The west side of the Minch offers everything that makes Skye special – and you'll have it to yourself
In 1746 Bonnie Prince Charlie famously sailed “over the sea to Skye”. Had he known how busy with tourists that island gets today he might have stayed put on the western side of the Minch. Those ever-playful waters wash up on the east coast of Benbecula – where he hid from the English crown – South Uist and adjacent North Uist.
Collectively known as Uist and forming much of the southern half of the Outer Hebrides, the islands remain puzzlingly unvisited. If you are after monumental landscapes, endless, empty beaches and birdlife seemingly performing on demand, there are few places to rival them.
My journey begins on South Uist. On a map, the island bears a striking resemblance to the outline of Chile, if on a more modest scale: a long, thin land with ocean to the west and mountains to the east. Fjord-like sea lochs eat deep into a rocky, peaty landscape of bleakly beautiful moors. Wildflower-filled cornfields paint a rural mural of pre-industrial Britain. Today’s meagre population of 1,900 is scattered across a vast, open landscape where isolated homesteads appear to have been dropped like pieces of Lego from the skies.
In high summer, a half-light prevails at night before dawn returns. At 10pm I pad along boardwalks around the peaty waters of Loch Druidibeg. Birds congregate at the water’s edge, including sanderling and golden plover. I am overlooked by the glowering, always-wintry Beinn Mhor mountain range where Beinn Choradail has a distinctive castellated summit that resembles a rakish top-knot. From their ridgeline, birds of prey swoop across the loch on the hunt for a meal.
I walk across the island’s spinal road and past lochs fringed with lilies towards the coast at Dreumasdal. Here I gaze up and down along much of the 25 miles of beach that define South Uist’s west coast. The shoreline is bedraggled with seaweed that banks up against the adjacent sea meadows, known as machair and densely packed with wild flowers.
Further along the coast I come to Tobha Mor, regarded by archaeologists as the most important Christian site in the Outer Hebrides. The remains of an important ecclesiastical centre dating to the 8th century survive in a churchyard still consecrated and set among stone-littered fields pockmarked with remnants of 19th-century croft houses. The four ruined churches and chapels resemble early Irish-Celtic monastic sites and some of their vermicular tracery survives.
Continuing north I traverse the first segment of a network of causeways that connects South Uist to its northerly neighbours – Benbecula, Grimsay, North Uist and Berneray. Benbecula’s Gaelic name, Beinn Na Faoghla, translates as “the Mountain of the Ford”, the single “mountain” in question being Ruabhal, which rises to the modest height of 406ft above sea level. The summit is a mere 20-minute climb and offers one of the greatest views in proportion to the effort required anywhere in the Highlands and islands.
More causeways flick their way across to North Uist. Described as “more loch than rock”, it is a waterworld with a coast and hinterland punctuated by hundreds of small lochs, a few large hills and infilled with empty peat moorland.
I climb one of those hills, Beinn Langass, to reach Barpa Langass, a Neolithic tomb 80ft in diameter. One of the oldest standing buildings in northern Europe, it retains an internal burial chamber and was in continuous use for more than 1,000 years. A more recent burial took place on the northern flank of Beinn Langass, that of Hercules the bear.
Bought as a cub from a wildlife park, he featured in documentaries and the James Bond film Octopussy but came to worldwide notice in 1980 when he went on the run around Benbecula and North Uist. “Resting” in between scenes for a toilet-paper advert, he had been taken for a swim by his owner along the coast of Benbecula when the rope snapped, and off Hercules went. He evaded capture for 24 days before being shot with a tranquilliser gun.
North Uist’s northern fringes slip gently into the sea. I take a walk along two adjacent beaches, Traigh Iar and Traigh Ear, exploring a blissful blur of seemingly endless hidden bays, spits and headlands that draw away to the horizon. The sands peter out by the shingle spit of Corran Aird a Mhorain. The light on this bay, particularly at low tide – or just before the ebb is complete – is remarkable, resembling a collage of contrails of yellow, white and green.
Artists are inspired by the landscapes of Uist. At Shoreline Stoneware gallery (shoreline-stoneware.co.uk) I meet Louise Cook, who has got to grips, in a literal sense, with the beaches. “I’m a prolific scavenger on the shore,” she says self-deprecatingly. Her pottery is beautiful and unusually shaped, sometimes echoing clay wicker baskets or resembling abstract shallow bowls, embellished by materials Louise finds on the beach such as shells and seaweed.
A final causeway leads to Berneray, where I embark on one more beach walk. The island’s West Beach is hailed by many as the best in the islands. The shoreline is dominated by the machair and, as elsewhere, this billiard-table-smooth grassland is transformed in summer into a blizzard of colour. Orchids abound, as do corn marigolds and poppies. Butterflies and bees are drawn in.
I leave Uist from the port of Lochmaddy. Before the 90-minute ferry to Skye departs, I wander along the meandering coastline that leads to a slim footbridge where red deer, as if right on cue, are fording a river. My boots turning this way and that, I am reminded of the author Mairi Hedderwick’s observation that, should you walk every indentation of the village’s shoreline and be prepared to get your feet wet, you will clock up 43 miles and “still be in hailing distance of the tourist office”.
The tourist office shut down long ago, partly to cut costs but partly because of a lack of demand. I can’t understand it. The west side of the Minch offers everything that makes Skye special – and more. All that is missing are the crowds.
Mark Rowe is the author of ‘Outer Hebrides: The Western Isles of Scotland’, published by Bradt at £15.99.
Calmac (calmac.co.uk) sails from Uig on Skye to Lochmaddy on North Uist and from Mallaig to Lochboisdale on South Uist. All islands in Uist are connected by paved causeways. An inter-island service connects Berneray to Harris.
Uist Forest Retreat (uistforestretreat.co.uk) is a stunning trio of self-catering treehouses, each sleeping two, in the forest overlooking the tidal sands of Vallay on North Uist. From £1,250 per week. Discover more amazing places to stay with our guide to the best hotels in the Outer Hebrides.
More information visitscotland.com; visitouterhebrides.co.uk.
Explore hotels that have been tried, tested and rated by our experts
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