Wednesday 18 April 2018

Last day on Lewis & Harris

After a terrific breakfast we set forth to Stornoway town to have a look round before going on for the ferry back to Ullapool.

First stop was at the Lewis Loom Centre.  Hmmm.



Now, this was an interesting place.  Kind of a cross between a high-end fabric shop (although with a preponderance of tweed!) and a tat shop, and not for the faint-hearted.  In fact, there was some really interesting stuff here, all dark and disorganised apparently - although the proprietor knew where everything was and was a fascinating guy!  Lois bought a piece of tweed big enough to make a skirt from and, probably most exciting of all, with it came the Harris Tweed label for her to sew in, because the tweed was hand-weaved on Harris.

Then on to Lews Castle and its museum.  The castle isn't old - Victorian, and bought by Leverhulme (remember him from an earlier post) then given back to the parish in 1923 when vereything went wrong with his life!  Lews Castle College (part of the UHI) is in the grounds.

The museum is small, but beautifully laid out and gives a fascinating story of the area and the islands.  We spent a very happy couple of hours there.

AND IT HAS A STARBUCKS!


That was that.  Lewis and Harris done - for now anyway.  We were very taken by this place and we intend to come back.

The ferry journey back was uneventful - just as good as the journey over here.  We'll share one photo, though.  This is sailing down Loch Broom towards Ullapool.  The snow-covered mountains in the distance really frame it well and make a terrific backdrop to Ullapool that's just visible to the right of the ship's flag.

 



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