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Blown Away in Stornoway - 2005

After our successful holiday in Shetland last year, we thought we would visit the Hebrides this year. My brother, in a previous life, had been a lighthouse keeper and was based at Thiumpan Head light house on Stornoway for about four years in the early seventies. We had taken several holidays there during that period but had not been back since. So curious to see how much I remembered and indeed how much the place had changed we set off.

tom at Thiumpan After camping the first night in Ullapool, we caught the early ferry to Stornoway in the morning had a very smooth crossing which was very much shorter than I remember it from the seventies.

When we got to the camp site just north of Stornoway there was a stiff wind blowing and this gave us a problem as we had two tents with us: a small two man backpacking tent and a large family tent which we had borrowed from our son-in-law. The small tent would be much more suitable in high wind but we were keen to try out the bigger tent as we planning on getting a bigger tent and this would give us the opportunity to test it out! Big mistake!

That night the wind really picked up and then the rain came on with a vengeance as well. We cowered in our sleeping bags, waiting for dawn as the tent seemed ready to collapse about us. Come the morning the wind seemed to intensify and the rain was coming down in sheets, with no sign of letting up.

lewis Winnie was all for taking the tent down, before it blew away. I, on the other hand, was for sitting tight and hoping the storm would blow itself out but with the proviso that we empty it of all the bedding etc. just in case the worst happened.

Now, our recipe for success, after thirty odd years of happy marriage is to talk through all problems and disagreements in a fair and democratic way before coming to a mutually agreed decision arrived at after an equal and fair exchange of views.

Then I took down the tent! Only it was not a simply as that. The wind and rain seemed to sense they had achieved some kind of victory and taking heart from their success blew and lashed even harder. Those campers amongst you will know that the tricky part of breaking a tent is feeding the tent poles through the narrow tubes, tricky when wet at the best of times, but in a howling gale impossible. What you must do is push or feed the poles through, never pull or the pole will separate inside tube, and will then be the devils own problem to work out, so guess what happened time and time again. For over an our we struggled to get the tent down and bundled into the back of the car, by this time we could have jumped into the sea to get dry.

What we did then was take a hot shower at the campsite before looking for a bed and breakfast.

Our next holiday will be a trip to North Uist and Benbecula and guess what? We are camping!!!

Tom & Winnie McDonald

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Blown Away in Stornoway - 2005