Friday notes

Occasional showers, but also sunny intervals this morning. Down the road in Harris, a three day conference is taking place on the Outer Hebrides' involvement in whaling in the past. When you drive from Stornoway to Tarbert, the main village in Harris, you may discern a chimney stack to the right as you pass the Huisinis turnoff. This is more or less all that remains of the old whaling station at Bunabhainneadar, half a mile down the road. This whaling station was one of the many enterprises by Lord Leverhulme by which he tried to improve the lot of the islands of Lewis and Harris between 1918 and 1923. Like most of his projects, it failed. Primarily, because he ran out of money.

Another project involved the building of a fishery port at Carloway, linking it to Stornoway, 16 miles to the east, by light railway. The train would carry the fish to the main town for processing. The railway was never constructed, although the trackbed is still there - over it cars now run on the Pentland Road.


Project number three never to be completed was the road between Tolsta and Ness - a look at the map shows that there is no road, only five miles of bog. The modern road out of North Tolsta peters out on the Bridge to Nowhere, a magnificent concrete structure at Garry - in the middle of nowhere, leading nowhere. Beyond the bridge, the hard surface of the road ceases.