The Northern Machair and Benbecula

Monday 8th June 2015

I first had the idea of walking the whole length of the Outer Hebrides soon after my visit in 2011 and a search on the internet brought to my notice a book by Peter Clarke (published by Northampton Square Ltd) called "The Timeless Way" that describes a walk the author did along the Western Isles starting from the Butt of Lewis and ending on the Isle of Vatersay. This book became my inspiration throughout my planning of this walk even though I eventually decided to do the walk in the other direction. When I heard the local council was planning to build a long distance path across the Hebrides that would be completed summer 2015 I decided this was when I was going to be doing my long awaited walk. Unfortunately the building of the new Hebridean Way seems to have been delayed as up to this point in my trek I hadn’t seen a single trace of this new path, much to my disappointment. The day before this walk I had seen a new path near Loch Druidibeag, but I have no idea whether this is part of the Hebridean Way.

Since I had no idea of the route of the new long distance path, and there is no sign of it on the ground, I had to resort to the route of Peter Clarke’s Timeless Way written almost ten years ago. Unfortunately, for various reasons I had not been sticking exactly to this route and that had led to me doing a lot of walking along roads, which was becoming very tiresome. By the end of this day I was so fed up with all the road walking I was thinking of abandoning the whole trek. Ultimately I should have waited a year or two until the new Hebridean Way was built and all the signage was in place as I’m sure I would have enjoyed that walk considerably more than this one. At the start of this day it was raining once again, which it had been doing every day of my holiday and was itself bringing me down, but it soon stopped raining and it would not rain again for a whole week.

I started the walk by resuming along the Machair Way, which I had walked along on Saturday. On that day I had thought the Machair Way was badly signposted, but now I began to spot the arrowed signs that marked the route and wondered if I had simply been unobservant. My route headed north across the wildflower-rich grasslands of the machair until eventually I left all trace of a track or path and continued north across the fields with the birds continuing to screech overhead that had been accompanying me throughout my walk across the machair. Eventually I reached the edge of the Hebrides Range, which I had skirted the day before, but now, since it was not active, I was able to continue north across the middle of the missile testing range just as Peter Clarke had done when he walked the Timeless Way. The new Hebridean Way will, I presume, go around the military range, but I have no idea what route it will take.

Near the barracks I joined one of the range roads and followed this for a while until my unending quest north prompted me to leave the road and head across the grasslands once again until I eventually left the rocket range behind at Cill Amhlaid. My onward progress now was tediously along the road that passes the townships that line along the northern edge of North Uist with views across the sea and over the South Ford to the island of Benbecula. It was curious to see, dotted beside the road, several small mother and child shrines that date from the 1950s when the Hebrides Range was being established. This reminder of the deeply ingrained Catholic culture in this area is unique in the British Isles and made me feel like I was walking in a different country far from Britain. I followed the road through the townships that hug the coast until eventually I reached the main road at Carnan where a short walk across the causeway brought me to the fifth island on my Hebridean expedition, Benbecula.

After stopping at the Co-op in Cregorry for some food, I turned off the main road onto the coastal road and after passing a school I took a road on the right north that became a path and after passing through Torlum took me to Griminish township. The Timeless Way turns east at this point to a path that Peter Clarke described as “rather soggy,” however I was concerned that I was running out of money so needed to head to the north-western corner of the island and the relatively bustling town of Balivanich. A path is marked on the map from Griminish that would take me in the right direction, but soon after taking it I was led into a quagmire that was rather more than soggy. Against common sense I kept going for longer than I should until eventually with no trace of a path around me I came to my senses and waded back through the bogs until I was once more back on the road. Feeling more than a little frustrated with Hebridean footpaths I wearily walked along the road back onto the coastal road and eventually reached Balivanich.

This town was actually quite a surprise for me as it doesn’t conform to the Hebridean norms that I had become used to, due to several small estates of ex-Ministry of Defence housing that made the town seem positively suburban. The military base and the nearby airport has transformed Balivanich into the administrative centre of the Uist islands and was ideal for my aim of getting some money and some non-food supplies, for which MacGilivray’s, a gift shop, was very helpful. Peter Clarke was disappointed that his Timeless Way didn’t go through Balivanich and that he didn’t get a chance to visit MacGilivray’s, so at least on my diversion I was able to do that. Following the road out of the town I climbed past Loch Dùn Mhurchaidh to the main road and along a track opposite past the local tip and around Ruabhal, the highest hill on Benbecula, to the point where the track just starts to descend and there I made camp with a view across the loch-filled eastern moor.

My end point on this walk was a tranquil spot with no sign of civilisation besides the track to Ròsinis on the eastern coast, but the rest of the day had not been good. It was a very tiring walk and I felt that I had not encountered anything of interest throughout the day. However, I had passed extensive wildflower-rich grasslands on the machair and dramatic coastal scenery between Benbecula and South Uist, but I felt like I had already seen views such as these before, and that I was unbelievably getting used to the unique Hebridean landscape. I had reached the low point of my holiday at the end of this day, so much so that I considered abandoning the whole thing. I was disappointed in the non-appearance of the new Hebridean Way and was not confident that the Timeless Way was going to deliver a satisfying walk. It is tragic to think that in the stunning surroundings below Ruabhal I was wishing I’d never started.