18 - A day to recover, relax and refuel

Monday 15th May – A day to recover, relax and refuel.

It was rather a wakeful night – awake, half awake, awake…..opened the window for some more air ….couldn’t sleep, so got up at 5:10 am, made a mug of tea, washed-up yesterday’s dishes, had a good personal wash (cold water of course), drank tea, tidied up; then set off (7:10 am) to the Craig Ghoraidh co-op and the filling station on the road north, in the middle of the island.  I noticed that there was a maintenance workshop, so I asked if they had any headlamp bulbs – one of mine had just stopped working.  I was directed to take my van around to the back.  A mechanic, of pleasant and helpful temperament, managed to access the back of the lamp-housing and remove the bulb without extracting anything past the obstructing grid between bull-bars; found that the contact was corroded and that the lamp was OK; he twiddled, scraped, fiddled, crimped and reassembled- and then it all worked fine again.  I offered my profound thanks and asked for the bill, but I was sent back to the office where it was suggested that I put a donation in the charity box.  It seemed that helpfulness was so easy, but the paperwork for a bill would be a major effort.

I drove up to the causeway to Grimsay Island.  The waves were crashing over the top, so I timed my transit of the causeway to be between salt-spray wave bursts across the road.  Then I took a look around Grimsay Island, but finding nothing of interest, moved on to North Uist, following the road to Cladach Chairinis (eastwards) in the direction of Eaval, but with nothing to see and with howling wind and horizontal rain, I decided to move to a lunch spot with loos where I could spend my time reading and writing.  I passed the Carnish campsite, where a few vans stood on top of a rise with no shelter, and continued on to the Banranald camp-site by the RSPB reserve. After a while reading all the display boards at the information centre, I took a look at the campsite, concluding that it was rather exposed, but not as bad as elsewhere, and having found that it was full on the previous night, I decided to bag a spot straight away (11 am).  So with the van shaking, rain lashing across and the cloud extending to the ground, I wrote, read, ate and appreciated the convenient facilities.  

Eating was the highlight of the day.  I’d bought some nice sunflower and pumpkin seeded rolls at the co-op – 49 p each – I would have bought two, but there was an offer of four for £1, so of course I bought four.  A couple of rolls went very nicely with plum tomatoes and Strathdon Blue Cheese (from the Eriskay Stores) and freshly brewed ground coffee.  Then, sitting and reading made me get rather dopey and cold, despite wearing a thermal base layer, brushed cotton shirt, fleece, down jacket, cag and woolly hat.  

Eventually meal time rolled around again, so I grilled three chicken drum-sticks and two chicken thighs (not all for the same meal) and boiled half a head of calabrese.  When the calabrese was almost cooked, I tipped the required amount of the veg. liquid over couscous and the rest into my mug to drink; then added half a buttered chicken jar-sauce over the calabrese to heat it and served butter-chicken and calabrese with two pieces of the chicken on a bed of couscous – not bad – keeping more of the same for the next day.  The rain almost stopped, so I tried a walk in the cold, strong wind.  I found a little shelter, of sorts, on the beach as I returned, but this exercise was a pretty short walk, and really more of a quick leg stretch.  It was difficult not to feel disheartened and demoralised, with the weather staying grim all day, and with no suggestion of improvement.