Bill and Jen's Adventures: Isle of Harris

The first day of the music festival we had tickets to see the band Fara play down in Harris. The Hebridean island we were on is divided into two; the northern half of the island is the Isle of Lewis and the southern portion is the Isle of Harris. Have you ever heard of Harris Tweed? Well, the Isle of Harris is where it comes from.

My, your wool will make a lovely tweed waistcoat!

Bill and I decided to spend our day driving down and around Harris to do some sight seeing, tweed shopping, and photographing until our dinner reservation at 6:00 followed by our concert at 7:30.

A dry stone wall in Harris

Although the entire Isle of Harris is rather barren and a lot of it looking the same as the mile back and the mile ahead, it is truly breathtaking.

Bog cotton

The northern most part of Harris is dominated by low-lying scrub, rolling hills, and marshland that blurs into lakes.

Harris landscape

Harris hillsides

And sheep. Lots and lots of sheep roaming freely. Sometimes we'd come around a bend in the road and there would be a half dozen sheep just sleeping on the warmth of the road. Often times they moved, but there were a few big guys that looked up at us as if to say, 'Nope,' and we had to maneuver around the lazy sheep.

Can you see the sheep?

Lake. Big lake.

The place was simply stunning and we kept stopping for photographs. I found it funny that this was the one weekend a year that the island is the most populated and there were barely any folks on the road.

Photographing the photographer

More of Harris

As we travelled farther and farther south, there were more and more lakes, the scrub became more sparse, and the rocks more prominent.

Harris lake and hills

At one point we followed a little off-shoot of a single-track (yet intended for bi-directional traffic) road towards a sign for Premium Harris Tweed. We wound back and forth along a landscape that looked more lunar or scorched earth than present-day Scotland. We arrived at a small village of six houses, one of which had a sign out from for Premium Harris Tweed.

Scottish Thistle

Bill and I were dubious, but we pulled over and walked up to the house. The front door had an Open sign on it, so we knocked as we entered. We heard dishes clatter in the sink as we said a tentative 'hello'. A gentle young man came out and showed us around the sitting room that was all done up as a show room. He was wearing the exact style of waistcoat that Bill had been searching for all week! It was a beautiful dark blue wool waistcoat (vest, for my American readers) with wool as the back panel instead of the typical silk or satin. Bill bought the waistcoat and a jumper and he was so very happy!

Typical Harris view - or are we on the moon?

The photo above was taken from where we parked our car and in the photo below you can see our view from the little hill we hiked to have our little lunchtime picnic.

Our lunchtime picnic spot

We headed down, around the bottom of Harris and then up along the southwestern edge to check out St. Clemens Church just outside of Rodel. The church was built sometime in the 1400s for the chiefs of the Macleod Clan of Harris. It was a catholic church for about 150 before it went into disuse after the reformation. Even after the reformation, it continued to be a burial site for the Macleods.

St. Clements Church, Rodel, Isle of Harris, Scotland

Macleod tomb marker

The church's back garden

Around the back of the church you could see the sea and, as always, sheep. This Western side of the Isle had been the easiest landing site for invaders as the eastern side's waterways (between mainland Scotland and the Isle), known as the Minch, is and always has been very volatile.

Sheep in church back garden

The walkway up to the church has its own creepy charm.

St. Clements Church

We then headed up towards a small port town where the ferry runs between Lewis/Harris and Uist, another of the Hebridean islands. We were an hour early for our dinner reservations so we walked around and took some more photographs.