The OUTER HEBRIDES
From South Uist - The Long Island - to the north coast of Lewis, the remarkable qualities of The Outer Hebrides are immediately apparent to all who find their way there. For the sea kayaker, there is no more compelling a coastline and for the hill runner, South Uist and Harris both offer something unique. I never did climb on the great sea cliffs of Pabbay but here too, is something beyond normal experience.
I have returned a score of times to these islands over a similar number of years or more, each time the possibilities that remain apparently greater than before, for it is a place that grows with the knowing. Two trips stand out however among the rest, one, an incredibly wet and stormy week when I ran the Simms of Harris and the other, blessed with calm seas and sun, when we kayaked from the southern end of the island chain, to the wild islands that lie off the north west coast of Lewis. There was time for the hills too and it was then that I first explored the hills of Harris - days which sowed the seed for what would follow, the traverse of the Simms.
A place of extremes, from the sublime beauty of shell sand beaches to the wild hills above, the huge surf which routinely pounds the Atlantic coastline, hammering vast sea cliffs of ancient gneiss, beyond which golden eagles and now sea eagles are seen in increasing numbers, this raw Hebridean mix remains unequalled among any of those places I have been so fortunate to spend my time.
And yet here too, industrialised development scars the land just as depopulation threatens a way of life, the damming indictment of our times set against those timeless qualities of these islands so many see as so far removed, where the voices are too few to protect what remains beyond measure.
