Leg 5, Day 2: Castlebay - Leverburgh

 

Our alarm went off at 5.45am this morning, after a decidedly average night's sleep on the floor of the Barra RNLI Station.

John the mechanic had made us very welcome and comfortable, but with the constant whirring and beeping of RNLI electronics in the crew room, hours of sleep achieved were minimal...

The pitter patter of rain on the windows when we woke certainly was not what we were hoping for- neither was the whistling of wind through the roof above us! Welcome to the Outer Hebrides! 

After a quick photo outside the station at 6am, we set off into the storm. With rain lashing the side of our faces, and strong wind buffeting us on our bikes, we were soon soaked through to the skin...

 

We raced the 15km or so across Bara to Ardmor to make the 7am ferry to Eriskay. You can imagine our delight therefore twhen we saw the ferry pulling away at 6.55am just as we rode in! Great... It's not often you see Rad REALLY angry- but this was one of those moments! With the next ferry not leaving for two hours, we settled in at a small ferry shelter on the headland, along with a delightful cyclist from Glasgow who was touring the Outer Hebrides. We did our best to stay warm for the following two hours while Rad tried to calm down!

With no waterproofs between us, and being utterly soaked and cold as we were, I was starting to question Rad's insistence that waterproofs are a waste of time for long distance cycling trips.  Later in the morning when even Rad resorted to wearing a bin bag and recommending that I did too, suggested that he might have been starting to change his views on this following day 1 of the Outer Hebrides....

The boat at last pulled in and we set off for Eriskay. By the time we arrived on the other side just 20 minutes later, the weather had worsened, with even stronger winds and heavier rain now lashing us. The great news however was that this was a direct tail wind from the South, and this really did turn our fortunes around.

 

After a small hill climb, the next 93km were generally very flat and very fast, being pushed along by the tail wind in our bin bags! Averaging over 40kmph we belted up the bleak and windswept Outer Hebrides (Eriskay, then South Uist, Benbecula and finally North Uist- each connected to the next by causeways).

With only two shops along the 93 km stretch, and being Sunday when everything is closed until 12.30 up here, we needed to find food for lunch,  dinner and breakfast the next day (as we knew from the RNLI crew that nothing would be open in Leveborough on Sunday- a very religious community). We pulled in at a closed Co-op, and Rad, in the full glory of his Lycra Outfit complete with luminous beanie and bin bag top, managed by some miracle, to sweet talk the staff into letting us do our shopping while the shop remained closed! Absolute legends...

The final 30km up to Berneray to catch the ferry across to Leverburgh, saw us battered by more driving rain, and a delightful crosswind to make the final stretch that bit more challenging ... 

Rather exhausted, we pulled in to the small harbour, only to see the ferry heading off into the distance- great- twice in one day! This time, it turned out to be due to Rad's timetable reading skills or lack thereof... So we settled in to the next ferry waiting hut for a three hour stint. 

Thankfully the ferry returned and we arrived in Leverburgh in good time before our early start the following morning...