21st May 2024

Today we left the rather hippy, but genuinely nice and laid-back campsite of Lickisto, driving North to Harris. Started off on the narrow roads, but then we joined the main two-lane road, positively a motorway!, which goes around the West Coast. Soon we were into North Harris at the town of Tarbert. Here we stopped off at the Harris distillery an picked up another bottle of Gin. Tastings did not seem to be high on the agenda. Very upmarket place compared with the previous distilleries. They did do tours and sold lots of merch. But looked like prebooking was required, and the car park was full.  Most expensive gin on the trip at £44.

Then a stop at a small shop to buy some food for the next couple of days, until we get to the Tesco at Stornoway.

From here we drove to our ‘free’ camping spot for the night. Aiming to get there earlyish so we could get a spot. Sat nav, or rather my settings got me wrong. No voice coming out of the vehicle’s speakers. We sped on past the turn of to Huisinis by 10 miles. Then I saw sat nave telling me to turn off, missed the turn, and got the next. It took me down a very narrow road, and back onto the main road in the other direction.  Google hates doing u-turns, instead it will drive you down other roads to get you back on track.  (R says its lack of u-turns means it must be designed by men.) Looks like this was the old single-track road from the South of Lewis to the North of Lewis.  Every now and again the remains of the old road would appear.

We followed a Polestar! Rather useful because I could see its brake lights when it had to pull in for on-coming cars. When the car turned off to park, I drove up next to them and had a quick chat with the owners.

Anyway 10 miles later, all the way up and down 100 meters in height, we were back on-track, then off on the toad to Huisinis Gateway & the carpark. Yes a very narrow single-track road. R hates these, I love and enjoy them. Later R saw a woman who was totally shell-shocked after driving down to the carpark. She claimed having driven there, the carpark owners should be paying her to park

When we arrived, and the place was chocka, but there was one space.  I commented “free camping”. Not free camping; £5 a day time charge for campers, free for cars. Then a £20 overnight charge from 6pm to 10am.  Turns out I should have arrived after 6pm when there was plenty of space.  There are showers available between 8am and 8pm at £1 for 3 minutes. Plenty of time in my book.  A loo is available all night.

The weather & beach were fabulous. We went for a walk around the headland where we met a chap who’d had an accident with his inflatable paddleboard. It had exploded in the sunshine when he’d taken it out of the water for a lunch time stop.I went on for a longer walk and even went for a swim, followed by a hot shower.  After supper I went out for a walk to take sunset pictures.  Alas some clouds were coming in, and there was a headland that got in the way, but some very obliging Highland cattle posed.

Back at the van at 10.10pm. Next to us was a Defender type LandRover with a sticker saying “Adventure before Dementia” which R found a tad depressing. Very smart vehicle, with an extremely smart steering wheel.

We went to sleep, with more wind, followed by some rain during the night.

Track