This week sees us hit the unwanted milestone of being 14 weeks without a house! We continue to hide out in the Outer Hebrides, enjoying all that island life has to offer. We visit some of the cultural treasures of both Lewis and Harris, explore the world class beaches of West Harris and hit some really pleasing YouTube milestones. At short notice, we then have to race home with the prospect of completing the purchase of our house in the Yorkshire Dales.
On the culture trail
The start of the week saw us being very cultural (!!!) and taking in some of the historic sights of Lewis, including Iron Age villages, ancient standing stones and traditional Island Black houses. Any rumours that this was down to everything on the Islands shutting down on a Sunday are pure fiction!
Visiting the Iron Age village on the isolated peninsular of Bosta blew our brains. How on earth did Iron Age man choose to settle there? It was on the very limits of the island, with nothing connected by land for miles. It was so isolated in the modern world, so how did ancient man survive in such a desolate place- and more importantly, how the hell did he get there in the first place? These are the big philosophical questions that Jackie and I discuss on our travels in the van!
Similarly, but probably to a greater extent, was our awe and wonder at the impressive Callinish standing stones that have stood on the islands since about 2500BC. Visiting these at sunset was a great decision, having the popular tourist attraction to ourselves. Obviously, we had to deal with all the weather in our brief visit, from sunshine, to driving showers, to rainbows…all part of Island life.
We both took time out to try and get our heads around this ancient monument- making our adventures feel rather small and insignificant in the overall history of man.
The beauty of West Harris
For the next few days we indulged ourselves in the beauty of the wild beaches of Western Harris. These are simply some of the best beaches in the world- end of. Within this small stretch of coastline, there are so many examples of sweeping, white sand beaches with aqua blue waters, backed by impressive mountain skylines. They are desolate, and we often found ourselves walking for miles without seeing anyone. The exception to this was always at the dawn and dusk “golden hours” that brought our the many amateur photography tours that were based on the islands at this time of year. Imagine waiting hours for the ideal photograph, only then to have Jackie and Richard wander along the shoreline, messing around with their iPhone cameras!
We had a blast, capturing the beaches in all of their glorious conditions- from calm and serine to wild and windy. We pottered around this area for a good few days as we love the beaches- they are one of our happy places- avoiding the storms and hunkering down as required- completely at the mercy of nature.
Time to come home…
It was with some excitement at the start of the week that our solicitor started actually taking of completion dates for our house purchase!!! As you will realise, this caused significant anticipation in our little van, and we actually booked a ferry home for the end of the week. In an ideal world, we may be again house owners by the end of next week- we shall see…
It is fair to say that things developed really quickly with the weather having a major say in that. Our solicitor helpfully sent us some documents to print, sign under whiteness and return by post prior to completion. How he expected us to do that from the Western Isles we do not know, never mind the Western Isles that were currently cut off from the mainland by storms!
We were stranded and helpless. All ferries were cancelled on Wednesday and Thursday- with a brief weather window opening up on Friday, with a single sailing planned. As I type, we have just secured the last slot on that crossing- fingers crossed we can get back to the mainland and get all the paperwork off on Saturday to keep the hope of a Wednesday completion alive.
YouTube mini successes
It is fair to say that we are really pleased at the way our little YouTube channel is growing week on week. This week we had our first video to hit a 1000 views…and all in under a week! This just blows our mind that so many people could be interested in our little story and adventures.
In latest news, on Saturday we gained our 200th subscriber to the YouTube channel- something that we never though we would do when we were setting out a couple of months ago.
Check out our most popular video to date here. If you want to keep up to date with our videos, we would love you to subscribe to the channel as it really helps the channel to grow.
So that's it for another week. As a progress check, we are currently back in Cheshire, having posted all required paperwork to the solicitors that is due to arrive by Monday morning. On Monday we need to transfer funds for the purchase and then with fingers crossed and a fair wind, we may be the proud owners of our Yorkshire Dales cottage by Wednesday. We will see...
Have a fantastic week,
Richard & Jackie
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