The Calm Before the Storm

The main reason Bill and I headed all the way up to the Isle of Lewis was for the annual Hebridean Celtic Festival, a 3+ day festival of celebrating music from the Hedridean islands as well as mainland Scotland. The festival has been getting bigger and bigger and this was its 22nd year (I think). Unfortunately, it was the first year for the weather to be absolutely miserable. The rain started in earnest on Friday and pretty much kept coming off and on all day Saturday and Sunday. 

That doesn't look good.

We stayed at a BandB about a mile from the venue site and it was a very easy walk to and from… unless it's pelting it down with rain. Before we left the BandB on Friday our host suggested we walk to the local Crofters (a tiny home depot type store) and pick up some wellies. 

We got our wellies and made our way over to the Lews Castle in Stornoway as we were told it was recently renovated and had a nice little museum as well as some lovely rooms to see. Since the music didn't start until 3:00, that sounded like a lovely adventure to start our day.  

Lews Castle

The castle museum didn't allow photographs, but it was really interesting. The Islanders had recently received back from the British Museum eight pieces of the Lewis Chess pieces that were found in a cave in Uig (where we had our boating adventure) and they're very proud to have them on display. 

Dining hall at Lews Castle

The castle itself hasn't been a home in many years. Most recently it was a college, but even that closed in the '90s. Now renovated, it sounds like the powers that be want it to become a tourist sight as well as a wedding and/or conference site. 

Dining hall at Lews Castle

It was a beautiful site, and it was a nice place to hang out for a few hours until the music started playing. Unfortunately, the weather outside was looking more and more dire. 

Tippy top of festival tents

We had looked around the castle and its museum and even had tea and biscuits in their tearoom before we decided to go down to the festival tents and start looking around. It was 2:00 and surely all of the craft and merchandise tents were open for browsing, right? 

Another view of the tents

We walked the ten minutes around the castle to the festival area in the rain. No luck; gates don't open for an hour. And the rain is coming down harder and harder. We each had a rain jacket, but this rain was coming down sideways, soaking our jeans and dripping down into our wellies and there was no place to go. We ducked under a small awning for a moment and Bill suggested we walk back into town to the shops and look for waterproof trousers to wear over our jeans. By the time we arrived at the shops in town the shelves were picked clean of rain gear and we were dripping wet. 

So we walked back to the residential area to the small Crofters. Thankfully it hadn't been overrun with too many tourists and we were each able to buy waterproofs that mostly fit. We hiked back to our BandB, peeled off our soaked jeans & socks, hung them over the radiators, put on dry jeans, socks, our new waterproofs and our now muddy wellies and walked the mile back to the festival. 

And then we made a bee-line for the beer tent and finally went to see some live music. Whew!