Lose the crowds and wander on untouched beaches of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides
IT WAS MONDAY morning in Uig on the Isle of Skye. We stood on the quay in the rain waiting for the ferry to take us across the Lochmaddy in North Uist. The weather was bleak. In this part of north-west Scotland, a land with its head in the clouds, the best chance of any sunlight and warm winds is only during the first two weeks of June. We were here on our way to the Western Isles or the Outer Hebrides under a gloomy sky in the first week of April.

But despite the weather, the charm of the Isles is hard to miss. We reached North Uist around midday. Each of the five main islands that make up the Western Isles — Lewis/Harris, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra — is split down the middle: on the west are picturesque beaches of fine, white sand backed by dunes and grassland, known as machair, which come alive in early summer with thousands of wild flowers; on the east, a craggy wilderness of bare rock and small lochs, with desolate moorland in between.

North Uist, half drowned by lochs, is famed for its fishing. For bird-watchers, this is paradise with wading birds—oystercatchers, lapwings, curlews and redshanks at every turn. But when it comes to humans, within minutes out of Lochmaddy, you sense an austere isolation. The few houses that dot the horizon look stark with almost no trees or visible gardens. Gardens, if any, are hidden behind high stone walls since these islands are among the windiest regions in the world.

... contd.