The Butt of Lewis

Bill and I stayed on the island an extra day after the festival concluded to avoid the mass exodus. 

Our bed and breakfast host, Margot, had warned us that 'The church is strong on the island' on Sundays and that we wouldn't find much open. We picked up some picnic-type items on Saturday to bring in our car Sunday as we drove along the northern edge of the island.  

Standing stones of northern Lewis

The first item on the list of sights to see was a mostly demolished set of standing stones. This set of stones was fairly small, but had a good vantage point on the top of a hill surrounded on three sides by good fields and a lake on the forth side. There was only a small plaque with historical details, and it looks like this had once been a site for locals to gather together, perhaps for trade, religion, and/or governance. 

Standing stones

We were glad we had thrown our new wellies into the car before we set out. There wasn't any rain that morning, but the whole island felt soaked through and through! 

The beach at Ness

We continued on up to the northernmost beach on Lewis, the Port of Ness. There is a retail shop chain in northern England called Ness and it sells a lot of beautiful Harris Tweed as well as Ness Tweed and women's clothes and purses. I hope the shops are named for this beautiful little fishing village. As you can see, the tide was low and fairly flat. We heard that you can often spot whales from this beach but although we looked and looked, we saw zero marine mammals. 

Ness harbor

Our footprints in Ness beach

Ness beach

Bill and I loved walking on the beach, hearing the lapping of the water and seeing the rocks covered in algae, muscles, barnacles, etc. It reminded us so much of home.

Beautiful algae at Ness

More Ness algae

After a long time hanging out in Ness, Bill and I drove 10 minutes or so to reach the northernmost point on the island called the Butt of Lewis.

The Butt of Lewis

I looked it up and it seems Butt and Butte are basically the same thing, but it didn't keep up from giggling. Again, we were reminded of Big Sur and the Carmel Highlands with the high cliffs and crashing ocean down below. 

Lighthouse at the Butt of Lewis

The lighthouse was operational and visitors aren't allowed in, but visitors can walk all around the lighthouse and along the cliffside. This is a fairly famous visitors site on Lewis and like most places in Europe, there were no guardrails or barricades, you just have to keep back from the cliff's edge or fall over and die. Needless to say, parents were holding their little ones' hands in death grips! 

A butt never looked so breathtaking!

Bill and I had our lunch picnic in our car and then decided to head back to our bed and breakfast. There really wasn't a single thing open on the whole of the island (no shops, no restaurants or cafes, no gas stations, no information centers), and the only other thing we wanted to do is see sites that were run by the National Trust and English Heritage, but those were all closed for the day, too. It turned out to be a good decision because by the time we made it back to our room, the sky opened up again and dumped several more inches onto the already soaked island. 

Sign on the Butt of Lewis Lighthouse

I took this photo because I found it so ironic. We were standing outside the lighthouse at the Butt of Lewis the very day that Teresa May took over as Prime Minister, less than ten days after the UK voted to leave the EU. Interesting time to be in England, that's for sure!