Is it really early September? The summer has passed.......back in England, leaves falling and light fading. So much to write about. I will start as promised with some stories about St Kilda.
We thought we would never get there....waiting for a fair wind...a safe wind to be sure of not getting in to trouble in Village Bay....eventually we set off in not enough wind......had to use the engine most of the way...a very gentle headwind I remember. There are so many stories of people going all the way only to find they can't land. I remember feeling that it wasn't going to be a big deal, after the Faroes, sort of preparing myself for disappointment. So much has been written about St Kilda and its extraordinary history and the spartan life of the inhabitants and their relationship to the birds and the sea. So it was a shock to see Boreray emerging to starboard....it took my breath away.
Majestic, serene, mysterious, utterly beautiful, shrouded in its myriad of green shades cloak of velvet and pointy rocky heights. The stuff of legends.....and nearby the awesome Stac Lee like a Star Wars silver scabbard of a giant from a far away planet dropped in to the sea . I have never seen anything like it.
Hypnotic, mesmerising. I could not take my eyes off it. I made Gav promise me that we would sail close to it tomorrow. For now we needed to drop our anchor in Village Bay on Hirta. From a few miles out it is hard to make out where Village Bay is exactly...then suddenly it is obvious..... a lovely wide entrance ( perilous with the wrong wind direction) Lots of room to put the anchor down. Most boats here are on day trips from the mainland...fast motor boats with their passengers strapped in. A jerky uncomfortable way of travelling most of the time , but the only way to get to see these islands which lie 40 miles of the coast of Harris. The first thing we notice is a huge ugly army building in the prime position on the shore. Massive, green, like a factory. We go ashore, and soon the ugly building fades away and we are entranced by this place. The warden welcomes us and we walk up the old street and past the old houses.
There are little stone dwellings everywhere as if designed for trolls. They are called cleats and no one is entirely sure of what they were used for.
The ones in the village can be explained and were probably used for storing sea birds eggs, wool, etc but cleats have been built everywhere....on the top of the hills all over the place.
Maybe it was a challenge for the young men in the winter to build a cleat in the most extreme place they could find? A sport perhaps? A way of staying fit in the winter months. I have to say if you get a chance you must visit this place.
We walked up to the top of the ridge and got attacked by Skuas again. Pretty bloody scary. Very unusual wild sheep and their wool clinging to lichen covered rock.
This is a view of the village from the top.
The people of St Kilda lived from catching sea birds, fulmar, and puffin and using them for oil, food, and clothes. One gets a very strong sense of the way they lived by being on the island.
We thought we would never get there....waiting for a fair wind...a safe wind to be sure of not getting in to trouble in Village Bay....eventually we set off in not enough wind......had to use the engine most of the way...a very gentle headwind I remember. There are so many stories of people going all the way only to find they can't land. I remember feeling that it wasn't going to be a big deal, after the Faroes, sort of preparing myself for disappointment. So much has been written about St Kilda and its extraordinary history and the spartan life of the inhabitants and their relationship to the birds and the sea. So it was a shock to see Boreray emerging to starboard....it took my breath away.
Hypnotic, mesmerising. I could not take my eyes off it. I made Gav promise me that we would sail close to it tomorrow. For now we needed to drop our anchor in Village Bay on Hirta. From a few miles out it is hard to make out where Village Bay is exactly...then suddenly it is obvious..... a lovely wide entrance ( perilous with the wrong wind direction) Lots of room to put the anchor down. Most boats here are on day trips from the mainland...fast motor boats with their passengers strapped in. A jerky uncomfortable way of travelling most of the time , but the only way to get to see these islands which lie 40 miles of the coast of Harris. The first thing we notice is a huge ugly army building in the prime position on the shore. Massive, green, like a factory. We go ashore, and soon the ugly building fades away and we are entranced by this place. The warden welcomes us and we walk up the old street and past the old houses.
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| Cleats and walls on the hill |
We walked up to the top of the ridge and got attacked by Skuas again. Pretty bloody scary. Very unusual wild sheep and their wool clinging to lichen covered rock.
This is a view of the village from the top.
The people of St Kilda lived from catching sea birds, fulmar, and puffin and using them for oil, food, and clothes. One gets a very strong sense of the way they lived by being on the island.
The next day we took Kyle around Boreray as promised. A bit more wind today. As we got near to Stac Lee I realised that the silver sheen was caused by thousands of Gannets living and breeding on the rock face.
Feeling a bit shaken up we took Kyle to the shelter of the cliff side of Hirta and we had a lot of fun getting really close to the cliffs and peering into caves.
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| The Seal Cave |
