I have an article in the latest issue of Scottish Islands Explorer about a walk to Hairteabhaigh, a remote ghost village on a far corner of South Uist. The journey was a six-mile loop walk from South Glendale that also passed the site of the schoolhouse of Glaic Ruairidh, immortalized in the poetry of Dòmhnall Aonghais Bhàin.
See the following link to get a copy of the magazine:
https://www.scottishislandsexplorer.com/index.php
Last month I had an extraordinary opportunity to spend a day on Loch Rog to set foot on four of its now uninhabited isles. The boatman picked me up at Bosta beach, at the north tip of Great Bernera—the 'Best Beach' as it's called by the locals. To get to Bosta I had to cross the Bernera Bridge, which I'd last traversed in 2019. As I approached the bridge things looked quite different. The road suddenly curved right and, instead of leading to the 100-foot-long pre-stressed concrete bridge of 1953, took me across a brand new, steel-girder bridge, which was opened in December of 2021.
Once over the bridge, I climbed to the standing stones of Callanaish VI to take a photo of the old and new bridges. Standing side by side above the swift-flowing waters of Struth Earshader, the bridges are the reason Great Bernera is still a vibrant, living island.
