The building doubles as a craft shop so we had a look around and Cathy bought a couple of things made with the locally-woven Harris tweed. It was a surreal place and I'm glad we visited, although I'm pleased it wasn't stormy, when winds can reach 150mph!
Our park-up for the night was an area of grass opposite Mealasta Bay, with nothing between it and Canada except for the northern Atlantic. We joined a couple of other vans and had a quick lunch overlooking the waves crashing on the rocks at low tide, before the very short walk across the road down onto the sandy beach. Later we took a cup of tea down and sat in the hot sunshine, just watching the blue sea and the waves washing over the rocks as the tide turned.; it felt like being in north west Spain. We talked about having a swim at high tide, but by then the clouds had returned, it was windy and the waves were a bit fierce for us. But it was a perfect spot to chill for the afternoon and do nothing except watch the sea, read and relax.
There were some heavy rain showers during the night and this morning it was overcast and windy, but I'm still in shorts! Today we had a bit of a longer drive to follow the road back up and around to North Harris. On the way we stopped at Ardroil beach where I was able to service the van at the campsite for £4. The tide was out and we walked across a huge expanse of white sand. Cathy spotted something in the sky and as it turned towards us, its huge wing-span was evident; then it turned again and I spotted white - it was our first ever sighting of a white-tailed eagle! It was only in sight for about 20 seconds then disappeared behind a headland, but what an experience!
Moving on, we stopped at the Uig Community Shop for a food top-up, before arriving in Tarbet about one and a half hours later, parking up between the Harris Tweed shop and the Harris Distillery. Cathy was after some pieces of tweed for her sewing projects, but the prices were very high (apparently the shop is a stop off for the cruise liner passengers), so she passed on that. We walked up the high street and visited a couple of other shops to buy the groceries we couldn't get in Uig. On the way back I popped into the distillery to see if I could buy a miniature of their whisky, but they were only selling bottles, again at a very high price (£75 was the cheapest I could see - the Cruise ships' effect again!), so I beat a hasty retreat.
The drive to Luskentyre was another half an hour and we managed to bag one of the three motorhome overnight stops. After a quick lunch we took Salty for a walk along the white sandy beach. It was windy and the waves were breaking hard, but it cleared the cobwebs. On the opposite side of the estuary is the island of Taransay, where a TV programme called Castaway 2000 was filmed 25 years ago, bringing together strangers to live in an isolated island community. This social experiment was the first (and IMHO the best) of the reality TV shows and was way more interesting than the vacuous ones now all over the TV.
For the rest of the afternoon and evening we chilled, warm and sheltered from the wind and occasional rain showers. After dinner we had a YouTube catch up and then just enjoyed the peace and quiet. Despite the erratic weather, we're really enjoying our time here. The driving is easy on single-track roads with loads of passing places and fellow drivers are polite, patient and respectful.
