Day 2- Barra & Vatersay

There was a melt down of Cal-Mac proportions in yesterday's travel arrangements, when over the sea to Barra at 13:40 morphed into over the sea to South Uist instead at 20:10, a delay of 7 hours kicking our heels in Oban thanks to a technical fault in the original Lord of the Isles ferry.

Arriving in Lochboisdale at 1:30am today, driving in inky darkness on single track roads and a causeway to Eriskay, an overnight in the car, before finally being awarded a special ferry to Barra at 5am this morning, has left His Lordship and me in a somewhat fragile state.

However much later with blue skies and in beautiful sunshine we drove along roads hardly wider than the car to the neighbouring island of Vatersay, linked by a causeway, with its white beaches and green shallows.
We noticed at the side of the road the WW2 wreckage of a Catalina aircraft which came to grief on the island in 1944, and above a lonely beach a monument to over two hundred émigrés drowned when their ship was wrecked in a storm on the shores in 1840 as they set off for Quebec.

Coming back to Barra and Castlebay, we saw Kisimul Castle a stone's throw off shore before we picnicked further along the coast overlooking another white deserted beach with oyster catchers wheeling overhead, a mile of white sand and a calm sea on an ebb tide.
It was hot enough for me to discard my thick Orkney sweater.

Our meal tonight is at the local Indian restaurant in Castlebay.
Their blurb says that finding good Indian cooking in the Hebrides is about as likely as finding a dope smoking clergyman. I like that.

Ignoring several blips of white beaches and green sea, I have posted the first sight we had of Barra this morning as the sun rose.