Julian Worker's Blog

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This is an extract from my new book “Travels through History : 10 Scottish Islands” available here.

Stornoway is the principal town on the island of Lewis and is the gateway to the island and to the whole of the Outer Hebrides. Loganair flies from Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Inverness to Stornoway several times a day from Monday to Friday, twice a day on Saturday and once a day on Sunday. There are also return flights to Benbecula twice a week. The Caledonian MacBrayne (Calmac) ferry terminal is just beyond the bus station. Ferries sail to Ullapool two or three times a week. Buses run from Stornoway all over the island, though there are no bus services on a Sunday. 

There aren’t too many sights in the town itself. The harbour has activity in the early morning with the landing of fish. Lews Castle is visible across the water. This castle is a 19th-Century edifice built by Sir James Matheson, with money earned from tea and from opium. Recently, a massive restoration program converted the castle into luxury self-catering accommodation; however, the grand public rooms on the ground floor remain free to visit when unoccupied. When Donald J Trump visited Stornoway to see the place where his mother lived in her early days (she was a McLeod, I believe), he did not help towards the costs of the restoration. 

Sir James Matheson was behind one of the worst examples of removals from the land in Scottish history. This occurred between 1851 and 1855. He decided to ‘emigrate’ many of his destitute tenants through a programme of eviction and ‘assisted’ transportation to Canada. No fewer than 2,327 men, women, and children faced the bleak choice of either being cleared from the land or emigrating with little chance of return. In 1851, before the evictions, the population of Lewis outside Stornoway was 17,320. The proportion ‘emigrated’ accounted for just over 13% of that total. 

Of the first 1,512 selected, only forty-five took the offer of support for the voyage to Canada. The rest had to be made to go. Another strange fact about Matheson was that he spent over £107,000 on the island of Lewis between 1845 and 1850 on famine relief and public works. Yet, between 1848 and 1851, he obtained 1,367 summonses of removal against his tenants.  

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The ten islands covered in this book are Lewis and Harris, Barra, Vatersay, Islay, Jura, Mull, Iona, Staffa, Lunga, and Arran. This is the order in which I visited these islands and isn’t meant to indicate any order of priority in terms of importance, beauty, or interest. 

I find islands fascinating especially if you can reach them by ferry. There’s something about seeing my destination gradually approaching that sparks my imagination and makes me keen to explore. With the Western Isles of Scotland, there’s the additional thrill of finding out the local history and wondering how the next island will compare with previous ones. The islands in this book each have different characters and outstanding sights to see.    

Lewis and Harris is all one island though their landscapes are different. Lewis is mostly moorland and contains probably the oldest stone circle in the UK. Harris is mountains, sea lochs, a rocky eastern coastline, and gorgeous white, sandy beaches on its west coast. Barra and Vatersay are two distinct islands, but a causeway has connected them since 2011, enabling me to walk from one to the other and back again. It would have been difficult to split this walk between two separate chapters, so Barra and Vatersay are together in one chapter. They’re not only connected by a  causeway but also by a shameful period just over a hundred years ago when a  wealthy landlord attempted to throw the residents off their land and replace them with sheep. 

Iona is one of the global cradles of Christianity. Staffa has Fingal’s Cave and those famous basalt columns rising from the sea. Lunga in the Treshnish Islands is home to a long list of seabirds, flowers, and no humans. Mull has Tobermory, probably the most picturesque seaside village / town in the west of Scotland. Islay has world-famous distilleries and thousands of migrating birds. Jura has Barnhill where George Orwell completed the first draft of 1984 and Corryvreckan the third largest whirlpool in the world. Arran has stone circles, distilleries, and glacial landscapes.  

Glasgow is in a book about Scottish islands because from the lovely airport you can fly to Islay, Barra, and Stornoway on Lewis (as well as Tiree and Benbecula that I haven’t visited yet). From Glasgow Central station you can catch the train to Ardrossan, Troon, Wemyss Bay, and Largs and from Queen Street station, you can reach Mallaig and Oban. All these places have ferry terminals to some of the western isles. In your journeys, you might come to Glasgow and it’s worth finding out what a wonderful place this is. 

The West Highland Line from Glasgow Queen Street towards Mallaig is a beautiful journey going past the Clyde, Loch Lomond, Bridge of Orchy, Rannoch Moor, Fort William, and Glenfinnan. The trip takes around five-and-a-quarter hours and in the past has been voted the most scenic railway line in the world. The station at Corrour on Rannoch Moor is one of the most remote stations in Britain and is not accessible by public road. This is the summit of the line at four hundred and ten metres above sea level. 

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