L2L Day 86 Dalabrog to Cill Donnain - 8 miles

By arriving earlier yesterday afternoon, Sally had managed to arrange an appointment with a specialist to check over her foot in the hospital in Benbecula - apparently with the number of walkers and cyclists visiting the islands, the NHS has set up a designated walk-in service for tourists.  

This was going to involve a 65 minute bus ride so she caught the 09:10 and I set off to walk to the Flora Macdonald Museum at Cill Donnain (Kildonnan).

As I walked into the village I decided to call in to the local 'Share Daliburgh' Thrift shop and met two lovely volunteers - cousins, Margaret and Rena. Both from Dalabrog.

Rena told me that, way back, she'd met and married a Yorkshireman who she brought back to the island and he'd never wanted to leave. We joked about whether she'd picked up his accent or he, hers.

Margaret had run the local Post Office for 42 years and had been the local Registrar of births, deaths and marriages.


For a small property, half the floor area arranged with clothes racks and book shelves, the other half with tables and chairs offering scones and pancakes, the charity has  done extremely well, raising over 110k to help local causes.

Their phenomenal work was rightly recognised when Margaret and Rena were invited to a reception at Holyrood where they met Charles, Camilla and Edward. 

The ladies are great fun and I could imagine the place being very popular for a cup of tea and a chat. I even convinced Margaret to share her secret scone recipe so that I could use it for fund raising at the Arundel Festival in August.

With a darkening sky and approaching rain clouds, I headed back down to the beach to pick up the route of the Hebridean Way.

In the sand dunes at Claidh Hallan, there are the impressive remains of some late Bronze Age roundhouses...and some very good information boards!

Apparently there was a cluster of 7 houses here in a settlement about 80m long. Between 2500 and 200BC it's believed that there were 200 such settlements on the machair of South Uist.


From the archaeological evidence it seems that the main house was rebuilt a number of times but appears to have been in permanent occupation for 900 years making it one of the longest inhabited prehistoric houses in the world.

Then on to the beach proper - interestingly the marker posts were in the sand dunes implying that the route should go across the top of the dunes. 


This didn't seem right to me so I walked down on the beach - though it was soon to be high-tide so I ended up skipping between the occasional wave ripple and the stones at the top of the beach. 


This good luck couldn't last and I eventually ran out of beach so had to climb back over the sand dunes and walk along a couple of the deserted fairways of Askernish Golf Club.


..before they ran out and I resorted to a wider section of the deserted beach. Not the easiest or quickest of ways to make progress.


I noticed that apparently the roundhouses were likely to have been roofed with larger sections of driftwood - presumably at that time, all natural. Not so nowadays, along the 3 or 4 miles that I walked, the beach was littered with plastic flotsam, lobster pots, crates, nets, ropes, fishing buoys, bottles - Bronze Age architecture could have looked so different.

By now the mizzle had long turned to rain and it was becoming heavier as I was eventually able to turn inland towards Cill Donnain.

The Flora Macdonald Museum was well worth a visit if only to prompt me to read more about the Jacobite Rebellion and the alliance with France. There were some amazingly brave, committed, intelligent and clever people around in the 1750s

The cafe was good too and they allowed me sit and warm up a bit while I waited for a short while for Sally on the 13:30 bus back to Dalabrog. 

Sally had had a good result from the doctor in Benbecula and then interesting chats with the bus driver and a retired vet on the return journey about sheep on St Kilda and the inate ability of lambs to swim. 

Public transport is great.

With the doctor's thumbs-up all should be good for tomorrow.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

L2L Day 1 Dover

Image
While waiting for the 09:14 from Arundel to Dover Priory , I had a perverse exchange with a driver on the taxi stand who I thought was cleaning out his coffee machine. After a brief, rather one-sided discussion over coffee blends and flavours greeted by his puzzled expression, I realised he'd actually  been cleaning his vacuum cleaner and the detritus from the floor of his taxi. Ah well!  Here's to more enlightening conversations over the next few months!! £37 gets you two tickets from Arundel to Dover Priory in comfort in just about 3 hours which at a rate of about 10p per minute, I reckon is pretty good value. Alas, on arrival in Dover  and checking-in to the hotel, the smiling receptionists told us they had no mains water supply. Catastrophe!!!! While looking for alternative accommodation, we were also struck by the intriguing instructions on their key-cards. With the prospect of no showers or flushing loos, we checked in to Dover Travelodge - cheap, cheerful and with...
Read more

L2L D5 Rye to Hastings - 13 miles

Image
With the prospect of a longer walk today, we had an early breakfast and were out to enjoy Rye in bright sunshine and a gentle breeze. There were few others around and we almost had the streets to ourselves. Our route for today. My apparel for the day now includes Barrie and Sheila's oyster shell from Whitstable. After  leaving Rye, we walked along the Royal Military Canal and came across a Stanton shelter dating from 1942. These were of prefabricated concrete panels that could be bolted together. This one was used to provide shelter for the men organising a Starfish decoy - made up of lights and fires set up in the middle of fields - a long way from habitations to mislead and confuse Luftwaffe pilots into believing that they were flying over a burning town and thus drop further bombs - out of harms way. Along the Royal Military Canal we came to the ruins of Camber Castle.  Commissioned by Henry VIII, he realised that the location could defend the whole of the estuary. Today, a...
Read more

L2L Day 2 Dover to Folkestone - 11 miles

Image
The weather forecast for the day was promising full sunshine all day but a low temperature combined with a keen wind from the North resulting in a 'feels like' temperature of 2 degrees. It was going to be a cold walk. Despite the forecast, the bright sunshine gave us a welcoming start to the day. Before heading out of town, our eyes were caught by a shop selling an alternative form of transport which might well become more attractive as the days go on. The 'Savvy Defender' had an air of indestructability and at a mere 6 and a half grand seemed to be a mere snip. We soon realised that the route was not going to be flat. The King Charles III coastal path as it heads West rises steeply out of Dover with open views back towards Dover Castle, the White cliffs and the harbour. The route westward passes the Drop Redoubt, built in 1804 to fend off any French invasion. The walk along the clifftops was a delight   with hearing our first skylark of the year, gorse coming in to f...
Read more