Our campsite wasn’t anything special but it was close to Stornoway, our first destination of the day. We got underway quickly and drove along the waterfront, keeping an eye out for an inviting breakfast spot. Nothing jumped out at us so we found a harbor-side parking spot for Heidi and prepared to continue our search on foot. We were immediately approached by a friendly local who had just finished parking her VW van and wanted to invite us to her shop in town for coffee and conversation. Excellent! But first, we needed to find some breakfast. We decided to head for the local museum in the hopes that they had a cafe. Strolling along the waterfront, we were struck by the pervasive use of Gaelic, and the constant reminders that Stornoway is a working town and not just run for tourists. (On the signpost below, all of the destinations are in Gaelic with no English translations!)
We meandered to the museum, only to discover that it had no cafe. The kids were not going to make it through a museum visit without some food, so we took the advice of the lovely woman at the museum and headed for the library to eat at their cafe. For those of you wishing to dine at the library, I should point out that there are two libraries in Stornoway and only one of them has a cafe. Don’t ask me how we know. It was after 10:00 by the time we got to the proper library with two very (and vocally) hungry children. We filled our tummies with coffee, juice, toasted tea cakes, scones, and some other local pan breads. (Lots of locals were doing the same, so we must’ve gotten some good advice from the woman at the museum.) After reading a story at the library, we headed back to the museum. It was small, but nicely laid out with basic information about the history of human occupation in the region, archaeological finds, and some specific information on the Lewis Chessmen (which were discovered on Lewis in 1831).
With the museum checked off of our list, we made our way to The Wardrobe, the shop run by Elspeth the VW owner. It’s a consignment shop for high-end kids clothing, among other things (including classic VW van paraphernalia), and Elspeth and her daughter were absolutely lovely! There was a great area in the middle of the shop to sit and visit, and the kids had a ball playing with the shop’s toys while we chatted. She told us about an amazing play park at the northern tip of the island, and also gave some tips on places we might choose to “rough camp” as she called it. We took several cards from the shop to share with Heidi’s owners. We also found a great pair of jeans and a cute red dress for Flora.
Armed with our new local information, we wandered back to Heidi with some stops along the way at a specialty food store (for beer, sweets, and olives) and a grocery store for more mundane provisions. On our way out of town we stopped at the Lewis Loom Centre, a shop that was jam packed with Harris Tweed cloth, yarn, scraps, along with items made from tweed. It was a bit overwhelming.
The kids had overheard the conversation about the play park and were very anxious to check it out, so we made that our next destination. It is no exaggeration to say that the Eoropie Dunes Park is the most amazing play park we’ve ever visited — and we’ve visited many. It was huge, and had an incredible variety of equipment and play areas. There was a maze, a variety of things to climb on, over, and through, slides, swings, a pirate ship, a zip line, etc. There were “standing stones”, totem-like poles with norse carvings, mushrooms, and other accents throughout. (The “please respect the sabbath” note on the sign was the first we’d seen, and was further evidence that the islands really do shut down on Sundays.)
Elspeth had said that nobody was likely to bother us if we’d just parked Heidi for the night at the play park, but we were anxious to check out some of the other spots she’d mentioned so we worked our way down the NW coast of Lewis looking for a good spot. We found a few that would have worked, but decided to stop for the night at the edge of a small bay near Labost. It was lovely, and deserted, if a tad on the windy side. Holly worked her magic on the pork chops from Skye — they were the best pork either of us had ever tasted.
The blue dot on the map below is where we stopped, in case you want to retrace our steps. The image is a screen shot from the fabulous UK Map app on our iPad. We would literally have been lost without UK Map. Its maps are comprehensive (including topographical detail), and are stored on the iPad so you can pull them up without a connection (essential on the islands).
Canterbury Travails 