Outer Hebrides - Days 6 & 7 - North Uist

I arrived in North Uist on Thursday afternoon and spent time before dinner wandering around the harbour and reacquainted myself with the village. I came through Lochmaddy once when I was living in Edinburgh and took a short trip to Skye and then on to North Uist, Harris and Lewis but it was very quick and I was only in Lochmaddy for one night and Stornoway on Lewis for one night. Yesterday (Friday) was very rainy and windy so I spent the day at Taigh Chearsabhagh which is this great museum and arts centre right on the waterfront. They had a geological exhibition called "Islands Carved from Stone’ all about the geological processes that formed gneiss from volcanic rocks and glacial ice sheets (I kept thinking Patrick would really love this) and a couple of art exhibitions including a video and sound installation about the Sound of Harris that separates North Uist from Harris and a photography exhibition about a well-known Gaelic band, Runrig. I did a bit of walking around in the afternoon but it was so windy that it was hard to stand up so I came back to Hamersay House and read until dinner. This morning it was sunny and lovely for a bit and then took another rainy and windy turn about Noon. They put a notice on the ferry from Berneray to Leverburgh that I was supposed to take today basically saying ‘could be cancelled at any moment because of weather conditions’ but miraculously the local bus on North Uist and the ferry across the Sound of Harris and the local bus on the other side to Tarbert all worked out in the end so here I am at the Harris Hotel in the port town of Tarbert. I remembered the Sound of Harris as being particularly tricky for the ferries to navigate but this time it was rainier and windier than the first time I was on that ferry and I really watched how shallow it is and how many small islands and rocks there are to navigate. There’s a very small channel that the boats have to follow closely like a zigzag to make it through. Imagine doing that 200 years ago in the dark with no lighthouses and no markers in the water. Amazing.