Riding Into The Wind

Cameron takes to his bike for a challenging traverse of the Outer Isles from Vatersay to the Butt of Lewis.

- Cameron McNeish

A USEFUL little guidebook dropped through my letterbox the other day and I wish it had been available 10 years ago. How I could have benefited from this beautifully illustrated guide to the 298km (185-mile) Hebridean Way, a cycling route from Vatersay to the Butt of Lewis in the Western Isles.

Gina and I tried to walk it a few years ago. We started out from Castlebay in Barra in good fettle and fair weather but wind and incessant rain dampened our enthusiasm. We ended up catching a bus from Benbecula to Tarbert in Harris and another to Stornoway and the ferry home.

Sometime later I made a TV programme we called The Hebridean Trail. This mix of bike and hike showed me the wonderful areas we’d missed first time. I was so enthused I went back the next year with a pal and cycled the route again. While the “official” Hebridean Way is fairly new, people have been riding it for decades.

The launch of the newly designated Way a year ago encouraged Pete Martin and Janet Moss from Cumbria to write Cycling on the Edge. The route isn’t difficult to follow, but the guide is full of useful information.

I rode with my pal Hamish Telfer. Mull, Ardnamurchan, Rum and Eigg all looked majestic as we sailed across the Minch from Oban courtesy of CalMac but even these faded into relative insignificance as we swung into Castlebay in the golden hues of a setting Hebridean sun. Lovely Heaval, Barra’s highest summit, rose radiant above the scattering of houses, and the ancient ramparts of Kisimul Castle added romance.

On the ferry we had phoned the excellent Café Kisimul in Castlebay to book a table. There was one problem we’d overlooked. We wanted to begin our bike odyssey in Vatersay, the most southerly inhabited island in the Western Isles, necessitating a big hill climb out of Castlebay and down to the causeway that links the islands.