Journey 02 · Scotland
Hebrides, Weather Permitting
Lewis and Harris in October
Published 10 Oct 2025 · Travelled 29 Sept – 8 Oct 2025
- 8 moments
- 10 days
- 126 km
- Autumn
- United Kingdom
- 40mm · f/5.6 · 1/800
- 58.0600° N, 6.0200° W
- The Minch, toward Stornoway
- 15:40
- 10°C, grey, swell easing
The CalMac out of Ullapool left an hour late while the crew watched the sky and the sky made up its mind. Mid-crossing the mountains of Harris came up out of the grey like a rumour being confirmed. A man at the rail told me he had done this crossing four hundred times. He was still at the rail.
- 12mm · f/8 · 1/500
- 58.1970° N, 6.7450° W
- Calanais, Lewis
- 12:20
- 9°C, bright, wind with intent
The stones have stood on this rise for five thousand years and the wind has been working on them the whole time. I had the circle to myself for twenty minutes at midday, which in July would be impossible and in October is just Tuesday. Up close the gneiss is streaked like driftwood. You want to touch it. Everyone for five millennia clearly has.
- Listen
- Mangersta, Lewis
- 14:55
- 8°C, gale, force 8
I went to the cliffs to photograph the gale and mostly ended up listening to it. The waves come out of three thousand miles of open Atlantic and detonate against the headland with a sound you feel through your boots, a full second before the spray arrives. I braced the camera on a fence post. The fence post was also vibrating.
- 12mm · f/8 · 1/640
- 57.8890° N, 6.9370° W
- Luskentyre, Harris
- 10:35
- 11°C, sun between squalls
People say the Harris beaches look tropical and the water temperature is a betrayal, and both things are true. When the sun found Luskentyre the sand went white, the shallows went a green I last saw in the Maldives, and the dune grass stayed stubbornly, correctly Scottish. I walked it for two hours and met one dog.
- 40mm · f/8 · 1/500
- 57.8710° N, 6.9550° W
- Seilebost, Harris
- 13:15
- 10°C, big clouds, moving fast
Across the water at Seilebost a single white house sits above the turquoise with the hills behind it, and every photographer who passes has to stop, because the composition was finished centuries before cameras. Sheep grazed the machair around my tripod legs, entirely unimpressed. Someone actually lives there. I hope they know. I think they know.
- 40mm · f/5.6 · 1/400
- 57.8300° N, 6.8000° W
- The Golden Road, Harris
- 16:05
- 9°C, shower just gone, rainbow
The single-track road down east Harris winds through bare gneiss and tiny lochs, and traffic control is handled by sheep. This one led me at walking pace for a quarter of a mile, checking over its shoulder now and then to make sure I understood whose road it was. A rainbow put itself up over the hills while I waited. No complaints filed.
Overheard · Tarbert, Harris · 09:30
"Some wind today." — "Aye, a wee breeze." The forecast at that moment said gusts of seventy miles an hour. The ferries were cancelled. A wee breeze.
- North Harris
- 18:20
- 8°C, clear, gold, brief
- Last frame
On the last evening the weather handed over twenty minutes of copper light as an apology for the week, and the empty road through the North Harris hills took all of it. I stopped the car in a passing place and stood on the tarmac with the engine ticking. Ten days, six kinds of weather a day, and I would go back tomorrow.
- 25mm · f/8 · 1/250
- 57.9800° N, 6.8500° W
The route
8 stops
Journey completed
Ten days, eight stories
- Distance walked
- 54 km
- Frames exposed
- 1310
- Ferry crossings
- 4
- Ferry crossings as scheduled
- 2
- Kinds of weather before lunch, record
- 6
- Favourite moment
- The gale at Mangersta — being leaned on by the Atlantic and laughing about it
- Best food
- Smoked salmon on oatcakes from a Stornoway smokehouse, eaten in the car in horizontal rain
