I’m so far behind my blogging at the moment that I’m writing a post about a previous holiday when actually on the next one. This current trip follows on from so many now to the west coast of Scotland; a place I’ve grown to love for its remote and stunningly beautiful islands. Sat inside sheltering from wet and blustery autumn day on the Isle of Skye, it’s seems hard to write about a summer’s day back at the beginning of July – although that day did have a hint of autumn about it, come to think about it.
Staying on the Outer Hebridean island of South Uist for a week, we wanted to take a boat trip to an even more remote island. There are a few to choose from including St Kilda but we decided instead to go to Mingulay at the southern tip of the archipelago (only Berneray is further south).
First we had to make a 40 minute ferry journey between Eriskay (joined to South Uist by a causeway) and Barra. Usually this crossing of the Sound of Barra would have provided great views of the islands but due to COVID-19 restrictions passengers had to stay within their cars for the entire trip. Not that walking around the ferry would actually have given us much of a view, however, as the clouds on this summer day were shrouding the ferry and the surrounding sea and land.
On arrival on Barra, we drove one half if the road that loops around the island and arrived in the main town of Castlebay still cloaked in cloud. This didn’t look promising for our trip but as we waited at the small marina the cloud started to lift a little; the gloom remained but it didn’t obscure every view.
We were welcomed aboard ‘Spirit of the Hebrides’ by the Hebridean Sea Tours crew for 30 minute from Barra to Mingulay. The boat was comfortable and stable as it powered across the open sea, helped by the good conditions. The water was almost bubbling with birdlife all the way to the island with auks, cormorants and gulls flying in groups or fishing alone on the surface. There were lines of gannets too, skimming low over the sea and we had a glimpse of a possible albatross tagging on to the back of one of those groups.
As we neared the island, we entered Mingulay Bay and moved slowly over towards the rocks on the northern tip of the beach. Anchored to the seabed, the boat sat still as the crew unloaded an inflatable at the back and half the passengers disembarked and were taken across to the shore, making the sometimes nervy step onto rocky land. We immediately headed up the grassy slopes above our landing place to seek out the puffins. Once halfway up the hillside we sat and waited for them to come in to land. They almost immediately started to appear but flew onwards, both above and below us, and sometimes straight past our heads. It took a while for them to get confident to land with people close by but eventually they were popping into and out of their burrows all around us.
After a while, we decided to take a wander down to the beach and up to the abandoned village. The island has no resident population after the final permanent inhabitants left in 1912. The island was not cleared like so many old communities around the Highlands and Islands; this was a much later and voluntary, if to some reluctant evacuation, when the last remaining families decided that a better and easier living could be made elsewhere. Mingulay was a tough place to live and as numbers dwindled the living became even harder. Other nearby islands had natural harbours and landings from which to load and unload boats; Mingulay does not and could be cut off for months at a time.
I find the old abandoned islands and villages of Scotland, as can be seen in some of my other posts, fascinating and hugely magnetic. There is something I can’t quite explain that draws me to them. I find silence where communities used to thrive, or survive, is almost tangible. There is a spirit to these places where the human past is being claimed by nature as the signs of former habitation slowly melt into the landscape.
The island around the bay is one large amphitheatre with four peaks along its outer edge. The sandy beach at its centre, on a clear day, reflects turquoise up through the lapping water but for most of our four hour stay, the sea remained a dark steel blue grey. Occasionally, the sun would start to break out through the dominant cloud to reveal the true colour of the bay but it was soon obscured again as the cloud got its way. As we sat having our lunch by the old school house, a sailing ship came in to moor while we were distracted by the old village, giving the island an even greater feel of times long gone
All too soon, the time had come to return to the boat but having made a more confident return by the inflatable, we didn’t sail straight to Barra but had a tour around the other side of the island, unseen as we approached in the morning. Away from the green eastern-facing slopes of Mingulay, the island is rocky with high, precipitous cliffs, towering dark and foreboding over passing boats and ships. I’ve seen quite a lot of sea cliffs around the UK and further afield and Mingulay has some of the most spectacular I have been fortunate enough witnessed. They seem almost endless at times and so steep that you have to be careful not to fall backwards as you stare vertically upwards. They are covered in seabirds from guillemots and razorbills, fulmar and kittiwakes to shags, cormorants and puffins. The cliffs are patrolled by gulls and great skuas picking on unsuspecting nests as they pass. Just as we left the island behind a white-tailed eagle appeared and made is purposeful way along the cliffs looking for its next meal.
The sights, sounds and smells of the cliffs were a spectacle like few I’ve seen and the cliffs made all the more ominous by the dark looming clouds above. As I’ve written before of other sea cliffs, these are probably not the spectacle they once were with many seabird populations in serious decline compared to the historical scales but it was a privilege to see such a place while such large numbers of birds are still there.
Just to add to the great day, the cliffs were not the last spectacle. As we made our way back to Castlebay, we were joined by a pod of common dolphin, playing in our wake and riding the waves alongside us. They were distant at first but as we slowed, they soon caught up and we had a good ten minutes of action. Unfortunately, we had eventually to leave them behind and return to the marina – some of us had a ferry back to Eriskay to catch.
As we retuned to the ferry slipway and waited for our crossing, the sun started to break through the cloud and patches of the Sound of Barra took on its stunning turquoise shimmer. In the distance, the were grey seals hauled up on sandbanks and we could hear their eerie calls washing over the water – quite a lovely way to end a day in the wilds of the southern Outer Hebrides.
P.S. Whilst this post is really about the Mingulay and it’s wildlife, I can’t not mention that up on that grassy slope watching the puffins, I proposed to my girlfriend, Sarah, and got a positive answer! Mingulay will therefore always be an even more special place to us and this gives us another reason to return in the years to come.
