Heaval - Our first Scottish hill

[Indiana1947]

We have been visiting Scotland every summer since 2012. Stockholm. Sweden is our home base and my sis and brothers house in Edinburgh has been our base camp. From there we have touring the inner and outer Hebrides, Orkneys etc. 2017 we were approaching Castlebay by ferry from Oban and spotted Heaval.

Heaval from the Castlebay harbor

Which we climbed the day after.
Some problems to find the track from A888. We were struggling for some time with heavy winds. Eventually we saw the statue "Our Lady of the Isles".

The Lady spotted

The Lady and Castlebay

After some steep climbing we reached the top, a bit exhausted, with an amazing 360 degrees view over Castlebay, Vatersay etc.

The reward!

We were spellbound at the summit and decided that hill climbing was something for us. Back home in Stockholm we started planning for summer 2018.

We find the walkhighlands site a commendable and very useful site.

[Magoo82]

That's a great wee hill with superb views and easy enough that most able bodied people can achieve it.

I was up there a few weeks ago and got speaking to an older local chap who explained the statue to me. During the Second World War most of Barra's seafaring men were drafted to serve in the Navy but the locals started a fund putting a small amount of money away each week so that the men would not return to poverty. At the end of the war the men returned home to the fund but decided that money doesn't really mean anything and that they'd prefer to put it towards something that would last long after they were gone. And so it was spent on the statue that still stands there today.