As I stood on the Bridge to Nowhere last July, I did some time-travelling. I could see myself, 27 years younger, standing on that very spot, as I set out on one of my first long-distance Hebridean walks, the 12-mile trek along the coast to Ness. The agenda for my walk this time was not as ambitious. It was a sweltering hot day, and I only wanted to hike the first three miles of that route to the rock stack of Dùn Othail.

Once over the bridge, I came to a way-marker sign that had not been there when I last came this way. As I would soon discover, the route is now extensively dotted with marker posts, which made for an easier hike than I'd had last time.

The first mile of the walk is along a dirt track. It initially headed due east, with sweeping views back to the vast curve of Tràigh Ghearadha. Also to be seen at the far end of the beach was the hundred-foot-tall rock stack of Caisteal a' Mhorair, the Nobleman's Castle, capped with the ruin of a small fort.

The road turned to the north, then abruptly ended at a concrete bridge over Abhainn na Cloich, the river of stone. This little bridge marks the end of Lord Leverhulme's planned road to Ness.

Right after the bridge, a marker post indicated a 90-degree turn to the right was called for. Back in 1998, I'd gone straight here, which led to an hour of slow bog hopping. After making the turn, I followed a boot-beaten path to the east. After cresting a rise, Dùn Othail came into sight.

A bonus of following the marked route was that it went past a beehive cell I'd missed on the walk in 1998. It looked to still be occasionally used, as it had a tin roof that covered spots where the corbelled roof had collapsed. According to the 1880 OS map, there were another five cells near here, but I was unable to find them.

From the beehive, it was a short walk to a spectacular overlook of Dùn Othail. There is a ruin near its base, possibly a chapel, that I wanted to see if I could reach. Easier said than done, for the terrain facing the stack was cloaked in deep heather. Walking through the heather was treacherous, as it hid lurking holes, ready to break your leg if you weren't careful.

After slowly making my way down the steep slope, I was able to see part of the ledge that was the site of the possible chapel (centre of the next photo).

Not only was the steep slope covered in thick heather, but its lower reaches had sections of sheer rock, with a direct drop to the surging sea. There was no safe way to get anywhere close to the ledge, so I scrambled back to the top. There had been a fort on the stack at one time, manned by the Morrisons of Ness. It was here at Dùn Othail that one of the leap tales of Hebridean folklore occurred, that of Leum Mhic Neacail, MacNicol's Leap. Here is one version of the tale, which is identical to the story of Gorrie's Leap on Mull.

A MacNicol was castrated for some misdeed. Seeking revenge, he kidnapped the infant son of the chief who had sentenced him to this punishment. His pursuers almost had him in their grasp when he managed to get up onto Dùn Othail. Dangling the child over the sea, MacNicol had some bargaining power. He demanded that the chief castrate himself; otherwise, he would drop the child on the rocks. The chief did as demanded, and once MacNicol saw the bloody proof, he shouted, "I will have no heir, and neither will you." He then jumped off the rock, killing himself and the infant.

It was now time to turn around, as I was going to hike part of the north end of the path the following day (see the August 12th post). After retracing my steps back to the Bridge to Nowhere, I made my way down to take a close look at the sea stacks of Tràigh Ghearadha. 

The largest stack, nearly a hundred feet high, is Caisteal a' Mhorair, the Nobleman's Castle. At its top are the ruins of a small fortification and, like the stack of An Coroghan (The Prison) on Canna, the only access is via a steep, turf- and rock-covered slope that you can see at the centre of the next photo.

I am too old these days to attempt the climb. But there was still something spectacular to see, as the stack is pierced by a cave that is accessible at low tide. Fortunately, although the tide was on the rise, the cave was still reachable.

The rising tide was starting to flood the cave, but I made it through without getting too wet.

As I drove away from the Bridge to Nowhere, I recalled the first time I was there, on a May day in 1997. It was, in a sense, a sad day, as our vacation was at an end, and I did not have time to make the long walk to Ness. It was a walk I had to do, so I came back a year later to do it, as recounted in Chapter 7.2 of Thirty Years of Adventures in Search of the Past: The Outer Hebrides. It is one of the supreme Hebridean hikes that can be done in a day, and along the way you'll encounter several shieling sites, some still in use, along with a view of Dun Othail, and the evocative ruins of Dune Tower and its cliff-top chapel.

Return to Dune Tower and the Dougal Monument

Last month, I had the chance to return to a few places on Lewis I'd not been to for nearly 30 years. It was back in 1998 that I made the Tolsta to Ness walk on what is now called a "Heritage Trail", a 17 km (10-mile) walk described in Chapter 7.2 of Thirty Years of Adventures in Search of the Past: The Outer Hebrides.

Taking advantage of some spectacular July weather, I drove up to Ness and took the side road to Skigersta. At the end of the paved road, I found a small parking area next to a Heritage Trail marker at NB 5431 5129. There was room for three cars, but it was empty. It seemed no one else was interested in walking this brilliant stretch of coastline on a perfect July day, which was fine by me.

I was soon on my way down the peat track to the Cuidhsiadar shielings. The entire area, on both sides of the track, was a vast peat field, and I passed numerous peat stands drying in the morning sun.

Two miles into the walk, I came to Cuidhsiadar, a group of shielings still in use, clustered along An Abhainn Dubh, the Black River. The river is spanned by a cement bridge, which I remembered crossing back in 1998. For someone walking north, which I was back then, it marked the end of the boggy parts of the walk. For me, heading south this time, it marked the beginning of dealing with soupy, squishy, and tiring terrain. The next photo is looking back north across the bridge to Cuidhsiadar.

After crossing the river, the track became fainter with every step as it climbed to the south. If I kept straight, the track would take me to Filiscleitir, another village of shielings still in use. However, I noticed a series of waymarker posts for the Heritage Path, markers that had not been there in the last century, which led off to the east. And so I followed them to the clifftops.  

A boggy series of ups and downs had to be crossed, including two treacherous swamps that required a lot of zig-zagging to conquer. The gaiters saved the day, as at one point I sank to my knees in slimy muck. But it was worth the effort when I reached the cliff edge and Dune Tower came into view.

In his book Island Memories, John Wilson Dougal writes about a nighttime arrival at Dune Tower. It was a much different experience than my approach on a sunny summer day:

Approaching in the darkness with great care, since the sound of dashing waters was heard on the cliff edge, a pathway was reached which, when seen next morning, revealed itself as the edge of a chasm, one side dropping two hundred feet to the sea. Inside the house blazed a cheerful peat-fire, on which a store of scones and cakes had been prepared by the kind folks who had arrived earlier. About midnight they bravely went off to their village, four miles away, lighting their path with a lantern, leaving me alone in the haunted house. This is a haven completely furnished, even to the cragman's rope lying in a corner of the kitchen.

It had been quite an undertaking to build the house. Between 1907 and 1920, Iain MacNeachail (John Nicolson), a former Baptist preacher in America, had a house and a nearby chapel built. Nicolson dreamed for years of having a home and chapel near where his father had a shieling. Nine tons of sand were brought in by boat and carried up the 200-foot cliffs. And several tons of cement, along with all necessary lumber and fixtures, were carted across the moors from Ness, six miles away.

In front of the house, almost completely covered in tall grass, were two low stones planted firmly in the turf. In his book The Haunted Isles, Alasdair Alpin MacGregor tells that they mark the grave of a man who fell to his death while birding on the nearby cliff, long before the house was built. By the time they retrieved the body, it was too decomposed to transport it to Suainebost Cemetery, so he was laid to rest here, near the top of the cliff where he died. In the next photo, you can just see the two stones in the foreground.

The house was much more dilapidated than when I was last here. The following two photos show how more of the north gable has fallen (the first photo was taken in 1998).

Knowing that another historic ruin was close by, I continued south along the clifftop.

Five minutes later, Nicolson's chapel came into view. It looked just as it had in 1998, all four walls stood complete, and two lancet windows graced its western gable. Nicolson built the chapel for the people who inhabited the Filiscleitir shielings in the summer. It must have been a serene place to worship, as it overlooks the small bay where the Leum Langa River tumbles to the rough waters of the Minch. Here are a few photos of the chapel. The first dates to 1998. 

It was getting late in the afternoon, so it was time to start back. Knowing where the worst stretches of bog were, I did not follow the markers, but kept a bit higher on the hillside. Once back through Cuidhsiadar, I followed a side track that cleaved through the peat fields east of the main track (NB 5468 6019).

The peat road turned into a grassy quad-bike track, and I was able to easily make it halfway to the coast. Where the track petered out, I could see my destination a half mile away: a white obelisk rising from the edge of the cliffs. 

The ten-foot obelisk sits atop a two-tiered pedestal. It has a metal plaque embedded high up on one side. The plaque has an engraving of a rock-hammer, along with the name John Wilson Dougal and the date 1905.

It was in 1905 that JW Dougal noted the flinty-crush bands of the Outer Hebrides. He was the founder of a chemical company in Edinburgh and an amateur geologist in his spare time. For many years, he explored the geology of the Outer Hebrides and was the first to describe their flinty-crush rock formations. You're asking what flinty-crush is, aren't you? Here is one definition I found: 'It is an ultracrushed variety of mylonite, in which the primary structures and porphyroclasts are obliterated so that the rock becomes homogeneous and dense with little parallel structure.' In layman's terms: it's very hard rock.

Dougal, who died in 1935, believed that a band of this rigid material, stretching the length of the Western Isles, helped them survive the effects of glacial erosion. He wrote up many of his adventures in the Hebrides, and after he died in 1935, they were published in the book Island Memories.

I'd come to the monument for two reasons. The first was that reaching it was the culmination of my walk back in 1998, one of the first long-distance Hebridean walks I'd ever made, and I wanted to revisit that milestone of my island walks. The second reason was that I'd been asked to send a photo of myself at the monument to Valerie O'Grady. Valerie, who lives in Australia, had kindly sent me a photo of her grandfather, JW Dougal, which I used in the book.

I was tired of crossing bogs, so instead of returning to the track as I'd done in 1998, I decided to follow the spectacular coastline to the north. And so I followed the cliffs, aiming for Skigersta jetty, a mile away. It was the right choice, as it took me past Cladach Cuidhsiadar, a stunning white sand beach at the mouth of the Cuidhsiadar River.  

A half hour later, the village of Skigersta came in sight, and after rounding the ravine carved by the Skigersta River, I came to the tarmac road that leads to the jetty. 

I reached the car six hours after setting out. Next to the small parking area, hidden in tall grass and long ignored, was an old information board about the Tolsta to Ness path. I pulled out some of the grass to uncover it, as I wish I'd seen it at the beginning of the walk. If you ever have the chance to walk the route, even if only part of it, do it. It is spectacular.

Nostar & the Seaforth Roller Coaster

If you ever find yourself staying at the Rhenigidale Hostel, be sure to wander a mile up the west shore of Loch Seaforth to the deserted croft at Nostar (NB 226 033). To get there, you start by following the path that leaves the Rhenigidale road 150 feet SE of the hostel.  

If you are lucky, you may encounter Widget the cat on the road or somewhere along the path.

The path takes you up and over a low ridge where you pass through a gate that marks the beginning of the Gearraidh Mhurchaidh croft. The path then continues north before dropping down to Taigh a’ Phuist, the Postman’s House, at Gearraidh Mhurchaidh. When the Postman lived here, the house would be a welcome sight after making the 12-mile round trip to Tarbert, which involved climbing the 950-foot-high mountain pass between Urgha and Rhenigidale. Taigh a’ Phuist is known for its ‘Roller Coaster’, a 250-foot-long tram used to bring supplies to the house. It consists of a trolley that slides on four iron rails down to the shore of Loch Seaforth. 

The path ends just beyond the house at an elegant footbridge over the Gearraidh Mhurchaidh Burn. From there it’s a cross-country bash through heavy vegetation as you climb 200 feet up and over the east shoulder of Mulla. Once at the top, it’s an easy descent into the croft land of Nostar. 

At Nostar there are the ruins of several homes. The most substantial is a house that was never completed. A while back I was told the story behind the unfinished house, but my memory fails me. If anyone out there knows the story, please get in touch. 

In the 1890s, Nostar was home to a family of eight: Donald MacInnes (Domhall Nostair), his wife Chirsty, and their six children. Their story is quite tragic. Donald had acquired a 30-foot herring fishing boat in 1893, and in December of that year Donald and his crew of four went missing. 

The crew that sailed out with Donald on a December day in 1893 included his 15-year-old son Norman and three men from Eilean Anabaich, which lies three miles northwest of Rhenigidale. The men from Eilean Anabaich were Donald MacInnes’ brother-in-law Roderick Shaw, Roderick's son Angus, and  Roderick's brother Angus.

After anchoring off the west coast of the mainland with two other Rhenigidale boats, Claymore and Try Again, the three ships set out to return home. A storm blew up when they were near the Shiants. It started snowing and they became separated. Only Claymore and Try Again made it home to Loch Seaforth. A few days later (Dec 12) a shepherd found two drowned men tied together on the shore near Sandwood Bay (pictured below), 60 miles from where they were last seen. 

The Sandwood shepherd was from Lewis and recognized the bodies as Donald MacInnes and his son Norman. (The two men were buried at Oldshoremore Cemetery, four miles south of Sandwood). A bit later a search party discovered the wreck of Donald’s boat north of Sandwood on Strathcailleach Beach. Then, on Dec 18, the bodies of Angus Shaw and his nephew were recovered and buried at Oldshoremore. The last of the five-man crew, Roderick Shaw, was never found.

Donald MacInnes of Nostar left behind his wife Chirsty and six children: Duncan (13), Roderick (11), William (9), Margaret (6), Marion (4), Donald (2), and Norman (10 months). Roderick Shaw of Eilean Anabaich left behind his wife Salvia (Donald MacInnes’ sister) and five children: Duncan (14), Donald (13), Kenneth (11), Margaret (8), and Mary Kate (18 months).

The most recent tenant of Nostar (that I know of) was Kenny MacKay, who still lives in Rhenigidale. Kenny was the last postman to have the route to Rhenigidale before the road was built in 1987, and his story is told in Rhenigidale: A Community’s Fight for Survival, published by Acair in 2016. An interesting reminder of Kenny’s time at Nostar is the rusting ruin of his tractor.

Also to be seen at Nostar is a strange object snaking its way down from the top of the ridge. It is the remains of a very long pipe set in place to bring fresh water down from a mountain loch to the shore. It was a failed attempt to come up with a way to clean sea lice from farmed salmon (freshwater kills the lice). It was a failure, but the fish farm is still there. (The location of the pipe is indicated with arrows in the next photo.)  The second photo below is looking east from Nostar to the fish farm and 1470-foot-high Caiteseal.

Here ends a stunning walk up the far shores of Loch Seaforth. If you are inclined to make it a loop walk, you can head west over the ridge from Nostar and then drop down to the road. From there, a two-mile walk will take you back to the hostel (pictured below). Otherwise, return the way you came.