Western Isles Holiday – South Uist – part 2 – Crazy weather day and a day trip to Barra and Vatersay

Following on from yesterday’s post, I thought I’d talk about a day on South Uist where we had the craziest weather and our day trip to the Isles of Barra and Vatersay. If you missed that post you may want to read that first.

On Tuesday we headed to Loch Druidibeag, South Uist. On our way there we had sunshine, blizzard, sunshine. When we got there it continued, it was crazy…each 20 mins it changed.

To get to Barra, on Wednesday, we drove across the causeway from South Uist to Eriskay. We then caught the ferry across the Sound of Barra to Ardmhor (north side of Barra). If you want to get to Barra from mainland Scotland there’s a ferry from Oban to Castlebay (south side of Barra) or you can fly (more on that later).

The ferry only took 40 mins and was pretty smooth sailing. In the photo collage you’ll see us setting off from Eriskay. Barra has one road that goes around the island and a few smaller roads off it. I think they were pretty much all single track roads with passing places.

The main village is Castlebay, in its bay is Kisimul Castle. We were visiting out of season and most tourist sites are only open April to October (this applies to all the Western Isles).

We headed south on the east side (clockwise). We had a brief stop in Castlebay and then headed to the causeway which would take us to the Isle of Vatersay. You could see off in the distance the Isle of Rum (an Inner Hebrides isle.

Vatersay is most known for its two fantastic white sandy beaches and turquoise sea. These islands benefit from the Gulf Stream and it’s warming effect and bringing with it some very white sand. The west and east beaches have high sand dunes, between them is a small green area where you can park with some protection from the wind. We walked on the east beach, had our picnic in the car sheltered from the wind and then walked up the dunes to see the west beach.

We then headed back to Barra, drove up the west side of the island and headed to Barra airport in the north of the island. Barra is the only airport in the world that has scheduled flights taking off from the runway which is a tidal beach!

We missed the plane coming in to land but managed to see one taking off, which is pretty cool. I have uploaded a video (2 mins 16 secs) to my YouTube channel if you’d like to see, apologies that it was shot in portrait.

Once it had taken off we headed to the ferry to take us back to Eriskay. Obviously as the runway depends on the low tide times you’d need to check on the day the flight times. The planes go to and from Glasgow with Loganair.

Once we docked back on Eriskay we decided to have dinner at Am Politician restaurant/bar. (Dogs are allowed in the bar section.)

If Eriskay rings a bell you may recall the movie Whisky Galore!, the story of the SS Politician shipwrecked off the coast which was full of whisky. The locals enjoyed the whisky before the taxman came a calling. They have some of the original whisky bottles from the wreck.

My husband had the largest scallops we’ve ever seen, which are hand dived locally. I had a halloumi burger which was so huge I couldn’t finish it. Neither of us had room for dessert.

Tomorrow I’ll cover the islands to the north that we visited.