It's been just over a week since I got back. I spent the first 4 days in a bit of a frenzy of appointments and sorting out stuff that had been left undone while away. Then, I got up to Burra on Saturday and...slept. 

It's so quiet here, and lovely in the Spring. There has been a very wet winter and the yard is in full flower, but was also full of weeds. I have done my best with the whipper snipper but the place still looks a bit like an overgrown country jungle yard. 

The sleep was much needed. My physio has said I needed to take it easy, but I did not realise exactly how easy that would be. I have been taking the days slowly, going to bed at 10pm and getting 12 hours sleep over a 14 hour period, Sat, Sun and Monday nights, to awake at midday. I have one more night and am hoping insomnia doesn't kick in. Adelaide tomorrow. 

The equinox is over and my Adelaide life must start again, at some point. It is already full of appointments and needful activity. For now I am enjoying the last days of perfect temperature, and an even balance between day and night.

I've been mulling this over since getting back and decided to list the Top 12. Some ovbious ones and some surprises have made the cut. 

1 - Managing to get to see a former member of Steeleye Span play with a current member of Spiers and Boden and the Nettlebed Folk club
2 - Spending time with Nick and Anita on bird and butterfly trips, especially at Arne Bird Sanctuary in Dorset
3 - Spending time with Daniel H in County Clare, following up obscure placenames, visiting holy wells and shrines and so on. 
4 - Seeing Martin Hayes at the Feakle Folk Festival, Clare
5 - The sections of the Ridgeway between Chiseldon and Goring, especially the town  of Goring
6 - The sections of the Great Glen Way between Gairlochy and Drumnadrochit, especially Invermoriston
7 - Crazy dancing with Scottish girls at a pub in Glasgow
8 - Ullapool and the ferry ride to Stornowau
9 - The Antrim Coast, NI
10 - Two long walks from Belfast to the Giant's Ring and to Slievegullion, Mountains of Mourne
11 - Birding in Walthamstowe, London
12 - Callanish

I've been back nearly a week, and have had a lot to catch up on in terms of appointments, and sleep. I am currently in Burra and slept for 14 hours last night. My physio says not to do too much to allow my back a chance to recover,. If things are still playing up on Thursday I might need scans. 

Despite drinking a lot of good beer whiole away, I did manage to lose 6 kilos, andI wasn't undereasting, so it must have been the excercise. These are the best I can remember. 

1 - Tring Brewery Side Pocket for a Toad Ale
2 - Butcombe Original Ale, Bristol
3 - Wadworth 6x, Wiltshire
4 - Harviestoune Bitter and Twisted, Scotland
5 - Caledonian Brewery Deuchars, now owned by Green King / Belhaven
6 - Belhaven 80 Shilling (or Caledonian 80 Shilling aka Edinburgh Castle)
7 - Smithwick's Red Ale, Ireland
8 - Williams Fraoch Heather Ale, Scotland
9 - O'Haras Stout, Ireland
10 - Another English one I need to find a photo of
11 - Timothy Taylor's Landlord Pale Ale was a hit wherever I could find it on tap
12 - Saving this spot for another memory...

Best whiskies (Top 6)

Lagg
Raasay
Hearach (from Harris)
Ledaig
Method and Madness Single Grain (Ireland)
Wiltshire

The weather turned towards the very end of my trip and road touring got a bit tedious. On the final day in Stornoway I drive to a few new places, but it was all getting a bit sameish, and I had to get the car back to the airport by 2pm. The biggest challenge of the day was filling it, when all the petrol stations were closed. (It was a Sunday and the whole place just shuts down on a Sunday). The highlight of the day was a Harbour Seal, found in Stornoway Harbour while I was having a final stint of birding. 

The flight to Edinburgh was delayed 4 hours so by the time I got in it was 9.30 and I had a quick bute and then went straight to bed. So much for my night on the town! The next morning I spent op-shopping, in Tollcross and Haymarket and other spots where there are loads of them, and managed to find a few choice Tweed items for friends but nothing that fit or suited me. Then it was on the train to Leighton Buzzard via Stoke, a 5-hour journey that took me through Gretna Green, Carlisle, the Lake District, and a lot of very poor industrial towns in Lancashire which a all looked a bit grim. Anita and Nick picked me up after work and it was another night drinking whisky on the canal bank and then snoring in the back cabin. It felt like a preliminary homecoming. 

I'm in an apartment in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It's 3am and I can't sleep so I thought I would finally catch on on the blogging that has not occurred in the last 6 days. 

Well, I did it. I stood among the ancient Stones of Callanish, one of the oldest of all the circles. I got to the Outer Hebrides, and fulfilled a promise I had to to myself when I was about 25, that one day I would go. I saw them for three days, in all light, morning, noon, dusk and midnight, in sun and rain and rainbow and moonlight.  They were everything I had hoped they would be, and the area was even better. 

The first circle (2700BC, older then Stonehenge) is the best, and unique. It has a central stone, an circle, an avenue and a burial mound, and that's not normal. Later on it was a Bronze Age town and then the site was left to be buried under meters of peat, much of which was only excavate recently. As many of thirteen other circles also stand in the area within 5k of the main site, but only a few are impressive, the rest being rings of smaller stones. I went to five others. 

Having done all this, I had finished. This was the most outward step of my trip, and everything after it felt like a contraction to the centre, and also, like a random addition onto the last momemt of a planned schedule. I am glad I am in KL, with Louise, 6 days later. It's time to go. 

I don't have any bucket list items of this type, any more. There are plenty of things I want to do, but there isn't a single place that I know I must see, which I have not already seen before. Callanish was it. And it's done. I was extremely happy for the two days I was there. I even kissed a few stones...

Lewis and Harris form the majority of the Outer Hebrides landmass. The landscape here is very weird - it consists of lumps and fingers of gneiss rock, filled with inland lakes and intruded upon by sea lakes, and covered all over with boggy peat, which grows so thick it can bury structures within a few hundred years. Few people live here now - but for the stone age people 4000 years ago, the lack of full tree cover and the easy access to both fresh water and sea resources made it (and Orkney) ideal. Stone Age civilisation flourished here. Our civilisation is not doing quite as well. 

Until the 1950s, many people here still lived in what they call 'blackhouses', which are stone buildings with peat fires inside, no insulation, and straw roofs. There's still a few ones left, now museums, to give you an idea of what it was like: not very nice. After WW2 the government began moving people out of them and into newer pebbledash houses, which are ugly but probably a lot more healthy to live in. The remains of blackhouses dot the landscape around villages - they are often right next to the newer house.

I spent 2 days driving around Lewis and saw a lot of small villages, with miles and miles of winding road stretching through peat moorland in between. Sheep and cattle roam free, all over the roads, tagged so their owners can find them with GPS if they go missing. (I saw some sheep in really odd places.) The views are bleak, but sometimes amazing. The ever-changing weather allows for many rainbows, and strange moments where it is dark and gloomy in two places within view, but then the water shines clear blue and the mountains glow in two others, as fast fronts come in from the Atlantic and then disappear within half an hour. 

One one walk I met a local ranger whose job was trapping mink. Apparently some peabrain ran a mink farm here in the 60s, and when he abandoned it, he let them all go. At one time there were thousands, decimating local birdlife. They were mostly under control, which gave the government an excuse the cut the control programme funding, so now they are coming back again. It was ever thus. He showed me a dead mink, but most of his traps were empty at the place we visited. 

The temperance movement really did its job up here. Stornoway itself has pubs, but there are scarce few elsewhere. The village community centres (also the library, historical society, medical centre, post office and shop) are the real heart of life here. I went to four of them all up. The last was at Balannan, near where Clan MacKenzie of Seaforth once ruled the Lordship of the Isles for a few hundred years, late in the piece. I went to see the monument where my (adopted) ancestral seat once was. It's a ruin, like so many things here. That was around the time when the loneliness kicked in, the bleak scenery got all a bit much, and I made it back to Stornoway for an early dinner and some time off. 

Many place names are Viking in origin - Stornoway, Carloway, Shawbost, Leurbost, and so on - but there is little of their archaeology left, just a recreation of an old mill. There is one Iron Age house - barely recognisable under the peat, and an Iron Age Broch - but no Roman, no Anglo-Saxon and hardly any medieval stuff either. There are surfers, hippies, dreamers, croft farmers...and me. It was fun, but I would not live here. I am not a stone age hunter, so it does not look like paradise to me. 

The last picture is of my camping pod at Callanish. I'll post about the stone age circles tomorrow. 

A quick post about Stornoway before I get to the main action. 

I arrived here 4 days ago and I'm back here now after my Isle of Lewis tour. All trace of the original Viking settlement is gone and Lews Castle is is an ugly 1850s fake-gothic excuse for a castle / golf course. Basically, Stornoway is an industrial port town, which the local council have tried to dress up a bit, but there's ho hiding it's pebblecrete character. Most of the population of the island live here. The main ferry port, airport and infrastructure is here. There's a good Gaelic-speaking cafe here with nice music and people, here are also weird drunk fishermen in droves. it's been a handy base, so that I didn't exhaust myself with sightseeing on the rest of the island, only to jump straight onto transport at the end of the day. I get on the plane to Edinburgh tomorrow at 4pm. 

The last great objective of my trip is accomplished and I am starting to feel tired and a bit lonely. I see friends on Monday, and Louise by Friday, so the loneliness has hit at a good time. I am glad it didn't come earlier. The weather has gone bad, right at the end of the trip. Today was rainy and windy all day, and it felt like the end of things. 

Ullapool has replaced Invermoriston as my favourite of the Highlands towns I have visited - mostly because it is big enough to imagine having a life here, whereas on Invermoriston, you'd be in the car to Drumnadrochit every other day. 

I had a very relaxed day here, not straying any further than about a mile away in any direction, searching for birds, otters, and so on. The view back along Loch Broom was very nice in different light and weather throughout the day - I'll post one picture of the scene to give you an idea, but I took about 8, depending where the sun was. It is still light at 9pm up here. 

I got laundry done during the day, had a nice long nap, ate the best scallops I have ever tasted at the Shore Restaurant above my hotel, watched some crazy accordion music, and then attempted sleep. Unfortunately, the punters above the Arch Inn had other ideas and yelled their heads off until about midnight, despite frequent attempts to shut them up. I get the feeling southern 'lads' like coming to the Highlands to get a bit large with it and show everyone they can do whatever they like, because it's their country. The Highland Scots hate them, but need their money. 

The ferry ride this morning was  the best of the trio in terms og wildlife. I got talking to several older Brithsh women, one wsho had bought her son up here as he was mad keen on wildlife. Their entire day was going to be spent on the ferry from Ullapool to Stornoway, and back. I can't blame them - we saw porpoises, dolphins, minke whales, and I think I got a new bird - Manx Shearwater. 

I did plenty this afternoon on Lewis, but I'll post about that some other time.

I'm in Ullapool now, actually having a rest day. It's 31.5 pm and I'm in bed! It seemed like it was finally time. 

Yesterday, I went to Culloden Battlefield, and found a field, which one remaining cottage, and a huge concrete visitor's centre explaining what happened here, which I mostly knew already. I am sure there is plenty in there for a trained archaeologist, but not for an amateur observer like me. The internet describes the place as brooding and myserious an I can assure you that it certainly isn't. I left, and went to find Clava Cairns.

On the way I stopped in at the nearby Battlefield Inn, where I had a pint of the locally-made 'SCOTS DEFEAT' lager and a 'WE GOT BEATEN BY THE ENGLISH' burger. 

Jokes aside, it is a bit sad the way the Scots cash in on their own inglorious demise at Culloden in 1746. I'd rather see a new-brand Scottish business go up than a slightly retrograde and twee one. I have just spoken to a local McKenzie woman here in Ullapool who was delighted to tell me that one of the Ye Olde Highland Kitche stores closed down and was replaced by a new gin distillery. It's not 1746 any more, guys. 

Clava Cairns were wonderful - part of a much larger complex of Bronze Age burial cairns and stone rings that stand above the River Nairn. The Scottish Heritage folks will let you go two tow of them and I did that. Even despite the larger number of tourists they were still very evocative. They are now one of my favourite archaeological sites, taking a top spot pretty quickly. 

The walk back was...interesting. I had fun in the small villages near Culloden, and on the banks of the Moray Firth, checking out the views and the birds and so on, but then got tangled up in a train line and a massive of roundabouts and slogged my way back into Inverness by about 8pm. It was a long day. 

Ullapool is a beautiful town, I have a meal booked at a seafood restaurant tonight and then at 9pm I will see a local accordion player who is apparently a bit of a nutter. Tomorrow I am on the ferry to Stornoway, where a hire car awaits. 

Might have a hunt about for an Osprey this evening. Apparently, they are around in Loch Broom. I'd love to see one.