Hugging stones

Ihave just returned from the slopes Ben Mhor above Loch Seaforth where the island of Lewis meets the Island of Harris, and where I have been watching the weather fronts roll in relentlessly from across the Atlantic Ocean.

One moment the sky was azure blue and I felt the warm bake of sun on my face; in the next instance, the rain came sheeting over the hillside, splashing onto my waterproofs and soaking the springy ground at my feet. Writing a century and a half ago, the Reverend George Hely Hutchinson, who annually leased the stalking lodge at Aline, described the island of Lewis as a giant sponge. Nothing has changed.

A friend of mine recently observed that you know when it is summer in Scotland when the rain gets warmer. She had a point, but when you are out-and-about in the Hebrides, it is this same rain combined with mist and wind, and coupled with the shafts of sunlight on a distant lochan, which makes the landscape so spectacularly, and so evasively, beautiful. This has to be God's own country, although I do have some sympathy with the residents across the Minch on Skye who recently reported fifty days of continuous wet weather, the longest period on record since 1861.

Abrief glance at the on-line weather forecast says it all – 1300: Heavy Rain, 1600: Light Rain (shower),1900: Sunny Intervals, 2200: Light Rain (shower). That's what you get in the Outer Hebrides, four seasons in a day. It's all part of the great west coast of Scotland experience and you soon learn t...

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• By : Rob Allanson
• In : Roddy Martine's World
• Issue : 47
• Page : 7
• Words : 806