An early start. Up to catch the bus to Aird Mhor jetty to catch the ferry to Eriskay, only to find it cancelled due to high winds. “Come back at noon,” the bus driver translated the ferry-hand’s sweeping pseudo-semaphore from the on-ramp where we stood. “That’s island life,” shrugged the only other [...]

Much is made of Barra being this encapsulated summary of all that’s good about the Hebrides: beaches, history, scenery, great hikes, friendly people, etc. So where to begin? Excited by the prospect of piles of rocks thousands of years old, I made my way north up the island, past the airport that uses [...]

Governed by logistical details, bordering on paranoia, I still manage to have fun; and more often than not, things work out in the end anyway. Case in point: the weather. Basically all my posts leading up to the trip have had to do with securing waterproof pants, given the schizophrenic North Atlantic weather. [...]

Another nick-of-time sprint for Victoria Coach Station landed me on the overnight to Glasgow, where I’d be catching another bus to Oban: quaintly seaside and port for the 5-hour Calmac ferry that would, nearly 24 hours after the initial dash, deposit me in the village of Castlebay, Barra, from where I’d begin my trip northward. [...]

My replacement waterproof ski-cum-hiking trousers arrived today, so I don’t need to pack the corset anymore. Supreme-o waistband satisfaction as I swish-swish my way through the Hebridean sleet. Now I have to figure out whether to take the 70L or 60L backpack, since these new comfort pants take up half the pack I [...]

Although some of the stone-circle sites in Lewis will be just off the main roads, I’m more interested in remote locations, and that involves traipsing through bogs and probable muddy situations. So I ordered a pair of waterproof, fleecy-lined trousers off eBay, which arrived today. Great quality for £6, but oops, they’re size [...]

I was on a flight recently, and aside from having to arrive at the airport 3 hours before, divvy up all our liquids into 100mL portions, and partially disrobe in front of a strangely unappreciative metal-detector queue (everyone’s a critic), the flight was fine. The atmosphere wasn’t as close and cattle-car in character as [...]

Spent most of today wading through the Byzantine schedules for the Western Isles buses, trying to piece together a workable route northward. It’s a tricky business because many services run only 3 or 4 times a day, if at all (Sunday, being a day of rest for everyone else, actually means I’ll be walking [...]

The thing about cities, and especially London, is just the crush of people. This is great for urbanites like us. We feel comfortable in crowds: it in some ways validates our decision to be wherever we are; it suffuses our purpose with some feeling of shared intent and destiny. We like that [...]

After a month and a half of skanky-dive viewing we settled on a fairly decent place in an “up and coming” part of town (read “mild chance of knife fights”: we’re actually 10min walk from the scene of a big case where a kid got stabbed for looking at some other kids “the wrong way”). [...]