Outer Hebrides trip Day 7 – St. Kilda – 0 miles (on the bike)

Boy oh boy, was I excited when I got up this morning – I was going to St Kilda!

I don’t know how long I had known of St. Kilda – but it felt like somewhere I had always been aware of and this was just too good an opportunity to miss.  Although it was quite expensive (£160 for the day), it really is a unique place that not many people get the chance to visit.

For those who are not aware of St. Kilda, it is a group of small islands and sea stacks about 45 west of North Uist.  The islands have been inhabited, on and off, for many 1000s of years.  Their isolation led to distinct customs and even unique animal species.  The most recent islanders lived mainly by catching seabirds for food and enjoyed a tough existence on this island on the edge of the world.  After many people leaving, the final 36 people asked to be evacuated in the 1930s and the island was abandoned.  It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site for both cultural and natural interest.  The islands are now owned by The National Trust for Scotland and are the ultimate getaway.

There is plenty of information here and here.

After a good hearty bowl of porridge and a cup of coffee, a quick shower and then I wandered down to the pier.  I turned up about 7:45 and Angus was there – but no boat!  He explained that his boat (which is in it’s first season and cost over £400000!) hit something on the way back last night and had broken it’s propeller.  He was awaiting a spare part and the boat was going up on a slipway later that day.

My heart sank – but then he explained that his old boat (which he’d sold to the guys at Sea Harris) was luckily not out that day, so Seamus and Coinneach of Sea Harris was going to take us that day.  His old boat sat the same number of people (12) but is not as large or powerful as his new boat, but it was perfectly fine by me.

We all boarded – it was an interesting bunch of people, a couple of Japanese tourists, some locals, a couple of Danish students, other people traveling around the isles.

Off we went into beautiful sunshine.  I was rather pleased to see the sea was looking very flat.  I am not a great sailor and was worried that the 3 hour trip would be very tough.  I had taken some anti-sickness pills but still I know how easily I can get ill.  We gently left Leverburgh and passed a series of little islands.  Some of them had seals relaxing in the sunshine.

As we left the Sound Of Harris, Seamus opened up the taps and got the boat up to speed – the 700HP engine could easily make the boat cruise at about 17-18 Knots.

The trip was very smooth and I enjoyed the sun as we all hung out on the back deck of the boat (near the back is also where the boat is moving the least, so minimised risk of sea sickness).

After about an hour and three quarters, a very, very small hump was visible on the horizon.  This was the first sighting of the islands.  But we still had another hour or so to go!  The journey was interrupted by a school of common dolphins joining us for a brief while – it was great to see them jumping in and out of our wake.  Sadly, I could not get a photo of them.  There’s an awful lot of marine life in these waters and they regularly see basking sharks, minke whales, killer whales (orca) and a whole range of dolphins.  Today would hopefully be a good day to see whales as the sea was so flat.

The islands got bigger and bigger until you could start to make out the different islands – there are three major islands in St. Kilda – Hirta (the largest and the one where people had lived), Soay and Boreray.  There are also several sea stacks including Stac Lee and Stac An Armin (the tallest sea stack in the UK at 196 metres).

Finally, we came towards Hirta and Village Bay.  There was a beautiful sailing boat in the bay – this is used for a three day trip to islands (one day out, stay on-board, one day on the island, one day back – all fully catered etc.).  There was also a reminder of just how harsh this spot is with the wreck of the Spinningdale lying on it’s side in the bay – this ran ashore in February and made headlines around the world with the fear of rats getting onto the island and destroying the bird colonies.  It’s now been drained of fluids and will, hopefully, be salvaged next year as it is a little bit of a blot on the landscape and not so good for the UNESCO status!

We dropped anchor and headed to the jetty in a small dinghy (the boat can not come alongside the jetty to eliminate the risk of rats getting from larger boats to the island) and were then met by Bill Shaw the National Trust Warden.  He gave us a quick introduction to the island and explained a few things – there were a few areas we could not visit as there is a quite large military presence on the island.  I was pleased that there are now toilets on the island that can be used by visitors (my guide book had said that this was not the case!).  He explained about a whole load of temporary fencing around the island – this was because there were 16 academics studying the soay sheep on the island.  Soay sheep are an ancient breed and represent a window into early domesticated animals.  They are a lot smaller than sheep we see on the mainland and there were poeple measuring them, studying their behavior etc.  The ranger seemed to take delight in tales of these highly qualified academics running around catching sheep!

The weather was superb – really quite hot and sunny indeed.

After hearing from Bill, we were allowed to do our own thing for the next 5 or 6 hours.  People obviously had different priorities and some people went straight off towards the bigger hills (Connachair is the tallest hill on the island) whilst others headed into the village.  I headed towards the village – via the cliffs where it was possible to photograph Spinningdale properly.

The first site is the store house and gun.  The store was used to store feathers – this was one of the ‘currencies’ the islanders used to pay their rent to the landowner.  The gun was built in the First World War to protect the island from attack by U-Boat (the island was shelled in 1918 to try and destroy the radio masts).

From the store, you pick up the street and walk towards the Kirk (church) and schoolroom.  Both were very plain and simple buildings – inside and out.

The street is a fascinating mix of new and old buildings.  The newer houses were built in the 1860s and replace the older blackhouses.  Of these newer houses, National Trust working parties have re-roofed 6 of them and made them habitable for people working on the island.  You can not go into these houses (as they are in use by the sheep counters as their living quarters), but you can go into any of the abandoned houses – both the blackhouses and the new houses.  Inside many of the houses are plaques showing who lived there at the point of final evacuation in 1930 – it’s moving to see the names and think of the many generations of these families who’d lived on the island.  Tellingly, most of the plaques indicate that there were not many men left on the island at the time of evacuation.

One thing that quickly strikes you are the cleits.  These are storage buildings and look like small blackhouses – they were used to store the birds they’d hunted, ropes, wood (very rare commodity!), peats etc.  There are around 1300 cleits on the island – and they are everywhere.  Even as you look up onto the horizon of the large hills, you see them.  Each family might own around 30-50 cleits and it was the owner’s responsibility to make the cleit stock-proof.  If a sheep got into your cleit and died, you had to pay the owner compensation.

The islanders menfolk would meet in the street each morning (except Sunday) to discuss what work needed doing that day.  By necessity it was a very co-operative lifestyle.

There’s a museum in one of the restored houses with lots of information on life on St. Kilda – truly fascinating.  I finished my walk up the street and decided to head towards the Gap or Saddle – this is the bit between Conachair and Oiseval hills and is good for views of the village and looking over towards Boreray.  There were dozens of cleits up there still.  The views of the village were incredible.  The cliffs even here at the saddle were very high – nothing compared to those around the back of Conachair – something like 427 metres high – the highest cliffs in the UK.  I sat in the sun and ate my lunch looking down on the village – it was a very enjoyable experience indeed.

After lunch, I headed down the hill and towards the other side of the island towards Dun.  There were lots of the soay sheep here and it must have been a lot of fun chasing them again here!

I walked up towards the Mistress Stone – one of two locations where the men of the island would show off their balancing skills in order to impress potential wives.  I didn’t fancy trying it myself!

Time on the island was running out, so I wandered down to the little shop – there were lots of great books there, but I was not able to buy any due to lack of room on the bike – I will order them on Amazon when I get home.

We got back on the boat with a cup of tea and some ginger cake waiting for us (ginger is good for sea-sickness).

In the harbour at this point was a RIB – apparently, you can get from Lochmaddy (in North Uist) to St Kilda in an hour and a half.  I did not fancy that idea at all – RIBs are pretty scary and bumpy!

We set sail to what was promised to be even more exciting than being on Hirta – must be good!  So we sailed towards Boreray via Stac Lee (a massive sea stack) and Stac An Armin (the tallest sea stack in the UK) – both of which have enormous gannet colonies.  Both of these stacks were visited by the islanders to collect birds.  There were bothies on both stacks.  In 1727 a group of 10 men and boys ended up getting stranded on Stac An Armin for 9 months!  The reason was that the entire population of Hirta had died of smallpox whilst they were on their (planned) 2 week stay on the stack.  There are 74 man-made structures recorded on Stac An Armin – but it looked like a horrific place to stay for any length of time!

The birds were so noisy and there were millions of them flying around.  Even on this relatively calm day, the swell near the stacks was huge.  We went around the back of Boreray and there were hundreds of puffins sat on the sea and diving down for fish – amazing sight!

We headed back towards Leverburgh.  The trip back was a little rougher and a couple of people were ill.  I did not feel great – but was not ill.  I spent time chatting with one of the Danish girls who was doing a PhD in Edinburgh on the ecology of the machair – so she gets out to the Hebrides 6 or 7 times a year!  Coinneachtold us about all the whales and so on he’d see over the years sailing around the Hebrides.  It really is incredible how much marine life is out there.  Sadly, today we weren’t being lucky.

I do have to say I felt very emotional leaving the islands – but I also knew I would have to come back some time in my life.  I am already thinking about applying to go on a work party on the island which would mean 2/3 weeks on the island helping with refurbishing the houses etc.  That really would be a great escape from the world!

The day really was unforgetable and the islands will probably haunt me for the rest of my life.  I got back to my tent very tired, slightly sun-burnt and terribly happy.  Today will undoubtably be the highlight of the trip – it has been a highlight of my life really!

Read about day 8 here!

Outer Hebrides trip Day 6 – Rhenigidale to Leverburgh – 49.04 miles

A great morning promising sunshine.  However this of course meant the midges were out in force again.  So after a quick shower, I very quickly struck camp and headed off.  The fast descent into Rhenigidale meant that my first job of the morning was climbing out of there.  It was tough, but not as tough as coming in (and I don’t think that is just because I was fresh compared to the previous night).  On the road out of Rhenigidale is a phone box – it amused and impressed me that BT maintain these boxes in the middle of nowhere (most of them don’t accept cash anymore, so I guess that BT really don’t need to visit that often now).  The logos on the phonebox were the old T ones – this was phased out (as I looked up when I got home (I am that sad!!)) in 1991 in favour of the piper logo (himself now phased out).

The descent towards Tarbert was very fast and steep – I saw cyclists at the bottom heading up.  Rather them than me!  Right at the bottom of that descent (I missed the turning with the speed I was doing) is a turn off towards Huisinis – this is meant to be a beautiful road and I wish I had time to cycle down every road, but I didn’t – however, I did want to see the whaling station at Bunavoneader (Bun Abhainn Eadarra) so I quickly flicked round and headed about a mile down this road.  The whaling station is an interesting spectacle – there’s not much to see other than a large chimney and the ramp where the whales would be dragged onto land to be butchered.  I don’t know much about the UK’s whaling industry and there is potential there for some kind of information centre or something.

On towards Tarbert.  I had promised myself a fry-up breakfast (assuming, of course, that there would be somewhere to have one) as I hadn’t eaten anything this morning in my desire to get away from the midge hell of Rhenigidale!  The midge risotto of last night had not been that filling either – so I was hungry!  The last three miles into Tarbert seemed to take forever.  I arrived and quickly saw that it was not a very exciting place – however, it did have several good things including a cash machine (first one I had seen since Stornoway) and a tea room.  Sadly, the tea room did not open until 10:30 – so I went to look in the tourist information office and also got some much needed funds from the bank!

The First Fruits Tearoom in Tarbert is a little gem – I enjoyed a great breakfast there (and reminded myself how much I like good black pudding!) including the first good coffee of the trip (other than those made on my own espresso maker!).  Thoroughly enjoyed that breakfast – oh, and the fresh orange juice was good as well!

The guy from the family I had seen near Uig beach popped in to get a coffee and a cyclist who’d stayed at Rhenigidale also had his breakfast there.

Great breakfast – set me up for the day!  Finished up and popped into the grocers to get lunch etc. before setting off.

I caught up with the guy who’d been in the hostel – he was a teacher from Portree in Skye, we rode together for a while – he was a nice guy with plenty of good advice on the islands.  We parted ways as I wanted to visit Luskentyre (Losgaintir) as it was meant to be a fantastic beach.  I was not disappointed by the beach at all.  It really was beautiful – blue sea, mountains in the distance and white sands – spectacular.  I walked along the beach and it was easy to imagine that one was in the Caribbean or something!  The sun was even out nicely now.  This beach is a real treasure and would be great to spend time on if you had kids etc.  It was not crowded at all – and a few people were swimming in that clear sea.

The rest of the trip towards Leverburgh was very pretty – I had elected to take the west coast (this was the main route down to Leverburgh) rather than the east coast (known as The Bays).  The ride around the Bays was a backup plan for tomorrow if I did not get to St. Kilda – though the weather appeared to be on my side for now!  There is more camping in Harris than is generally advertised – one could camp at what looked like a good site at Horgabost and there was some camping in the Bays for sure.  There were great sections of dunes and beaches – very pretty indeed.

Leverburgh is a nice little town.  The supermarket was pretty well stocked – I picked up some further anti-midge protection – a citronella candle and some bog Myrtle stuff that is supposed to keep them off.  I caught up with the white VW camper family in the supermarket – they’d camped at the Uig site last night rather than Kneep and said it was great.  They could not believe I was on a bike as they had first chatted with me only a day and a half ago and about 100 miles away.  It is funny how you see people time and time again – there was a family in a yellow VW camper who I had first noticed on the ferry from Ullapool – the dad wore short shorts in all weather and did not look like the kind of man who would paint flowers on his yellow VW camper – but you never can tell!  I had seen them again in Shawbost and Calanais.  I guess people follow similar routes whether they are in cars or on bikes.  The car people just have a little more time to do stuff than cyclists who have to sit on the bike for several hours a day to go the 50 miles or whatever.

I went to the bunkhouse I was staying at – and was mighty impressed.  Ruari (the owner) has done a great job with this place and I can highly recommend it in every way – I camped, but the bunk rooms looked great as well.  It was very colourful inside with lots of interesting bits of shipwrecks on the walls and built into the design.  The Am Bothan website is here.

I decided not to pitch my tent quite yet as the weather was still pretty good – but I ate a little sandwich.  At this point there was a quite heavy shower – hopefully this was not a bad sign for my St. Kilda trip tomorrow!  Anyway – the rain stopped, so I left my bags at the bunkhouse and headed towards Rodal (Roghadal) to see St Clement’s church.  It was the first time in nearly a week that I’d ridden the bike without bags – boy did it feel funny and almost wrong!  It felt horribly twitchy.  Weird how quickly you get used to a sluggish, heavy monster!

The church is fascinating – it almost grows out of the stone and is one of the most impressive churches on the islands.  It is quite eerie inside as it is completely empty – no pews or anything.  There is the mid 16th century grave one of the MacLoeds designed for himself about 20 years before he died – very impressive indeed.

I headed back to Leverburgh (hitting a highly irresponsible 42.3 mph on the way back – I’d previously kept my speeds under about 35 mph due to the weight of bags and the thought of stopping it).

I needed to get a bag for St. Kilda – you have to carry everything you need for the day (food, clothes etc.) as there’s nothing there.  I could have taken a pannier – but it’d have been a pain.  Anyway, a weird little shop/post office supplied me with a lovely cloth bag – it was so tacky, but it was the best I could do……

Pleased with my purchase and looking forward to being the most stylish person on the trip, I returned to the bunk house and pitched my tent.  There was a group of divers staying at the bunkhouse and they had caught some great looking crayfish – it was a bit distressing to watch them kill it in the kitchen – but I guess that’s nature!

I managed to charge my phone and camera batteries and also called the people running the St Kilda trip (Kilda Cruises) and they confirmed that the trip was going ahead.  I was so excited!  I had to ring my mum as she’d sent me a nice text saying she was crossing her fingers that I would get there!

So I made my dinner and then prepared sandwiches etc. for the next day.  It was going to be an early start (8 am leaving the pier), so I went to bed.  I did, however, get up in the night to use the loo and was reminded that there are a LOT of stars out there.  It was a near full moon, and the skies were clear and I could see thousands of stars – incredible.  I stood out there looking up for a few minutes and realised that we do miss so much living in cities.  In London, you’re lucky to spot half a dozen bright stars due to the light pollution.  Amazing!

Read about day 7 here!

Outer Hebrides trip Day 5 – Kneep to Rhenigidale – 54.6 miles

Woke up to a beautiful sunny day – much better than yesterday.  Sadly, the wind was back!

The ride back along the B8011 was just as enjoyable as the ride in yesterday – staggering scenery.  I was rather hoping that I’d have a tail wind for part of it (having battled in horrendous head winds yesterday), but it seems that the wind was not on my side and decided to give me a fight back along the road.

I reached the main road after about 18 miles and headed towards the south of Lewis.  This really was all very remote – very little traffic and truly remote.  I stopped for lunch and enjoyed one of the best pies I have ever eaten – Stag Bakeries Steak Pie – delicious!

The scenery was magnificent and very desolate.  There were not many houses or villages.

At Balallen, there was a great memorial to the Deer Park Raiders – a very interesting tale indeed.

Somewhere on this road (and I still don’t really understand where the border is), I reached Harris!  So, goodbye Lewis, you’ve been great!

Just after Scaladale, I stopped to admire the view and take in the view of An Cliseam (the tallest peak on the Outer Hebrides at 799 metres).  Setting off, things got a bit more vertical and the climb out of there was long and tough.  However, after reaching the top and descending slightly, I could see my next challenge!  The road to Rhenigidale looked terrifyingly steep!  However, first I admired the views of Loch Shiphoirt – truly awesome.

Turning off the main road, I descended a very scary bit of single track – all good fun!  But, then the fun stopped – the climb up over to Rhenigidale was brutal.  Tiny little road and ever so steep at points.  This really was tough after a long day.  Finally I got to the top and then another descent into the village.

Rhenigidale is remote to say the least.  It’s about 5 miles to the nearest village and access by road only became possible in 1987.  Prior to this, it was only accessible by sea or walking about 6 miles cross-country.  It’s a tiny little village – less than 10 properties.  One of these is the Gatliff trust hostel and it’s a really great getaway location.  Very basic hostel, but ideal.  The camping space is very limited indeed – there’s really only room for 1 small tent – so luckily, it was not occupied and I was able to pitch my tent.  I wandered about the hills for a while before returning to the hostel.

I decided to have a look over the bike and found I’d broken a spoke on my rear wheel – I thought I had heard something when I’d stopped at Scaladale – it sounded like I’d got a stone under the tyre and it had pinged out from underneath.  I’ve never broken a spoke in my life and here I was in the most remote part of the island without a spare.  I was rather worried about it all as I thought more spokes might pop now this one had gone.  Luckily my bike has disc brakes so the slight kink in the trueness of the wheel would not affect braking.  I loosened off the two adjacent spokes just a touch to even out the kink a little.  Oh well.

Things then got hellishly worse.  Rhenigidale appears to be the midge capital of the islands.  I have never seen anything like it.  My dinner had more midges in it than it had risotto!  I could hardly leave the tent and, at times, they sounded like rain hitting the flysheet of the tent so hard!

I appear to be very tasty to the average midge and get bitten a lot – luckily, they do not itch me much once I have been bitten, just give me the little round red spots.

I really was a prisoner in my own tent and it was a pretty miserable night – compounded with slugs crawling up the inner of the tent – and slugs really are my least favourite thing.  Overall the camping at Rhenigidale is pretty poor.  It is a tiny spot and the midges and slugs are too much.  I wish I had stayed in the hostel that night.

I was even more amazed when a group of german campers turned up and pitched their two little tents on what must seriously be a 40 degree slope!  How they slept I will never know, but I guess the hostel was full – certainly seemed to be a lot of people there.

I went to sleep feeling a little dissapointed with it all – broken spoke, crappy camping, midges etc.  But, I hoped tomorrow would be better!

Read about day 6 here!

Outer Hebrides trip Day 3 – Stornoway to Shawbost (via the Butt of Lewis) – 56.11 miles

Awoke to pretty good weather and was itching to get out of Stornoway and into (what I hoped) would be the more remote parts of the islands. It was also a Sunday – and things are very different on a Sunday here in Lewis!  There is almost universal sabbath observance here – EVERYTHING is closed.  Not just shops and restaurants, but also visitor attractions etc.  I was aware of this, so I had prepared myself and ensured I had enough food on the bike for the day and night.

I was certainly right about the remoteness – I was rewarded instantly with a ride across the A857.  Empty road as far as the eye could see – excellent.  Very few cars indeed.  Saw these enormous dragonflies – not that I had never seen one before, but I was a little concerned about the effects of hitting one these whilst going downhill – that’d hurt quite a bit!  Also on the road over the moors was plenty of evidence of peat cutting season.  It’s quite a complex operation by the looks of it and there were dozens of pallets with peats stacked on them.

One of the most interesting things on that road was the Clach Aonghais Greum (Angus Graham Stone).  This was an enormous stone painted white with a little plaque on it.  Apparently Angus moved the stone in about 1850.  It did not say how far though!  He was known as The Strong Man Of The West Side.

I hit the coast again and turned north towards the Butt Of Lewis.  There is some fantastic archaeology on the side of the island and the next thing I saw was the huge standing stone at Ballantrushal (Baile an Truseil).  This magnificent stone was nearly 6 metres high – very impressive indeed and really whetted my appetite to see much more over the coming weeks.

Just beyond that is a very enigmatic stone circle and cairn at Steinaleit.  The site is very interesting and has a real hold about it.

I carried on and saw some worrying weather rolling in – things looked a little grey and I saw my first ever twister in the UK.  I might be making this up, but I am sure I heard somewhere that the UK has more twisters and tornadoes per square mile than anywhere else.  They’re (fortunately) very small though.  Still it was great (and a little worrying) to see.

I then saw what was one of the more amusing sights of the trip so far – suddenly, out of nowhere, at 11:45, the quiet roads became jammed up with cars.  There were dozens and dozens of cars on the road – all containing men and women in perfect morning suits and dresses with big hats!  There were, of course, all on their way to church.  The midday service at most of the churches in Lewis was a Gaelic service.  There would be an English service at 6pm.  I did wonder which was the most popular – did people go to both?  Anyway. the Gaelic service must have been packed based on the number of cars that suddenly appeared!

As a non-church goer (and my Gaelic is a little patchy!), I carried on towards Port Nis, where there is a pretty little harbour and beach.  I sat on the sea wall and made my lunch and relaxed a while watching the ocean.  There’s always something special about sitting near the sea.  Brings life back to you.

After lunch, I headed up towards Eoropie and the Butt of Lewis.  At Eoropie is a very interesting church – the church of St Moluag.  It was interesting for many reasons, but in particular I liked the little side building.  The church was always associated with strong healing properties and this small building was rumoured to have been built to enable lepers to watch services through a small viewing window.  The main church was locked, but I was able to go in the lepers chapel.  Very pretty little church indeed.

I then carried on to the Butt Of Lewis.  I guess for many people, this is the end of their trip (if they are sensible and ride the islands south to north), but, to me, it felt almost like the beginning of the trip even though I was a couple of days into the trip already.  I LOVED this part of the coast.  The rock there is some of the oldest on earth (the Lewis Gneiss is around 3000 million years old) and the landsacpe is very brutal with incredible distortion of the rock.  Even on this calmish day, one could see the power of the sea – it must be awe-inspiring here on a stormy day.  Truly an exciting bit of the coast.  I really enjoyed it here and thoroughly recommend it as a place to visit.

Sadly, I had to leave this amazing place and returned down the road towards Shawbost.  This section did prove quite tough with headwinds and worried me for the rest of the trip!

On the way to the campsite, I first stopped at Arnol where there is a very interesting blackhouse museum.  Blackhouses are a typical Hebridean home with thick stone walls and a thatched roof.  They had no chimneys and were known as blackhouses due to their colour from the peat smoke.  Sadly (it being Sunday), the museum was closed, so I wasn’t able to visit.  But interesting non-the-less.

I stopped by Bragar where there is an enourmous whalebone arch outside a house.  This came from a blue whale that washed up on a nearby beach and the bones were recovered by a local school teacher.  It really is a humbling experience to see just how big this creature must have been.  Quite amazing!

I arrived at the campsite and had a chat with the owner – it’s a nice campsite again with good facilities.  The weather was still pretty sunny and I sat on the grass for a while.  I ate some food and then decided to head down towards the beach for a walk.  Sadly, it did start raining heavily whilst I was out – but it did not stop me seeing a lovely beach and then (once the sun came out again) a double rainbow (and you don’t see those every day!).  Back to the tent and then to bed after a great day.

Read about day 4 here!

I’m back and ready to tell all

Coming back into London this morning, I was certainly filled with fear and trepidation – not just for all the stuff I knew would be on my desk and I have to clear before I jet off next week to the US for a conference, but for all the crazy stuff that goes on here – how busy, dirty, hectic etc. it is.

My ride home certainly proved those fears.  I suppose I will get into the swing of it all fairly quickly though.  However, I will not forget that trip as it will live with me forever.  I am looking forward to writing about it, just to remind myself of the great time I have had.  I know a blog is ideally meant to be a spontaneous, stream of consciousness and here I will have to write about stuff that happenned 2 and half weeks ago – but I will do my best.  I wrote a lot of notes whilst I was away – so hope I can write ‘in the moment’ and express my feelings at the time without anything that happenned later in the trip prejudicing that.

I will have so many photos as well to go up on my Flickr site.

It’s going to take a while – so be patient!