Day 4: Stornoway

Tom and a Lewis Chessman

Today, we decided to stay closer to home and headed to Stornoway for a look around.  It was another lovely day - blue sky and sunshine - hurray.  Stornoway is by far the biggest settlement in the Outer Hebrides and bigger than most settlements in the Highlands.  It has a population of 6,000 (3x Ingleton) but then there are lots of outlying villages which brings the population up to over 10,000, so significant.  The Isle of Lewis is quite different from other islands in that it doesn't rely on tourism for its income (although I'm not sure what it does rely on other than fishing etc).

You would think that Stornoway would be full of touristy shops, but they were pretty few and far between.  There were quite a few empty shops, giving you the impression that the town is a little down on its luck at the moment.  There was a Boots, an Argos, an M and Co., a bookshop, a sports shop, an Edinburgh Woollen Mill (of course), a couple of Harris Tweed shops and that was pretty much it, oh, except for a wool shop which I couldn't help but investigate - was one of the best I have ever been in - I could have happily spent hours in there looking at all the yarns, ready to get inspiration, but when you have two boys tagging along, that's not an option.  There is a cinema / arts centre and somewhere there is a swimming pool and an airport and that is Stornoway.

Lews Castle

Obviously, it is also a working harbour, we found a nice sculpture of a fishing man, looked at the boats, walked around to the port where there was a freight ship in and that was the town covered.  However, it was now time for lunch, so we headed to the grounds of Lews Castle where we knew there was a cafe called the Woodland Centre which is rated as the second best place to eat in the town.

Now, since we have been here, we have only ate out once, and that was fish and chips last night.  Unusual for us on holiday (in Japan we didn't eat in at all except breakfast).  The reason being, there are very very very few places to eat out.  Once you are out of Stornoway, there doesn't seem to be much at all.  I'm not sure if it is because as I said they don't cater much for tourism, or because with them being strict Presbyterians, they don't see the need to eat out, or maybe they don't have much disposable income (we could buy a small hotel here for the price of our Ingleton home).  We were therefore quite excited at the prospect of a lunch out.  It was good enough, but not amazing, I guess the place isn't known for its food.

Stornoway harbour

After lunch we headed to the castle - this has been newly restored and opened in July this year.  It is very much work in progress as for a moment we were convinced it was closed and almost didn't find the way in.  There were a lot of workman around and a lot of construction activity, but once we had found the front door, we went into the museum and were pleasantly surprised with what was inside.  The first room was a 360 degree time-lapse cinema of the scenery of the islands which was gorgeous. The second room was a history of the islands and the islanders.  Tom found a good game for children on a computer and spent ages on it, meaning Matt and I got to have a good look around.  We saw some of the Lewis Chessman  as well which were very very intricate - hard to believe they are so so old (from the Viking era - around 800 years old).  Gaelic is widely spoken here, did you know that some communities in Canada still speak it and that Germans come to Lewis to learn it - a number are now fluent! I'm not all that surprised, there are LOADS of Germans here.

Time for a dip

After finishing at the museum we went for a walk in the extensive grounds and then headed to the Co-op.  Matt stopped in at one of the butchers and got himself a Stornoway black pudding (one was in the fridge when we got here and he (and Tom) love it).  He came away with 1 black pudding, 1 fruity pudding (like a white pudding but with fruit in) and 4 thick slices of haggis (free of charge). Apparently the butcher was lovely (and a broad Londoner).

We headed home with puddings and beer, put them in the fridge and then headed up the road from our cottage to the end of the road at North Tolsta, where we found another lovely beach.  It was 4.30pm by now, but we stopped a while so Tom could have another play, the water here was much colder - big difference from the other beach which was on the west side of the island.

We then headed home, and I made a Japanese curry for tea.  A much quieter day, but enjoyable none-the-less.