A Breakfast Request

A Scalpay week. Sounds fascinating, doesn’t it. A week in a Gaelic speaking B&B sounded even more fascinating. A chance to practice a language I’d been studying for a few years. I also had some unfinished business on Harris: a minor island easily reached from Scalpay by a bridge. And so I booked a week-long stay on Scalpay in the best time of year to do that, late spring. 

On the first day I made the circular walk to the Scalpay lighthouse, and was late getting back to the B&B. I was the only one staying there, and as I climbed the stairs to the room my host Annabel asked what I’d like for breakfast. I tried to say what I wanted in Gaelic, and as I did she nearly gasped, a look of puzzlement on her face; it was as if I’d asked for fried cow-pooh and boiled bull testicles (maybe I did.) 

I repeated my request in English: I'd like a bowl of corn flakes, two fried eggs, toast and coffee. She was still puzzled, a puzzlement that puzzled me for a few puzzling seconds. Then I realized most Americans want the full Scottish breakfast: porridge, eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, potato scones, tomato, mushrooms, kippers, and black pudding (I felt my arteries harden as I wrote that). Such a breakfast would leave me incapable of doing anything but having a heart attack, and then resting in peace, forever. She was very happy with my selection. It meant she did not have to get up at 4am to start cooking.

Old Scalpay Light

Scalpay lighthouse is an impressive sight, one most people only see from the Uig to Tarbert ferry. But you can get a closer look by making the mile-long hike from the end of the road on Scalpay. The tower seen today was built in the 1820s. But hiding below it is the original lighthouse, the first built in the Western Isles. It dates to the 1780s, and used whale oil burned in front of a reflector. 

The artist William Daniell spent a night on Scalpay in 1818, and produced an aquatint drawing of the old lighthouse.

Old Scalpay light - 1818

Same scene - nearly 200 years later

In the previous photo you can just see the top of the old light to the right of new tower. The shell of the old tower is intact, but its interior has almost completely rotted away. And it will only get worse, as just a few timbers remain of its roof; allowing rain, wind, and birds in to do more damage.  

The old light - some 230 years old

With such a historic destination, the walk to Scalpay lighthouse is a great starter to introduce someone to Hebridean hiking. The terrain is boggy in a few places, and it is easy to lose sight of the marker posts, but the walk is so short that you can't really get lost (though there may be times when you may think you're lost). You can read a description of the hike here.

Inside the old Scalpay tower

The Cretetree Hulk

Last time I was on Scalpay I spent four nights at Dail-na-Mara, a B&B on Scalpay's North Harbour. On the shore below the house was a massive, derelict barge that appeared to be made of cement. It was quite an eyesore, but was making itself useful as a jetty and storage area for the local fishermen.

Later I would learn that this no longer afloat boat was the Cretetree, a 180-foot-long concrete barge built by the Aberdeen Concrete Shipbuilding Company in 1919 for hauling iron ore. (The first five letters of her name come from her con-crete construction.) Cretetree's working life as a transport ended in 1953, and somehow they got her to Scalpay in 1955.  That's 60 years now, and she's so solidly built she'll probably be there for another 60 years. See this RCAHMS page for more on the Cretetree, and this Electric Scotland page for the history of the Aberdeen Concrete Shipbuilding Company.

Drochaid Scalpaigh - Scalpay Bridge

This is the 1000-foot-long Scalpay Bridge, which opened in 1997. The first photo was taken from MV Chalice on a Hebridean cruise I took in 2006. We motored under the bridge on our way to find an anchorage south of Tarbert (Harris).

As we passed under the bridge I noticed this group of young people fishing off the base of the Scalpay end of the bridge. I promised myself that someday I'd visit that spot.

It took me seven years to make good on that promise. In June of 2013 I spent five nights on Scalpay. On the evening of one of those days I put a can of beer and a bag of crisps in my pack, wandered over to the north end of the island, and then descended the grassy hillside below the bridge. 

At the base of the bridge I took a seat on the spot where I had seen those folks fishing seven years before. I cracked open the beer, ripped open the bag of crisps, and then enjoyed them as I listened to the bridge sing. It was windy, and the bridge acted like the string of a bass; a low frequency groan that came and went with the wind. I sat there for an hour, and then made my way back to the B&B (Dail na Mara). I tend to overuse the term 'memorable', but it was indeed a memorable evening.