Day 39: Lochmaddy, North Uist to Daliburgh, South Uist
Virtual Walk: Scotland 2021
12th February 2021: 101.18km walked today taking the total to 3995.37/8854km. 13% of 110 entries submitting 778.31km.
We travel down North Uist and Benbecula onto South Uist today. Enjoying coastal scenes and settlements as well as ancient places en route to Lochboisedale in the south of South Uist.
Lochmaddy is named after its sea loch, Loch Maddy, ‘Loch nam Madadh’, meaning ‘Loch of the hounds’. A ferry from Uig also docks here. Due to the nature of the east coast, it is the only settlement on the island’s east side. Historically, it was remarked as a place of ‘piracie and murder’, but by the time of King Charles’s reign, it was the site of a Royal Fishing Station. The Hut of the Shadows is in this area, a grass-roofed, dry stone camera obscura. It was constructed in 1997 by English environmental artist, Chris Drury, as a tribute to the architects of similar prehistoric buildings. Inside the dark chamber, a lens and mirror project the outside scenery onto the wall! There is also the award-winning Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre in the village which explores all aspects of North Uist life and functions as a community hub.
Continuing along the A867 south on the Hebridean Way for a further 9 kilometres we leave the road to climb Ben Langais (91m) over to Loch Langais, where there is a stone circle. Pobull Fhinn means ‘white people’, or ‘Finn’s people’, and the circle sits on a plateau at the base of the Ben overlooking Loch Langais and Loch Euport. It has an oval-shaped formation and dates to around 2000BC.
Following the Hebridean Way along the ‘coast’, we wind our way through lochs and over small hills for c8km to re-join the A867 to cross the North Ford Causeway taking you over Loch Nighe onto Benbecula. Before this was opened in 1960 by the Queen Mother it was a treacherous crossing at low tide. A traveller in the early 1900s was quoted in Ray Burnett's book 'Benbecula' and described the North Ford as follows: 'Before us lay miles of mud and water, interspersed with islets and black rock and dark tangles of seaweed clinging to them.' His guide told him that losing the path was dangerous. 'A yard or two to either side of it means that you are in quicksands which immediately swallow any man, horse, cart or trap that deviates from the path.'
Community-owned Benbecula comes from the Gaelic, ‘Beinn na Faoghla’ meaning ‘Mountain of the Ford’, which is so appropriate as it is a patchwork quilt of lochs, machair and marshes. It has also gained the nickname ‘The Dark Island’ following a BBC documentary in 1962 of the same name. Bonnie Prince Charlie took shelter on the island a few times during his escape attempts in 1746. It has one hill called Reuval (124m), ‘Ruabhal’, which we climb as we continue along the Hebridean Way, to enjoy panoramic views that stretch out across land and sea. To the east, we look over Rossinish where Bonnie Prince Charlie left the island for Skye with Flora MacDonald on 28th June 1746. On our descent, we turn west to head for Balivanich, which comes from the Gaelic meaning ‘town of monks’. This harks back to its history when there was a monastery here in the 6th century.
Balivanich is the main administrative centre on the island and home to Benbecula Airport. The airport was built by Scottish Airways in 1936 but became an important military base during World War 2; RAF Benbecula. This continued after the war, and at its height, saw several thousand troops based here. It is still home to the control centre for the Ministry of Defence Hebrides Missiles Range, though testing is carried out from South Uist across the Atlantic. The first unmanned aircraft also landed here from Newfoundland in 1998.
We are now on the west coast of Benbecula and make our way south on the coastal route past Culla Bay, walking alongside 6km of white sand beach, lochs and machair to arrive on the islands’ most southwest point. We return to the A865 to see Borve Castle, a 14th-century tower house ruin, occupied by the MacDonalds of Benbecula and Clanranald into the 17th century. After a further 4 kilometres, we cross the South Ford Causeway onto South Uist, the second biggest island of the Outer Hebrides. This causeway was completed in 1942, thanks to the expansion at Benbecula, and was upgraded and ‘reopened’ in 1982.
For a good section of the 25-mile-long island, we will be following the main road that runs through its centre. Like North Uist and Benbecula before it, the east side is mountainous, the highest being Beinn Mhor (620m), then Hecla (606m), both with heather uplands, while the west has dune-backed stretches of white sands and machair, 20 miles of it in fact! The north-west is an area for the Missile Testing Range (Deep Sea Range) but also boasts the oldest rocks in Britain at Ardivachar Point on its west coast. The island’s habitation dates to 2000BC and there is evidence of this dotted about the island; some we will pass. They were in Viking control, like all the west coast islands, known to the Norse as ‘Suoreyjar’. They suffered during the clearances of the 1840s with many islanders forcibly being removed from their properties and shipped off to Canada. Today, the island is community-owned, as are Benbecula and Eriskay, since 2006. Gaelic is widely spoken as a first language here and the island is economically dependent on seaweed farming, crofting, fishing, fish farming and tourism.
After leaving the causeway we walk 4 kilometres on the road passing Reuval (87m), with a Ministry of Defence facility (MOD) at its peak, run by QinetiQ. On its western slope sits a 9-metre-tall granite statue of the Madonna and Child called ‘Our Lady of the Isles’, sculpted by Hew Lorimer and installed in 1957. The MOD range proposals were contested at the time by Canon John Morrison, as his parish would be destroyed by the removal of locals from their lands, so he commissioned this as an expression of their devotion. After Reuval we leave the road to re-join the Hebridean Way for 18 kilometres which will take us to Kildonan. We skirt the north shore of Loch Druidibeg, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, cared for by NatureScot, which stretches from the Atlantic coast to The Minch in the east. The loch is freshwater here and has stunning views to Beinn Mhor and Hecla in the south as we walk the heather moorlands. We follow the route around the irregular-shaped shore on a well-made path and grassy track, crossing a wooden bridge heading west. Offshore to the south, on an islet, we see Dun Raghnailll (or Dun Raouill), a late 16th-century ruin which according to folklore was the earliest stronghold of Clanranald on South Uist. Crossing the main road we pass through Drimsdale settlement on the north shore of Loch an Eilein where we see the remains of Castle Bheagram, then head south at Drimsdale House.
We are now c11 kilometres from Kildonan and are walking the west coast stretch of white sandy beaches, dunes and machair, which also makes up the Machair Way. There are huge amounts of machair on South Uist, several of them are protected as a result. As elsewhere in the Outer Hebrides, the machair is very vulnerable due to sea-level rise and climate change. South of Drimsdale is Howmore, ‘Tobha Mhor’, where several ancient chapel remains can be found. Chapels were built here as early as the 9th century, but today the remains we see date back to 12/13th century. The settlement also has a few quaint thatched cottages and a Youth Hostel.
Moving on we enjoy the west coast sands looking out over the Atlantic, whilst inland there are many lochs. We pass through further settlements of Stoneybridge, ‘ Staoinebrig’, Ormacleit, ‘Ormiclate’ with its 18th-century castle ruin, then Bornish, ‘Bornais’, to reach Kildonan, ‘Chill Donnain’. We move inland here over a causeway bridging Loch Kildonan, back onto the A865 to visit the Kildonan Museum; a museum of local life and the Clanranald Stone. The stone was thought to pay homage to John of Moidart, chieftain of the Clanranald in the late 1500s. It once stood among the church ruins at Howmore but then disappeared without a trace at some point after 1990. It was discovered in London, after a young Canadian’s death in 1995, and returned to the island. Incidentally, it is believed to be cursed. There is also a Feis Room; a space to teach Gaelic arts and culture year-round which includes music, drama, art, and dance. Outside the museum is a sculpture of steel set in a Uist stone base by Malcolm Robertson, commissioned in 1998 for the Museum’s reopening. It is etched with words from a Gaelic emigrant song, ‘In Praise of Uist’. Further down the road, we reach the birthplace of Flora MacDonald, now marked by a monument, in honour of their famous lass. Shortly after the monument, we turn west, passing through Milton to re-join the Hebridean Way once more on our journey south.
At Askernish we head onto the beach to pass Askernish Golf Course. The oldest golf course in the Outer Hebrides (1891), it was designed by Tom Morris who was also involved with St Andrews. The course was destroyed for a time but reopened in 2008. After the golf course, we clamber back up onto the grassland to walk through the site of Cladh Hallan with its old cemetery. This place dates to around 2000BC, the Bronze Age, and evidence of roundhouses can be seen in the landscape. It was here that archaeologists discovered mummies in 2001 - the only ones found in the UK.
We join a minor road heading east, then follow the main road at Daliburgh to head south-east for 5 kilometres to Lochboisdale.
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