Uig

 Di and I walked (alternating so one could stay with Hilary who was sleeping still) up to the apothecary tower overlooking the harbour. It was built in the 1700’s as a signal to the ships and crofters that there was medicine and health care available in that port. There is also one at Uig and Uist.

Apothecary's tower

Portree harbour from apothecarytower

Portree from the tower

A quaint Portree building (youth hostel)

We went to a place called Skeaborst which Di’s cousin Alice had told her about. It has a very small island on the river called Nicholson’s Isle which is the burial site for that family. There used to be a cathedral there from 1079 when it was the head of the church in the area. Some of the tombs were from the 1400’s very small, as were the people then.

The weather was lovely, a one tee-shirt, no merino kind of day, may have reached nearly 20out of the shade, just about a heat wave!!! You can understand why the locals go crazy and leap into fountains in Trafalgar Square (the Londoners) when the mercury tops 23 or whatever because after the early teens or worse, single figures for the height of summer, it does feel quite hot.

A tombstone at Skeaborst

Scotch thistles

From Skeaborst we headed up to Uig which is where we are now. It is a very small little village, not much more than a pottery, pub, brewery, petrol station and ferry terminal. But pretty, little white houses amongst the green/brown fields, beside the seaside.  It was sunny for the first hour or so, then the dark cloud came over and just as I finished putting the last peg into our washing on the line the rain came down. Though the sun setting looked pretty with bright red skies over the hills in the west, it rained overnight, and is still raining this morning. 

 We had planned to take the ferry over to the Outer Hebrides this morning, there is a day trip which involves a few ferry rides and a coach trip showing off the highlights of the two lower islands. We decided it would be pointless in this weather though, so instead we’ll have a day out catching upon chores, blogs, post-cards, maths, writing, music practise etc. There is a café here where you can do painting on pottery too, so we will probably do that a bit later too, and poke around a couple of galleries a bit further away. Still sick of the weather, even though there is relief every now and then with sunshine and warmth it does get you down. We have noticed on the community notice boards all over the island that there are lots of support groups running for people with mental health issues, addictions, and people affected by suicides. I wonder if there are a lot of issues with such things particularly related to weather and remoteness?? Or else just good support community awareness of such issues. I can imagine it would be likely to affect you adversely after a while, unless that is all you know, grey days, cold weather, open paddocks, sheep, ……… beautiful for a holiday, but to live it????