Oh ye'll tak' the high road an’ I'll tak' the low road an' I'll be in Scotland afore ye ........

We have a convoy. 

We've enlisted the help of my brilliant family to drive up to the islands in a variety of vehicles so we can get all of the stuff we need and The Dog up to our new home.
Jessica is driving our car with Mary, baby Charlotte and The Dog. They'll need frequent stops for baby needs, doggie needs and possibly the occasional cigarette. John and myself will be driving the two vans - our own trusty Bongo and a hired transit. Only the car and the hired van are coming back to the mainland where the transit will be dropped off in Glasgow for them to travel back down the motorway to Wales and onto Devon where John and Mary live.

The route is pretty mundane and boring up to Glasgow, relentless motorway driving and it surely feels like you're driving constantly uphill once you get into Cumbria and across the border. Once you're through Glasgow and across the Erskine Bridge, though, everything changes.

Our overnight stop on the journey there is in Dumbarton on the southern bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. After that it just feels like you're driving through a tourist brochure. We pass so many of those places with familiar names and sights that are synonymous with Scotland - Loch Lomond, Crianlarich, Rannoch Moor, Glencoe, Fort William, Ben Nevis, Neptune's Staircase, Glenfinnan viaduct and that's before we even get to the ferry at Mallaig!

LOCH LOMOND

Loch Lomond is about 24 miles long and we'll be driving virtually along the whole of length of the bonnie, bonnie banks.

THE A82 OVER RANNOCH MOOR

We'll be driving along here where the last significant ice sheet in the UK sat and melted resulting in a soggy, peaty bog that stretches for miles and miles. The land here is still rising - kind of exhaling after unburdening itself of the weight of the ice.

GLENCOE

The A82 continues down through Glencoe. This view is classed as one of the most beautiful drives in the UK. This is where close to 100 people from the MacDonald clan were either killed in the massacre of 1692 or left to die of injury and exposure after being driven from their homes for not immediately giving their loyalty to the William and Mary and waiting to see if their own king, James II, would be returning to Britain from France to reclaim his throne. 

The Glen is the result of a huge glacial swathe that has smoothed out the cauldron of a monstrous supervolcano that erupted over 420 million years ago. It's probably safe to drive there now.

BEN NEVIS OVERLOOKING FORT WILLIAM

Ben Nevis is also a remnant of a huge supervolcano that has been smoothed over by glaciers during the ice age. It is nearly four and half thousand feet above sea level and the highest mountain in Britain - almost a thousand feet higher than Snowdon.

NEPTUNE'S STAIRCASE

This is one of Thomas Telford's great engineering feats. It's the longest staircase lock in Britain with 8 locks in total lifting the boats up a total of 20 meters from Loch Linnhe to the Caledonian canal which links the west coast of Scotland to the east coast through The Great Glen via Loch Ness.

GLENFINNAN VIADUCT

If you've seen the Harry Potter films you'll have seen The Glenfinnan Viaduct. Twenty one arches made entirely of concrete and standing nearly 100 foot tall in places it is said to be one of Sir Robert McAlpine's greatest engineering achievements. We don't really go over it on our road trip but if we stand on each shoulders we should be able to see it if there are no leaves on the trees. 

Do you know where you're going to......

The Outer Hebrides is an island chain of about 65 islands off the north west coast of Scotland  and about 15 of these islands are inhabited  They stretch about 130 miles from Barra Head in the south to the Butt Of Lewis in the north. It's a journey of just under 700 miles from Cardiff where we are now to Borve where we will be living from the beginning of June. The route we are taking is a 2 day journey with a stopover in Loch Lomond and then onwards for two ferry crossings, one from the mainland to Skye and then we travel across Skye for another ferry to Tarbert on Harris. 

Harris and Lewis is really one island separated by a magnificent mountain range and almost split in two by Loch Seaforth and Loch Resort. It's bigger than the Isle of Man and The Isle of Wight and after the British Mainland and Eire is the third biggest land mass in The British Isles. It's about 70 miles from one end to the other with a population of just under 20,000. 

Our little croft house is in the north west corner of Lewis in a village called Borve overlooking the Atlantic. It's about 15 miles or so from Stornoway which is the only town of any size on the islands. There's a couple of big supermarkets in Stornoway and many of the standard High Street stores. There's also a good selection of pubs and plenty of places to eat. It's the main port of the islands and is full of fishing boats, leisure and pleasure craft, ferries, cruiseliners and all manner of sea traffic. There's an art centre and cinema, a hospital, an industrial estate or two, garages, markets and everything else that we'll need. In fact, it's very much like any other British coastal town.

By way of contrast Borve is a tiny little crofting village with just about 150 inhabitants. However, it has it's own shop and petrol station, a medical centre and a pub. There's also a lovely little pottery there. The place is scattered with ancient ruins and standing stones. And here's an interesting fact - the founder of Crisis at Christmas, the homeless charity, was founded by the wife of a Borve man, Iain Macleod who was a former Tory Chancellor. 

                                           

All my bags are packed.......

Well here we are.

Here we are in Cardiff getting ready to move to The Outer Hebrides. I keep thinking that people like me don't do things like this but then I remember I am just me and I am doing this.

We're surrounded by boxes and interesting finds from charity shops that we're taking with us to help turn our little croft house into our home, even if it's just temporary.

We're not sure how this is going to work. Not yet. Apparently you have to experience two winters in The Outer Hebrides before you decide if it's the place for you. We've been there in March and May, June and July, September and October - managing to avoid the winter months, the season of long nights and short days. We have experienced the famous winds that whip your clothes against your skin and stop you from hearing your own voice. We've walked beaches in horizontal rain and driven roads so shrouded in mist that the corners crept up spattered the hub-caps with peaty puddles but we've always had sunshine at tea-time. Well, OK, that's a slight exaggeration - we've had daylight at tea-time. I try to tell myself that even this far south I leave for work in darkness and don't get home til after nightfall in November, December and January so of course I'll cope with Hebridean winters. At least two of them.

Our temporary home is a 1960s built pre-fabricated one and a half storey building. It's pretty unimaginative in its design but the setting is, in my opinion,  incredible. The kitchen overlooks a long skinny croft sweeping down to the Atlantic and the front of the house looks southwards over the village of Borve. Borve has a garage, a licensed grocery store and an inn with a bar where the locals sit, so I'm reliably informed by TripAdvisor. Apparently it annoys visitors or at least the ones that write reviews on TripAdvisor. 

The garden has the remains of blackhouse standing proud. There is evidence of these blackhouse remains all over the island. Some of them have been restored and resurrected for tourists to wander around and some are now holiday cottages. The one in our garden has four solid walls and a couple of windows and a door and the remains of a concrete chimney. The thatched and partially turfed roof is almost intact though I'm dying to see how completely weatherproof and safe it is.

Blackhouses were the main type of accommodation for the Islanders up until about 100 years ago, though some of them were inhabited right up to the 1970s. Originally they had no chimneys, the smoke from the central fireplace seeped up through the thatched roof. It was only when the state started to interfere with family life in the early 20th century that it was decided that primitive living needed to be modernised. Separate toilets and chimneys were the way forward. Unfortunately it created  outbreaks of TB and other disease because the peat smoke filled rooms and ammonia from the urine were natural antidotes to TB and midges. The chimneys were also made with more modern materials that helped to destroy the integrity of the structures.

When we were looking for somewhere to live I relied on GoogleMaps to help me picture where the properties were set. I must admit that the picture of the house placed by the Estate Agent wasn't very flattering at all but taking my little blue man for a StreetView walk helped me to discover the blackhouse in the garden. What a selling point! But it was never mentioned in the blurb accompanying the picture. It's probably a pain in the neck to maintain but I'm not the landlord. I can just brag about having a blackhouse for a garden shed without having to worry about whether or not it's going to fall down!

In two weeks time we'll be living there. Tuesday 4th June will be the first day of our Hebridean Adventure. Excited ? You bet I am !