• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Everybody saw this coming.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

“woke” is the new caravan.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Mobile Menu

  • Seattle Meet-up Post
  • 2025 Activism
  • Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On The Road – way2blue – Outer Hebrides

On The Road – way2blue – Outer Hebrides

by WaterGirl|  September 10, 20205:00 am| 30 Comments

This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging

FacebookTweetEmail

On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.

Submit Your Photos

The sand and sky in the first photo are amazing, and the sky in the next two photos, just outstanding.  So calming and beautiful.  Plus we get sheep!  ~WaterGirl

way2blue

I visited the Outer Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland last July. Seems a lifetime ago. My family name originates from that part of the world and I was curious to see the landscapes of my ancestors. Of course the islands are quite different now. In part because the Vikings cut down most of the forests a thousand years ago and they never recovered.

Once I adjusted to the stark vistas of peat, lochs, and rock (so different from my home of oak woodlands & redwood groves), it became quite appealing to see the sweep of the land and sky. But the most evocative sight was the abandoned villages. There’d be a village marked on the map, but when you drove through found maybe a cluster of empty stone buildings. The isles and crofts never recovered from the clearances of the mid 1700s. (I can trace my father’s lineage back to Philadelphia, 1750.)

On The Road - way2blue - OUTER HEBRIDES 7
ISLE OF SOUTH UIST

Beach and big sky on west coast of the Isle of South Uist.

On The Road - way2blue - OUTER HEBRIDES 6
ISLE OF BENBECULA

I enjoy being in the northern latitudes in June or July for the amazing sunsets that morph a few hours later into sunrises. This is a view from our cottage near Griminish at 11 PM, with a glimpse of the never ending twilight. The owner of the cottage has the same family name (slightly different spelling), and encouraged me to visit the historical museum on South Uist and a cemetery or two. The museum had a chart showing my ancient lineage from ~1000, starting with the Norse-Gaelic Somerled to ~1350 when the last clann patriarch was assassinated (a bug in the clann system).

On The Road - way2blue - OUTER HEBRIDES 5
ISLE OF LEWIS

View toward the loch from our farm stay in the village of Tolsta Chaolais at 1130 PM, again showing the amazing twilight. The roads in the Outer Hebrides are mainly single track with pull outs every kilometer or so. You develop a rhythm with oncoming traffic after a while as to who yields and who drives on; learning quickly the message of flashing headlights…

On The Road - way2blue - OUTER HEBRIDES 4
ISLE OF LEWIS

Lobster traps at the Port of Ness, a historical fishing port and the location of ‘The Great Drowning’ (Am Bathadh Mor) in December 1862 when 5 fishing boats sank in a gale, drowning 30 crew, leaving 24 widows and their children [“A national appeal raised £1,500 for the fishermen’s families, however, shortly after the donations were distributed the money was taken away as rent for the crofts they lived on”; www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-20766930].

On The Road - way2blue - OUTER HEBRIDES 3
ISLE OF LEWIS

Torn machair (a fragile soil which forms when sand is blown onto peat moorland) near the restored Gearrannan Blackstone Village.

On The Road - way2blue - OUTER HEBRIDES 2
ISLE OF LEWIS

Sheep being shorn with clippers, adjacent to the blackhouse village. (Also near Carloway Mill where warp threads are woven on looms from the late 1800s, then given local crofters who weave the weft threads to produce Harris Tweed.) You can watch Harris Tweed being woven on a traditional loom in the village.

On The Road - way2blue - OUTER HEBRIDES 1
ISLE OF LEWIS

Sheep being shorn with clippers, adjacent to the blackhouse village with a couple sheep dogs standing by in case a sheep gets a crazy idea… (We took a walk with the farm’s sheep dog one day, and he would get in these stare-downs with grazing sheep, which would spook them. When we mentioned this to the farmer he said, ‘yep, that way his dog has plausible deniability about harassing the sheep.’)

On The Road - way2blue - OUTER HEBRIDES
ISLE OF LEWIS

Shorn sheep after being tagged.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Wednesday/Thursday, September 9-10
Next Post: Thursday Morning Open Thread: Vote Biden, If You Want to Live »

Reader Interactions

30Comments

  1. 1.

    JPL

    September 10, 2020 at 5:09 am

    What a wonderful trip, and thank you for sharing your journey with us.

  2. 2.

    John Revolta

    September 10, 2020 at 5:30 am

    Mrs. Revolta is gonna love these pictures in the morning. She’s been to Lewis (20? years ago) and she loves it.

  3. 3.

    raven

    September 10, 2020 at 5:33 am

    wow

  4. 4.

    Yutsano

    September 10, 2020 at 6:29 am

    Lookit dem border collies! What a wonderful look into a part of the world few rarely get to see.

  5. 5.

    tom

    September 10, 2020 at 7:04 am

    I’ve been to the islands of Iona, Mull, and Staffa, and can’t wait to return to Scotland and the Hebrides. A gorgeous part of the world.

  6. 6.

    gkoutnik

    September 10, 2020 at 7:05 am

    Wow again.  Thanks.  I love that kind of desolate grandeur, and you photograph it very well.  Took the family on an ‘ancestor tour’ through England (including The Tower) and we all talk about it to this day.  So glad you had the chance to do that.  Thanks again!

  7. 7.

    p.a.

    September 10, 2020 at 7:09 am

    Wonderful photos, thanks.  ‘Griminish’ sounds like a Tolkein town name.

  8. 8.

    Wag

    September 10, 2020 at 7:26 am

    Fantastic photos, especially the reflected sky in the second photo.

  9. 9.

    Albatrossity

    September 10, 2020 at 7:40 am

    Thanks for these; that is a wonderful and evocative landscape.

    Coincidentally I am currently working on a series of pics from a trip to the same part of the world in 2008, and even more coincidentally I also was interested in seeing the land of my ancestors. My great-grandfather emigrated from Scotland about a century after your relative, and we were able to locate the abandoned house and barn on the farm that he grew up on. That series should start on Mondays in a couple of weeks!

  10. 10.

    eclare

    September 10, 2020 at 7:51 am

    • Great photos and story!
  11. 11.

    arrieve

    September 10, 2020 at 7:52 am

    What a wonderful way to wake up this morning. Scotland is one of the most magical places I’ve ever been, and I’ve been to Skye but not the Outer Hebrides. Top of the list for when travel is possible again…..

    Thanks for sharing your wonderful pictures.

  12. 12.

    Zinsky

    September 10, 2020 at 8:45 am

    Wow seems to be the right expletive here….  The sky really does go on forever in that magical place.  I love the expansive desolation of places like this – it really makes you think about how very small we are in this great universe.  Thanks so much for sharing!

  13. 13.

    cope

    September 10, 2020 at 8:55 am

    Thank you for the pictures.  The landscape resonates with my own Scots/Irish roots and the fact that I spent four summers in the far north of Scotland.  Alas, I never made it to the islands further north.

    As for the sheep, the last summer I was there, 1978, I worked with a shearing team who also used the hand clippers, not the electric ones.  Being inexperienced, my job was to catch individual sheep (Scottish blackface sheep as in your pics, I believe) in the fank (pen) and drag them out to the guys with the skill to do the shearing.  They let my try my hand at shearing one but the results were slow and blood specked and I gladly returned to my role of sheep catcher.

    Fun fact: because of the lanolin in the wool, after a day of catching and hauling sheep by the fleece, my hands were remarkably soft and smooth.

    Another side gig that summer (it was a languid summer of itinerant part-time jobs including barkeep and petrol pumper) was netting salmon out of sea lochs, a highly illegal endeavor (the English landlords would have chucked us in stir).  My partner in crime and I would row out as it got what passes for dark in July and August up there and string a couple of nets.  The next day at dawn, we would row back out and haul the nets and fish in.  The fish we sold to local hotels and B&Bs for beer money.  Our daytime wages shearing sheep went for food and petrol.

    Thanks again so much for stirring all these memories of mine.  That was the last wild and free summer of my life as two summers later, I would find myself married and with a child and an actual stable career.

  14. 14.

    bluefoot

    September 10, 2020 at 8:59 am

    These photos are beautiful. I was supposed to be in Scotland for vacation this August, but the pandemic got in the way of that. I am hoping that some time next year other countries will allow Americans in…

  15. 15.

    Miki

    September 10, 2020 at 9:11 am

    Adding another wow – wow.

  16. 16.

    kh

    September 10, 2020 at 9:34 am

    Beautiful photos!

    A piece of music that fits some of them – the band is from Uist, where the video was shot:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvV2fy75v1c

  17. 17.

    Albatrossity

    September 10, 2020 at 9:53 am

    @kh: Thanks for that video; wish I understood Gaelic!

  18. 18.

    Miss Bianca

    September 10, 2020 at 10:37 am

    I visited the Outer Hebrides in 1988 – in September, so missed the long long summer evenings – have never forgotten it. Thanks for the photos!

  19. 19.

    J R in WV

    September 10, 2020 at 10:39 am

    Wife’s fave Irish band is Black 47, who are working class socialists.

    Highly recommended, used to play in NYC bar scene, very popular with Irish union members! Songs about putting Company managers in their proper place, which I will leave to your imagination.

    Great photo set, such empty space since the Lairds put the people off their land. Somehow this comment loaded before I was thru typing… go figure.

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    September 10, 2020 at 10:40 am

    @Albatrossity:

    Reading that you were able to locate the abandoned house and barn on the farm that your anscestor grew up on brought tears to my eyes.  What a wonderful surprise.

  21. 21.

    Origuy

    September 10, 2020 at 11:30 am

    @tom: I think I took the same tour. Ferry to Mull from Oban, bus across Mull to Finnaphort, small boat to Staffa, a few hours there, then a boat takes you to Iona, the ferry back to Oban. A really nice day. I got a great picture of Fingal’s Cave on Staffa.

    Great pictures. I have a friend who grew up on Lewis. That’s on my bucket list.

  22. 22.

    satby

    September 10, 2020 at 11:41 am

    Those landscapes speak to my heart, though I’m Irish, not Scottish.

  23. 23.

    cckids

    September 10, 2020 at 12:05 pm

    How lovely, thank you! Scotland and Ireland are at the top of my fingers-crossed *someday* list.

    I’m heading out today for a (somewhat) backcountry camping trip to the Olympic National Forest. Please FSM no fires, for much bigger reasons than my little vacation.

  24. 24.

    TEL

    September 10, 2020 at 12:21 pm

    Lovely pictures! I visited Scotland years ago, but didn’t go further north than Inverness. Even so, these pictures are bringing back memories of that trip!

  25. 25.

    way2blue

    September 10, 2020 at 8:50 pm

    @Albatrossity: I look forward to seeing your photo essay—as usual.  N.B., I have photos from Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands I hope to send to WaterGirl someday soon…

  26. 26.

    way2blue

    September 10, 2020 at 8:53 pm

    @arrieve: For those thinking of visiting the Outer Hebrides, and who also like detective stories, I recommend reading the Lewis Trilogy by Peter May ahead of time [The Blackhouse, 2011; The Lewis Man, 2011; The Chessmen, 2012].  Lots of history woven into his stories and wonderful descriptions of the landscape.

  27. 27.

    way2blue

    September 10, 2020 at 8:55 pm

    @cope: What a great experience.  Thanks for posting.  Would love to spend more time exploring the islands & the highlands.

  28. 28.

    way2blue

    September 10, 2020 at 9:07 pm

    @kh: Perfect.  Thanks.

    I was fortunate to hear a fiddle & bass duo at a house concert before the pandemic shut things down.  The fiddle player is from the Fraser clan near Inverness, and shared a hilarious story about busloads of Outlander fans driving through the neighborhood.

    Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas  [alasdairandnatalie.com/listen]

  29. 29.

    way2blue

    September 10, 2020 at 9:08 pm

    @Origuy: Again.  I recommend reading the Lewis Trilogy by Peter May before you go—especially if you enjoy detective stories.

  30. 30.

    kh

    September 12, 2020 at 4:53 pm

    @Albatrossity:

    another tune from the same band (possibly a cover?) still focused on the Hebrides, but with some English lyrics:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0bBr9Y5FM

    or

    https://open.spotify.com/track/2Z61khw9DoMf81BS0ib1Yb

    or “The Story” from the album listing:

    https://music.apple.com/us/album/osgarra/1382759013

     

    (hard as it may be to believe – musicians get their best “per-play” payments from apple music)

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - BarcaChicago  - Off the Gunflint Trail/Boundary Waters 8
Image by BarcaChicago (7/11/25)

World Central Kitchen

Donate

Recent Comments

  • NobodySpecial on Open Thread: ‘Look, Everyone Dies’ (Jul 11, 2025 @ 8:05pm)
  • Formerly disgruntled in Oregon on Friday Afternoon Distraction Open Thread: Get the Passport Stamped with All the Right Signals… (Jul 11, 2025 @ 8:04pm)
  • Martin on Fox News Friday Open Thread (Jul 11, 2025 @ 8:04pm)
  • Geminid on Friday Afternoon Distraction Open Thread: Get the Passport Stamped with All the Right Signals… (Jul 11, 2025 @ 8:04pm)
  • prostratedragon on Friday Afternoon Distraction Open Thread: Get the Passport Stamped with All the Right Signals… (Jul 11, 2025 @ 7:58pm)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
No Kings Protests June 14 2025

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Feeling Defeated?  If We Give Up, It's Game Over

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!