When my brother and I decided for Scotland as our travel destination, we imagined everything but white beaches and turquoise water. We hadn’t planned to lounge lazily at the beach. We wanted to hike up mountains, see castles, drink Whisky and watch Scotsmen throwing around with tree trunks.
Once our destination was set I started my motivated research of places the we might want to visit. As expected my first results were castles, lochs and nature parks. But I also came across some photos of white beaches with caribbean flair and bright sunshine. Seriously? Let’s keep that in mind, were our initial thoughts.
Those beaches we saw online supposedly were located on the outer Hebrides. Back then we actually hadn’t planned a pricy ferry trip to those islands. Being in Scotland for the first time there would be enough to see on the Scottish mainland wouldn’t there?
Well, sometimes things turn out differently, and we found ourselves on the ferry to Lochmaddy (I’m planning on writing another more detailed post about the outer Hebrides and the ferry rides). We arrived at the heaviest fog you can imagine, and after an extremely rainy day on the Isle of Skye our hopes of the perfect postcard day weren’t exactly high.
And again it turned out differently. Our first full day on the (southern) Hebrides was the sunniest and warmest day of our entire vacation. We enjoyed this day to the fullest, driving and running around happy and motivated. I’m even grinning now that I’m writing this down. It was one of the most memorable days in Scotland (though there were some other quite unique experience, but more about that later).
We travelled southwards, had a little hike along a loch on the side and made it all the way down to the Isle of Eriskay, which is connected with the other Islands with a bridge. Basically all islands are connected via bridges on the southern part of the outer Hebrides. From North Uist we started and passed Benbecula, South Uist and reached Eriskay in the end. To go even further to the south you would have to take a ferry from Eriskay to reach the Islands Barra, Vatersay, Sandray and Mingulay. The view towards those other Islands was quite promising, yet we didn’t feel like going on another ferry ride (3 in 2 weeks are enough I’d say). And I mean… look at that view we had:
Actually we could have jumped into the water – at least a couple of tourists did so, but we decided to stay in the warm sun and simply enjoy an atmosphere that we wouldn’t have expected when we started our vacation.
Eriskay is a tiny island and we had discovered it rather quickly by car. Basically there’s the ferry port, where you can also find the beach – that’s it for our part. Though we read about wild pony’s on Eriskay we weren’t lucky enough to find them. We merely passed a couple of houses and after an extensive break at this picturesque beach we left Eriskay and discovered other parts of the Outer Hebrides.
Should you be interested in visiting the Outer Hebrides and got the weather on your side you shouldn’t miss the Isle of Eriskay.
Yet, if you’re staying on the northern part of the Hebrides you might want to pay a visit to Luskentyre beach. Luskentyre was the first photo I came across during my research for the Hebrides. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t on our side when we visited this place, so I don’t have any photos for you (we still had a great time there).
