Friday 22nd May

We were up at 8 for breakfast after which Jilly, Fred, Lucy and I set off for a ride around the south of Barra, or at least we would have done if I hadn't discovered a flat rear tyre on my bike. I pumped it up and it seemed ok so off we went. About a mile down the road the tyre went flat again so I had to stop and fix it. The land on the south of the island was a little hilly but the scenery was stunning and to make it even better the sun was out.


A view of a loch on Southern Barra

Fred and Lucy near the top

After a while we returned to the hostel to pick up the panniers and set off to the north of the island to catch the ferry to Eriskay. We went up the west side of the island to avoid that nasty climb on the east coast.


On the way to the ferry

On the north tip of Barra is the airport which uses the beach as a runway, unfortunately we did not have time to take a proper look but after meeting Ced and catching the ferry we did see a plane come in to land.


Ced's photo of the 'runway'

It was a 45 minute crossing and when we reached the other side there was a huge hill looming up in front of us which took some climbing. We stocked up on supplies at the shop in the town and then decided to head north as far as possible while it was sunny as the forecast for the following day was not so good. Also, we had heard some dubious reports about the hostel at Howmore which is where we had planned to stay.
The ride up through South and North Uist was superb, the sun was still out, the land was flat and the wind was behind us. We stopped at a craft centre for a coffee and found out about a hostel at a place called Lochmaddy which was just about in our range so we decided to head for it. We crossed several picturesque causeways between the islands and by the time we reached Lochmaddy we had covered 66 miles.

Fred on one of the causeways

The less said about the hostel the better, it did have a free internet connection but it would have been nice if they could have spent some money on new bedding or even on cleaning the old bedding.