{"id":19342,"date":"2019-03-04T15:37:17","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T15:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/?p=19342"},"modified":"2021-01-19T13:38:39","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T13:38:39","slug":"a-circuitry-of-ways-old-and-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/a-circuitry-of-ways-old-and-new\/","title":{"rendered":"A Circuitry of Ways Old and New"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My ‘Landranger 13’ map of ‘West Lewis and North Harris’ shows no road reaching down the peninsula west of Loch Seaforth\u2019s mouth. This is because I bought it for a trip to the ‘islands’ of Lewis and Harris in 1985 before a road had been built.<\/strong> I Lived in Devon at that time and remember experiencing a topographical shock on arrival: so much bare rock and brooding moorland. I felt uncomfortably exposed after the round, green hills of home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back then we took the post bus west from Stornoway, and south along the coast to the end of the road at Brenish to begin a walk through the remote hills and glens of west Lewis. In the notebook I\u2019ve recently rediscovered from that trip, I observed of the postbus journey: ‘\u2026stopped at every house and tiny post office to deliver papers and post (many thrown out of window). Many people cutting their hay with scythes and then banking it over fences or small ricks to dry. Also lots of peat cutting going on \u2013 great banks of it outside each house. There’s absolutely nothing here except small crofts and sheep.’ Amidst the words I\u2019d drawn small pencil sketches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That evening, on the slopes of one of the steep hills high above Brenish, where we\u2019d been caught out by severe weather, I made a sketch of the tent wedged between rocks, lashed with rain. A puzzled sheep looks on. The next night we camped in roofless buildings at Kinloch Resort, emerging the next day into Harris bewildered, having been besieged by wind, rain and midges, to plod soggily along the Huisinis<\/a> road, where we were called in across the peatland by a Mr MacDonald who sat us down with coffee, oatcakes and cheese before driving us to Tarbert. In subsequent days we walked further south onto the white beaches and effervescent machair of west coast Harris<\/a> where the weather improved and I relaxed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some reason\nit took me 30 years to return to these islands two summers ago for a\nshort summer cycle-tour. I sheltered for two nights at the Gatliff\nTrust hostel in the village of Rhenigidale at the \u2018new\u2019 road-end,\nwaiting for a storm to pass. This road had been built between the\ncreation of my peat-smudged, ragged-jacketed map 13, and my new sheet\n14 ‘Tarbert and Loch Seaforth’. From a high point on the main road\nbetween Stornoway and Tarbert (A859) a single-track road plummets\nsouthwest to sea level for M\u00e0raig, and a turn-off climbs at an\nincredible gradient through carved rock to find the high plateau of\nthe peninsula, trickling along under the wedge-shape of the hill,\nT\u00f2dun. Then it once again careers (if you’re on a bicycle, anyway)\nto sea level at the village, now linked by tarmac to mainstream life.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These maps are a joy to study, especially if you are able to mentally convert tight, contoured clusters and twisting headlands, a pebbledash of blue, the scribbles of crag, cliff, outcrop, all the inlets, airds, and islands, into three-dimensional topography. Even better though, is to go there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time last year I wrote for Walkhighlands<\/a> about the joy of spending early January amidst the scalding, short light on more Northern Islands. But the island this time is Harris. The light here in early January was quite different in quality but nevertheless, with a clear sky, it excited the land into chromatic brilliance. The oblique angle of the sun drenched dormant copper grasses, and shimmered off so much knobbly, exposed rock. And of course the abundant lochs, lochans, puddles, as well as the ever present sea, all reflected the sky to double its power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of us and two dogs set off from Rhenigidale<\/a>, striking northwest up the rough, seaward ridge of T\u00f2dun<\/a>, the stand-alone hill on the tip of that peninsula. There was barely a path; heather and rock and a sense of where feet and hooves may have found the way before. The climb was, in both senses, breathtaking. And it was a reminder of the rewards of gaining height, especially when it\u2019s also steep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An animate map\nunfolded around us as we climbed. Loch Seaforth gradually revealed\nits grandeur; at first a fjord running parallel directly below us,\nbearing up toy fishfarms. Further height revealed it slinking\nradiantly away up to Seaforth Island and then kinking impressive\nlength northeast to curl around the complex hills of Pairc. The loch\nconcludes dramatically at its northernmost end in a T-shaped tail\nreminiscent of a humpback-whale\u2019s, where seafarers might find the\nSiophort, or \u2018safe harbour\u2019, of its name ten miles or so inland.\nIt was perhaps the apparent conclusiveness of this stretch of water,\nonly six miles from Loch Resort in the west, as well as the sudden\nrise of rock walls and mountains, which led Lewis and Harris to be\nthought of as separate land masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we paused for breath and turned, the Shiant Isles appeared to our east, skiffed with light cloud. At the summit (528m), Clisham<\/a> and the hills of West Lewis rose up, reminding me of puddling my way through that roadless fastness in August, 33 years before. The whole glorious arena of hills was aggrandised by a sculptor\u2019s light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to take\na circular walk, we now descended T\u00f2dun\u2019s gentler northern slopes\nonto a rolling plateau. The route could equally begin at M\u00e0raig at\nits northern point ahead of us, just below the A859, or even at\nUrgha, its southern point just east of Tarbert. Now, instead of going\nas far and as low as M\u00e0raig, we walked westwards across-country,\nskirting to the north of Strathabhal (389m) to intercept the path\nbetween M\u00e0raig and Urgha. Grasses coated this plateau, coloured and\ntoughened like a red deer pelt in winter \u2013 bleached at the battered\nsurface but betraying, closer to the skin, rich russet colours and\ntangles of damp moss. And just as I was enjoying this visual\nonslaught, the dogs alerted us to a group of deer, pausing on the\nrise above us to regard our pathless progress before turning their\nheads and hooves gracefully to the south. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A short, steep,\nboggy descent took us off the plateau into Glen Lacasdail to the\nwest. We touched down onto a path leading south to a low bealach and\nblinked as the Loch glittered molten white light ahead, ragged\nshorelines kinking between steep walls of rock towards a\nnarrow-throated exit to the sea. A line of wet path shimmered\nalongside the western shore. After the rough-going of the first\ncouple of hours, our feet made a welcome strike of connection on this\nwell-made path, the logic of its line reassuring us of the sturdy\nbenefits of an old, well-travelled path ahead. On such a peninsula of\ncontorted hill, rock and bog, with its only road so very recent, such\nold ways were until recently the only way to travel out of or into\nthese coastal villages, or to transport tweed woven here, other than\nby sea. The rest of our day would now be on such robust,\ntrust-inspiring ways, lending an enjoyable sense of history to the\nday’s walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About a kilometre before Urgha, we crossed a small bridge connecting a near meeting point of two isthmuses, and via a new path to the next trailhead four miles from home. At first traversing moorland and following the driest line, this raised causeway took us east to a high bealach (290m) between Trolamul on our left shoulders and Beinn Tharsuinn on our right. Then it would return us, in a dramatic and pleasing fashion, to Rhenigidale along what was a vital artery between villages and is now known as the \u2018postman\u2019s path<\/a>\u2019. It was taken by generations of postmen three times a week carrying heavy bags as well as lists of shopping for the grocers in Tarbert, supplies which would later be delivered to the villages by boat. What probably started as a rough and difficult to follow route, was upgraded to an engineered track by the Parish Council in 1912. The community-owned North Harris Trust have now restored it for walkers to enable us to enjoy the scenic and historic route. But it is now less of a necessity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kenny Mackay,\npostie from 1975 to 1987, tells in his book (\u2018Rhenigidale \u2013 A\ncommunity\u2019s fight for survival\u2019<\/em>) of the long fight for a road\nin and out of the village which would allow children to be bussed to\nschool rather than walking five miles and crossing the high bealach\nin all weathers. It would also enable supplies in more easily, and\nmake health emergencies less catastrophic. It’s a story reminiscent\nof ‘Callum\u2019s Road’ on Raasay and other villages in the remote\nHighlands and Islands. In 1851 there had been 15 houses and a school.\nIn 1891 the village still housed 97 people. Inevitably the numbers\nfell away dramatically during the 20th century as life became\npredicated on road transport, on being connected to the\n\u2018motherboard\u2019, until the village was effectively rescued as a\nviable place to live by the agreement to build a road, completed and\nopened in February 1990. Although the number of residents had fallen\nto 11 in the late 1980s, with the road, telephone, broadband, it has\nnow increased to 17, including four children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the bealach\ncairn we paused for a bite to eat and to savour views of the way\nahead around a writhing coastline, where low sun highlighted furrowed\nlazybeds and a sense of past community. The breeze became brisk. We\ngreeted six young men from the west of Lewis, arriving raggedly on\nthe way back to their transport after an overnight stay in the\nabandoned village of Mollingeanais on the southern shore of Loch\nTrolamaraig. We were charmed by their adventure, by this apparent\nhomage to their own land despite the evident unfamiliarity of some of\ntheir party with mountain walking. By that stage, the light was\nthickening, so instead of diverting to Mollingeanais ourselves we\ntook the direct route, dropping towards the axe-cleft of Glen\nTrolamaraig and faced with a formidable wall of rock; T\u00f2dun\u2019s\nunfamiliar and very different south-western side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To reach the\nfootbridge at sea level, the path descends in a steep series of\nswitchbacks to cope with a precipitous gradient. For me this was the\nhighlight of the walk, dramatic and thrumming with a sense of past\nfootfall and bodily effort. The V-shaped inlet of the Loch lay\njade-coloured directly beneath us, the path was gloriously\nwell-graded and trustworthy. It reminded me of the heightened\npleasure of walking medieval \u2018Mozarabic\u2019 paths in south-eastern\nSpain as written about in Doubling Back<\/em>. They were engineered\nwith steps to cross the steepest of ravines, zigzagging like this,\nsafely and in sympathy with the scale and rhythms of the human body,\nespecially when carrying crops or tools. This descent, or ascent, on\nthe postman’s path is known in Gaelic as the \u2018sgriob\u2019 which seems\ncapable of taking a number of meanings depending on who you ask. It\ncan mean \u2018the furrow\u2019, which is also possible to interpret as a\ntrack or line or zigzag up a rock face. Or it can mean a \u2018slide\u2019.\nTake your pick. Perhaps it depends on the conditions underfoot!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the light\naltered again, colours muted. And with the air cooling further, we\nclimbed more gently around the rugged coast glinting with boulders of\ngnarly gneiss. Near the end of the path we paused at village ruins.\nOne building had been the village shop; stone-built gable ends were\nall that remained of a largeish house. Soon afterwards we reached\ntarmac and the final plummet to the cluster of current homes which\nconstitute Rhenigidale. It was good to see roofs, lights on, and a\nsign to tell us that eggs were for sale: a refreshing sense that the\nvillage is part of a wider circuitry of lives and ways, even in the\ndead days of January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This time last year I wrote for Walkhighlands about the joy of spending early January amidst the scalding, short light on more Northern Islands. But the island this time is Harris. <\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/div>\n

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