It's a small island, 3 miles top to bottom; there's one road from the Uist causeway to the Barra ferry and two short roads off, none much more than a couple of miles. We travelled them all hoping to catch a glimpse of the now quite rare wild Eriskay ponies. We found horse poo, bit no ponies.
We popped into to only shop on the island, it sold pretty much anything you would need on a day to day basis, as well as tourist stuff. Anything they don't sell islanders would need to mail order (probably Amazon these days) and await the ferry.
The ferry port (small carpark leading to a landing jetty) did have toilets (and a shower) and WiFi so yesterday's blog eventually got published.
As always pretty beaches, I took a walk down to this one (you can see the harbour for the ferry too)
Lots of razor shells, scallops and several I didn't know but none complete enough to warrant saving.
The ferry is a small vessel
but the trip across the sound to Barra is just 40 minutes. Someone, probably on Skye, told us that the best islands in the Western Isles are the top and bottom, i e. Lewis and Barra. We wouldn't question the wisdom re Lewis and Barra looks very appealing. There is basically a circular route around the island with the Eriskay ferry and airport roads just off it, and diametrically opposite them is the only town, Castlebay. Our campsite is out beyond the airport, so we can head there directly or do the full 360⁰ tour. It's early afternoon so tour it is, next question clockwise or anti-clockwise? The van in front turns right, anti-clockwise, so we elect for the open road clockwise.
Clockwise takes you down the east coast of the island, over the island's hills (probably mountains). Lots of gear changing, especially as there are regular stops up pull into passing places to allow oncoming traffic to pass. The west (Atlantic coast) is far flatter, but the road carved through the dunes and machair seems far narrower with less passing places. But the beaches look good!
We did stop half way round, at Castlebay. Only quickly we thought to pop into Bùth Bharraigh (literally, Barra Shop). It has a small coffee shop which worked on a help yourself to filter coffee basis and buy flapjack or whatever, pre-wrapped from the main shop bit to accompany the coffee if desired
Amongst other stuff the shop had a reasonable range of craft bits and some wool. Amazingly prices in the Islands are often very competitive: diesel on Lewis was £149.9, a pint of Guinness last night £4.30, and here some wool Liz uses was cheaper than she was paying for it at home. But the big buy was a case containing 6 different size sets of double-ended carbon-fibre knitting needles. Not cheap but this little local community run shop was a couple of quid cheaper than Amazon! Add to that the coffees and some locallyv produced hot-smoked salmon fillets and we were probably some of the better customers of the day.
We'd just been talking about ethical tourism and trying to spend locally. Especially on an enclosed island then the spend isn't just with the shop, these are shops run by locals so all the profits go into their pockets, and are spent by them mainly on the island, and so on, and on. So purchases aren't just one offs with large chunks going to shareholders or CEOs but actually boost the economy of the island and it's communities
Right enough economic philosophising. The campsite turning is back close to the ferry turn, and on past the airport. It is the furthest north campsite on the island and the narrow single track road runs out after it. The narrow single track circular road around the island is shown red on my OS map, the campsite road is white! Narrow and longer stretches without passing places so driving needs to be planned and taken at a suitable leisurely pace.
Anyway the campsite is delightfully strange. It is basically a couple of fields where they added a cess-pit for chemical toilets and the owner has built a small building immediately behind his house with a single WC, shower, and washing machine. We have to check we'd got it right, and weren't about to actually wander into someone's private outhouse. But it's cheap £20 a night. When we booked we were quoted £22, when we emailed a £10 deposit a couple of weeks ago we were told the balance would by £38 ( i.e. £24 a night), when we came to pay the balance today (in cash) he took one look to the van and said £20 a night. It's that sort of laid back place
Anyway here's the van
And the view from the back door.
The route map will make all my previous directions clearer
38.5 miles today but the ferry accounted for 6 miles of that
