Barra Holiday

It's been a while since we visited our friends house on Barra, we've been to the Island probably 10 times, our lady visit included a visit to Stornaway and a trip down through several Islands, finally visiting Barra. The kids have also been several times, Jacks first joined up spoken words were 'Chris's Canoe' , talking about the chap in the next house who had a canoe.

We decided to use the motorhome to make it a more comfortable trip, we planned to sleep in the house but use the motorhome on the Island.

Setoff Saturday morning and made good time, there was as bit of concern, other ferries had been unreliable for a couple of weeks and the day before we setoff the ferry had been cancelled, thankfully Calmac decided to put two ferries on to help with the backlog. The ferry terminal was very busy in Oban but we were booked on the 3:30 ferry so we knew there was a place for us. 

The crossing was trouble free, we made good time up the Sound of Mull, past Tobermory and across The Minch, reaching Castle bay by mid evening.

Sunday and it was cloudy, we headed over to Vatersay  connected to Barra by a causeway. Heading out to Uidh we parked the Motorhome where the road ends and headed down onto the large north facing beach, at the far end we clambered over the rocks and made our way to the next beaches, the sea has cut the island in two at high tide, the kids enjoyed looking for crabs, turning over stones and routing through seaweed. On the way back we visited a south facing beach, again looking for creatures under the stones, there was some quite large shore crabs and the kids enjoyed picking them up as they tried to nip with their class.

Monday and it was still clouds, we headed up to Cleat, this is my favourite beach, there's some great sea caves at the far end of the beach,you've really got to know where to look for some of them, the kids played for ages running backwards and forwards as the waves came up inside one of the best caves, thankfully you can escape at the back of the caves, so you don't get cut off by the tide.

Tuesday and better weather, we decided to do a circular bike ride on the A888, it's about 13 miles, went clockwise, the outbound ride follows the beaches that face the Atlantic, circling in land we crossed over to Northbay where we stopped at the Heathbank Hotel for a drink before heading  south along the rocky coast line, the last bit is a drag having to go up quite a long steep hill to the highest point of the road next to Heaval the highest mountain on Barra.

Wednesday as and we decided to walk up Heaval to admire the views out over the islands. The weather was pretty good and I got some good photos, in the afternoon we headed upon to the airport, watches a plane come in to land and finally ended up at Eoligarry where we got some muscles from under the pier, these were beautiful, Andrea and Finlay had their fill.

Thursday and we headed back onto Vatersay and spent time on the sheltered long beach, the kids were 'sand dune jumping', the beach was pretty busy and some of the other kids wanted to join in, but their parents weren't too chuffed and stopped them!

Friday we were heading home, so tidied the house up, spent time on the foreshore by the house with a crab line and a bucket before getting the ferry at tea time, landing back in Oban at 11:30pm, we stopped in the Tesco car park, we drove home Saturday morning and arrived home mid afternoon.

Barra is an amazing place when the weather is good, and on this visit we had been ferry lucky. We've had holidays when the weather has been poor and the whole experience is quite different, can't wait to comer back again!