The Herring Girl and the Fishermen...

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The statues of the herring girl and the fisherman stand a few feet apart on the inner harbour in Stornoway.  They both captured my imagination.

I can't find much information on the fisherman other than he was carved by local joiner and artist Uisdean Paterson, but there is information on the Herring Girl here.  

I was particularly taken with the bandages on her  hands.  How painful it must have been to be gutting herring with freezing hands covered in cuts and blisters, stinging from the brine used to preserve the fish.  Not an easy life.

It was a dull, rainy day and we had arranged to pick Christine's mum up from her sister's house (about five minutes from Christine's holiday house where we are staying)

It was so lovely to see Annie again (we met her for lunch on our last visit in 2019)  She's from Scalpay but was visiting her daughter so that was handy.  We went back to the cafe at Lewa Castle as the food is good and it's wonderfully accessible.  

After a very pleasant couple of hours we dropped Annie off again and spent some time at the harbour.  On our way back to the house we stopped off at Charley Barley's to pick up tonight's dinner (chicken breast stuffed with white pudding in a honey mustard sauce (delicious!) and a couple of steaks for our final meal tomorrow night.

We were supposed to make a start on packing to go home but decided just to chill instead.  It won't take long so we will do it tomorrow afternoon.

When I think about leaving, tears come!