Plan for today, walk the mile into Stornoway to look around the town and do some basic shopping. The campsite at Laxdale (perhaps I ought use the native Gaelic term (Lacasdal) is a suburb of Steòrnabhagh (Stornoway) so it's nice easy walking all the way in - past a couple of statues
Well I think it's a nice statue anyway. We are actually on a mission whilst on Lewis & Harris, and Stornoway offers the best chance to succeed. Several years ago Liz was gifted this fine owl cushion cover, which she removed from its original cushion and transferred to one of our duck-egg blue van cushions. But as you can see, like Miss Porter was , the poor owl is in need if some tlc
The original leatherette pieces have not withstood the test of time. Trouble is it's impractical to try and repair so a complete rebuild copy is required, and for that tweed is needed, and where better to get tweed than Harris and Lewis. But, of course, we don't want to buy large quantities of tweed, just small (hopefully bargain priced) offcut pieces
The first shop we encounter on the outskirts of town (excepting the Co-op) was a large charity shop and amazingly, they had some small tweed pieces, the right colour too. A second charity shop and a larger piece, but finally we ventured into a specialist tweed shop to complete Liz's (well her owl's really) needs. But all those charity shops provided another large haul of CDs too, again some at just 25p for well known (in the folk 2 world anyway) artists.
But what I really want is a music shop. There's two totally contrasting styles of music is like to get CDs of traditional Gaelic puirt a buel (mouth singing)
And, by contrast, the Stornoway punk legends Peat & Diesel
But, can I find a record shop??
Time for a coffee (and we are coming to today's blog title here!), a quick consult of Google Maps and there's one with good reviews just at the end of the street. We turn left, past a cultural centre and almost enter the coffee shop when a sudden instinct turns me right, back to the cultural centre where amidst all the Gaelic I notice they do coffee and cakes. So why not? Liz fantastically breaks the ice by immediately apologising that we don't have any Gaelic, but that's no problem, they're happy to take our money and speak our language.
The venture is a community run Gaelic culture revival centre called Taighe Celeidh which is probably simply "Meeting house"
Over coffee I ask about artists renowned for puirt a buel (and also make a joke about looking for Peat & Diesel too, this doesn't seem to be the sort of place they wouldbe approved of!). Firstly my suspicion of no music shop was confirmed but then the coffee maker invoked the assistance of a chap engrossed in his laptop. Turns out that Tearlach is one of the founders of the place and what an interesting chap. For the next 40 minutes we are chatting about Gaelic, it's importance to the island, linguistic comparisons particularly to Welsh, language evolution itself, education in a bilingual state, a whole myriad of fascinating subjects, particularly as I have more than a passing interest in language myself, particularly UK languages.
They couldn't help with finding me a puirt a beul CD, but there is a ceilidh sing-around in a Saturday and one of the singers there occasionally sings some songs. Ironically one of the regular musicians is the father of Innes h one of the three members of Peat & Diesel!
Now we had planned to spend a couple of nights (including Saturday) at the other end of the island, but guess what, plans changed. Tearlach not only has a PhD in Gaelic but is also passionate about the culture. What a fascinating lunchtime, thanks to turning right not left!
Anyway here's some random Stornoway photos
Oh, one more, remember that yesterday, on Skye I posted some random memorial commemorating Edward VII taking a ferry. According to this well close to the campsite, the ferry made it!
Back to the van but it's raining steadily now, can't complain, we've had hardly any. But we take a quick trip out along the NE side of the island, just for a look-see.
A nice beach at Tolsta spoiled by a hastily snapped shot to avoid a large motorhome, unwisely in my opinion navigating the narrow access road to it
And this monument
a memorial to those brave heroes returning from WW I to no promised land and so fighting the oppressor (Lord Leverhulme in this case). Full story here
https://www.visitouterhebrides.co.uk/see-and-do/gress-raiders-monument-p533661
Phew, that was a long post, here's the 35 miles travelled today, 5 walking, 30 driving (15 miles each way)
