9 - Continuing South Uist’s SE Peninsula

 Tuesday Afternoon - 9th May – Continuing South Uist’s South-East Peninsula

From the eastern edge of Roineabhal, looking over Rubha Mealabhaig and Loch Moraibh

It was around 2:15 pm: I felt it was too late to be including Rubha Mealabhaig – the smaller, rounded rock-hill, jutting out into the sea as a south-eastern promontory.  I considered heading for the sea inlet on a 100-degree bearing, but the map seemed to show rock strata lined up on a shorter route at 85 degrees.  Seeing cliff edges lined up down the ridge, I hoped for a natural descent between the rock strata. 

Descending from Roineabhal - don't go this way!  Try a 110 to 120 degree bearing off the top.

It looked satisfactory until halfway down.  The steepness increased.  The cliff edged steps, were a couple of metres high; knee high heather hiding where my feet should avoid or be placed; water draining in deep channels between and below the rocks giving audible warning of leg swallowing chasms - I would have turned back and chosen another route if that would have not entailed climbing back up to the top.  “Weay, weay, weay, weay, weay,” called a bird, in a mocking tone from deep below me.  I persisted downwards, hoping that these were false impressions of precipices in front, avoiding danger by my cautious progression; but the vegetation became lusher, moister, with now waist high heather and boulders covered with moss hiding the gaps – one of which swallowed my whole leg so that I rose with a cool wet seat to my trousers.  Reprimanded, I tried to follow this under-cover stream course but stayed just to its side, reaching the valley and appreciating the solitude of the place.  (Certainly, if I repeated this circuit, I would descend Roineabhal, following its ridge line on a 110 to 120 degree bearing – but what I would experience and write afterwards, I do not know.)  I thought this little visited and inaccessible vale would make a suitable place for a hideout, with eastern access to the sea, a saltwater loch cut off at low tide and fresh water lochans for water.  In my imagination, maybe by Loch a’ Gheoidh, among the outcrops nearer to the sea, with a rod-and-line and a shelter, there could be a quiet retreat from society for a while. 

Following the boggy hollow (from 842141) I noticed the first leaves sprouting from the bog-myrtle.  ‘Fragrant-myrtle’ would be the name I would choose for it.  I rubbed the leaves between my fingers, inhaled their scent and immediately felt refreshed and bright.  Passing through the cotton-grass, white fluffy tufts dancing in the breeze, I reached the babbling stream, Abhainn Moreef.  A lone violet giving promise of the awaited spring-like summer, a wren calling from downstream, I followed the course of the water-flow on its north-western side. 

Approaching Tharteabhagh

It was 3:00 pm and I was still heading away from camp after 6 hours, but to gain an easier return route, I decided to continue further east and further north. Reaching Loch Moraibh (3:15), on leveller ground, signs of a track appeared, disappeared and reappeared again.  Oystercatchers circled screeching at the far end, a cuckoo called briefly, but the oystercatchers continued; the trill of a wren, the plop of a feeding fish and the cuckoo recommenced and then called incessantly.  Reaching the tip of the loch I found fine lush green grass, closely cropped like a well-manicured lawn, but speckled with celandines and violets, and with islands of young uncurling tendrils of bracken.  I struck away from the loch, NW and then north, following the northern edge of the lawn followed by a sheep track north, but then changed my mind and went north-west through the valley gap where a stream runs through, following the edge of the fresh-water lochan with reeds and a view of the sea, at Tharteabhagh, and hills lining up into the distance to the north.  At 3:40 I found a footbridge of wooden pallets, remnants of a stone bridge, house walls adorned with fishing nets instead of a roof and the base of another, grown over.  

Tharteabhagh

 A track - vehicle width - with heather shrouding it had a couple of boot prints as evidence that someone had travelled along and back, at least once, this year.  

The route (827155 to 815166 to 812165 to 804172 to 793175) alternated between stony vehicle track, quad bike route over soft ground, waterlogged and threatening to swallow anything of weight that hesitated on it, then a single-hiker-path with boggy patches.  I avoided one section where the track route descended into a quagmire and then re-emerged, maybe 10 metres further along.  I trod carefully around the morass in a large loop, testing the ground in front, prodding it with a stick before each step.  One more step before the submerged solid ground of the emerging track, there was a brazen imitation of firm ground, so close, so secure looking, I placed my left foot on it without compunction, and I found no resistance to its downward motion.  As my left leg descended, I instinctively fell forward, until I was like a letter ‘T’ with my body horizontally forwards across wet black peat and the edge of the track, my right leg lying horizontally backwards, and my left leg extending vertically downwards into a thick black custard of unknown depth.  The dark-ochre liquid gave a cool refreshing feeling as it oozed its way into my boot.  The two horizontal parts of the ‘T’ prevented the vertical member from exploring further.  There was more fluid resistance (some would say suction) acting against pulling my leg out, than there had been getting it in, but wriggling forwards helped my slow extraction.  Apart from draining some liquid from an inverted booted foot, there was no point trying to clean up or dry out.  Walking was sufficient to keep me comfortable.  Drying out could rely on breeze and body heat, and I was enheartened to realise that I had another pair of boots available in the campervan and that the inner of these Brasher boots was lined with wipe cleanable soft calf leather.  

Around 5:15 pm, approaching Gleann Dail bho Tuath (North Glendale), the track lost all sense of direction entering in to a series of loops suggesting a quad-bike play area.  Meeting a random arrangement of barbed wire fences at this point, and with no track to follow, I passed through one convenient gap after another, trying to avoid going too close to a house.  Two dogs emerged barking fiercely, with menacing postures, followed by a rotund lady shouting and waving her arms like a helicopter.  I “should be going around over there” – where there was, I could not tell, since her arms went in all directions, but I offered my apologies and she told me I’d have to climb the next barbed wire to reach the road.  This I did and then followed it westwards with my smooth, unhurried pace for 2 km (770177).  

A vehicle approached from behind and as I stood to the side, a mature man of about my own age, offered me a short ride.  He found that I was not going far in his direction, which was to the next junction and north, but we had started chatting and we were both pleased to continue this in his van with  some more conversation and satisfied curiosity.  I also realised that being dropped closer to the west beach, I could return to camp via the shoreline rather than along the B888 – increasing my walking distance a little further, but a far better scenic route.  He dropped me at Baghasdal (742180) and as soon as I walked westwards, I was surprised to hear loud, metallic grating sounds, akin to some harsh mechanical device, but reaching me from several different directions.  There was an ambulance and a lady in ambulance uniform in a field opposite a house where she was checking on some sheep.  There was no-one else about, so I asked her “Is that sound what I think it is?” to which she replied “That all depends what you think it is”.  So, I said “Corncrakes”, and she replied “Yes, there’re so annoying.”  She explained that after returning home in the ambulance, she’d been taking a look at her sheep that had just had twins.  She talked about the corncrakes returning to their fields every year, that you hear them but don’t see them, and then, realising my enthusiasm about hearing the elusive and threatened corncrake for the first time, suggested that I took a look in the field among the reeds.  A grassy field with patches and larger areas with longer pointy leaves, looking like sturdy iris leaves, I listened from a few different positions to get a few converging directions to the source of the nearest corncrake, then, very slowly, moved in the direction of the sound. It appeared, scurrying between the reeds, flew up onto the fence briefly and then with rapid wings beats flew a short distance away to hide again.  My first hearing and sighting of a corncrake!  I felt a sense of satisfaction and also a responsibility to disturb them no further, so I quietly exited the field.

Walking westwards, there were a number of lapwings flapping, circling and ‘peewitting’, and a skylark singing. I passed a large building looking like an enormous shed (once used as a seaweed collection factory), reached the beach by Orasaigh, turned south, and followed the firmer, wetter sand along the shoreline.  An army of sandpipers scurried up and down, retreating from each shallow wave and following as the water drained back into the sea; then flying away, as one flock, with a blur and flashing of wings, showing pale undersides and dark tops. 

Walking southwards from Orasaigh, a firm sandy beach teeming with shoreline birds.

Further down the beach, the sand was fine, firm and flat – a white wet powder, more like a thick cornflour paste, backed by two-metre-tall, vertical sand-cliffs, with holes just below the turf topping.  Sand-martins performed graceful arcs and rising and falling circles, a lone swift smoothly passed, its scythe-like wings moving independently of each other, to carry it on its twisting path with a combination of speed and agility. 

The beach south of Orasaigh.  Barra lying beyond

Approaching Pollachar, passing along the beachside path, a boot-width wide hollow between grass-pressed sand, I greeted a well-fed, less than agile man in a ploughed plot, working with a bucket and a dual purpose crutch – supporting himself with it, then twisting it into the ground, then deftly throwing a seed potato into the dibbed hole, or occasionally using the end of the crutch to cajole the errant potato toward its intended home, repeating this process several times, before bending to the bucket to grasp another handful.  He commented that this method might be unusual but it works.  Afterwards I wondered how difficult it is to hold a few such missiles in one hand, throw one out of that same hand accurately, keeping hold of the rest, while supporting oneself on unstable legs using a crutch for balance.

Ancient navigational marker - Pollacher

By this time, the golden light from the lowering sun was behind me; the soft, smooth but lush growth around the inaptly named Loch Bristle shone a vivid emerald, and the surrounding grasses glowed with a repetition of green humps with crests of dry strawy tops, quivering slightly in the chilling breeze from behind me.  The Pollacher Inn stood impressively before me, neat and starkly white, perched on the end of the land, where terra firma met, sometimes glassy waters, sometimes raging storms, pounding waves and lashing horizontal rain, or the soft and gentle light of overcast sky with drizzle or hanging mist.  Just short of the inn, and even closer to the shore, an upright stone, of human scale, looks out on this interface, where land attempts to resist sea, thick growths of lichen imbuing it with life and giving testimony to its age – millennia of standing guard, watching and acting as an identifiable marker for ancient navigators traversing this dangerous passageway through the Sound of Barra and the Sound of Eriskay.  Incongruously, a few exceptionally smart and expensive cars stood outside the inn, tables inside were neatly lined up and precisely set, with menus on pedestals on each one, but no sign of life to be seen.  It seemed to me quite inappropriate that the few patrons should be cocooned and cossetted in a controlled, comfortable environment separated from this real, wild, ever-changing world outside.

With aching Achilles tendons, I walked the last kilometre of track and road back to camp, very gently and smoothly.  Arriving at 8 pm, I turned on gas and electricity, filled and put on the kettle, put a camera battery on charge, started the tea brewing, removed and washed out my left boot with warm water, repeatedly coming out brown with peat pieces, flakes and stalks, then, still wearing one boot, drank my cup of tea.  Almost randomly, I combined a feast of unmatched nutrients – sliced red pepper, quartered tomato, a heap of couscous, a couple of ready boiled eggs, all washed down with a cup-soup.  Following this with cocoa and crunch, some recording, some map perusing, some thinking and sorting and so, to bed – fleece base-layer top with pyjamas, a woolly hat and then well zipped and neck-baffled into my sleeping bag.