Day 8 - Thursday May 31st Lewis, Scotland
This is our last day on Lewis. Meg and I are sitting at the Kitchen table saddened by the prospect of leaving it behind.
Today we are bound for Callenish to see sites 2 and 3 (lesser standing stone circles in the vicinity of the first) and on to Rodel to see a church that Mera
the eye-rolling waitress from Glasgow promises us will have naked ladies hidden in the architecture. The Borve Pottery lady
(www.borghpottery.com) directed us to a wonderful walk along the
peninsula below the chapel. We expect it to be another day filled with discovery.
Dad, you'll be happy to know you were wrong. We haven't been bored for even a moment.
Today so far is Sunny and much warmer than yesterday which as the Scots would say was a bit soft. Which of course means that it was raining pretty good most of the day. But they do have a sense of humor about it here. A nice lady that was taking a pot of soup to the tea room as we were coming out of St. Molag's temple yesterday smiled and said "Ooooh isn't this a fine summer day we're havin'"?
So yesterday we didn't expect to get very far as it was expected to rain all day. We went first up towards the tea room with every expectation of making it to St. Moluag's first but we went the wrong direction (upon my suggestion) and ended up going out to a rough and rocky cliff to 
Dun Eistean. This is an ancient fort which simply means that it was a defensible place to escape to when somebody was after you. (Like your mum when you were particularly naughty). They (the people who do such things - probably peat cutters) did discover a structure there and if I remember correctly it was about 4 ft square. The legend is that the escapees would access the place by climbing hand over hand along a rope bridge between the island and this fort island. They are separated by a ravine.
Here's a view of the 
Butt of
Lewis Lighthouse from the Dun. Now later in the day we met Mr. Robeson a local historian
(more about him later) who assures us that it is in fact not a ravine being only 35 or so feet down.
Surely a ravine would be 50 or 100 feet down or more. He has on several occasions climbed down and back up in order to access this dun prior to the installation of an 
odd metal bridge that was placed courtesy of the Morrisons (much to the relief of overweight American tourists everywhere, thank you very much, ooooh that's lovely).
Though the rain came down all day we were actually fortunate that the wind was not stiff and we were able to use umbrellas most of the day.
So once we left this impressive site we hopped back in the car and headed for 
St. Moluag's church again. This is an active church in the 
Church of Scotland and the nice lady who made our wool hats is the preacher there. I think it probably suits her,
there was a three inch platform in front of the lecturn, we have heard she is a
tiny lady. The church is very small. It probably has eight pews no more than 8 feet across in two rows of four. The walls are stone and un-painted or otherwise adorned. There are small narrow windows on each of the four sides. It's quite old, I can get you the details later. There is a 
very old baptismal font that is carved from stone with a wooden lid and a 
donation box that looks to be late 19th century at the latest. The church stands alone at the 
end of a long path that is well marked and bordered on each side by - who would have guessed - sheep.
So having dropped our requisite pound in the collection box we wandered off to the tea room to see what was in the pot that the lady with the
Scottish sense of humor had delivered. It was a lentil soup this time. I have a theory that traditionally the
Scots didn't have teeth as all their homemade soups are pretty well blended. Of course the truth is probably more towards the fact that for a long time they didn't have much of anything and if you blended a soup it could go a lot further.
Anyway, we sat in the tea room, had a bowl of lentil soup and a brown bun. Hannah had a scone with jam and picked out the raisins. A pot of tea and we splurged on desserts. The whole time I was
literally steaming. It was cold in there and I was hot from the walk back from St. Moluag's. We should have gotten a picture.
After we left the tea room, Hannah was tired so we dropped her at the cottage for a nap and headed out again. We went to the
Callicvol quilt shop in Nis and had a lovely visit with the Robsons. First 
Mrs. Robson told us all about her quilt shop, showing us pictures and talking about the area.
She didn't have any quilts to show us because her business was so successful
that she spent all her time working on consignment pieces mostly for people who
had visited the area.
She cleared up any misconceptions about crofts she thought we might have had.
I will do the same for you. A croft is a piece of land sized about 5 acres to
about 12 ish that should be enough to sustain a family. It is not
necessarily a farm. Fishermen generally have crofts which are smaller than
those of farmers because they don't need as much land since they're presumably
getting part of their subsistence from the sea.
She also gave us the low down on the whole peat thing (her loft was heated with a peat stove).
She told us how they stack the peat and how the peat gets a hard skin on it .
They will then periodically go and stack the peat higher as it gets harder so
that fewer and fewer of the peat squares are in contact with the ground. Apparently each town has an allotment of the moor and each croft within the town has it's own allotment within the town allotment. Everyone just knows 
where their peat is and no one encroaches upon the other's peat. Though it is possible to take over someone's peat allotment if they don't cut it for three years,
but that is rarely done. It might be your neighbor or someone you know and that's apparently quite an affront. I know I wouldn't want to be considered a peat monger or peat thieving son of a sheep...
When we finished with Mrs. Robson we went downstairs on her recommendation to speak with her husband. 
Mr. Robson was equally delightful. He is an older man - a little deaf - who came to the area in the 50's from Northumberland after being sent to Skye for school. He started by announcing the beginning of the lecture by telling us how he came to purchase his first book which as it turned out had been previously owned by famous people in the area with a historical significance. Mssrs
Carmichael and Matheson or other who studied St. Kilda and owned most of Lewis
respectively. He went on to purchase other books which eventually resulted in
his collection that is now the Nis book trust. If you ever have a question about
the Outer Hebrides he's your man
www.callicvol.com He had some wonderful information about the area having become quite the historian over the years inspired by that first book. He prophylactically corrected all the misconceptions he thought we might have about the area from the mis-nomer "western isles" to the notion that Morrisons were "from" Lewis. He had several books on the area that he had written. I purchased one and Meg & Terry purchased two others. He also had recommendations on places to go on Lewis as well as told us some of his childhood memories from his time in the Cheviot Hills. Apparently there were wild goats there who "were ancient, like they were made of stone and clouds". When they came close he would don his indian chief headdress, grab his bow and arrow and stalk them. Whenever a goat presented his backside within range he would let an arrow go and nail those suckers (my words not his). The arrow would bounce off the butt of the goat and it would bound away.
When we finally were able to get away (and I say that in the fondest way, he really was a treasure but might not have ever let us go) we headed to the cross inn for an ale in the old barn tavern out back. We enjoyed a couple of pints before heading off to home and a warm dry bed. This was unexpectedly and thoroughly a wonderful day.
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