2024 Summer Tour - Day 4 (North Uist and Harris)

Day 4 North Uist, South Harris Thursday 30th May 

Redburn House is a ‘self-service’ B&B, with no resident manager – breakfast is provided for guests to help themselves. This was convenient, and this enabled an early breakfast so we could set off by 7.30 to cycle  over to Berneray for the 9.30 Leverburgh ferry.  

The plan for today was for a relatively short day in mileage terms, but of course there’s a lengthy climb towards the end of the route. Nevertheless, we took our time on this ride, with several breaks. I think this was important, since the day before, we plugged away for 58 miles (with headwind), and the next day was scheduled to be over 60 miles. 

Anyway, the weather was shaping up quite well, even though the wind was strengthening, and continued to be a headwind for most of the day.

On the way to the Berneray-Leverburgh ferry

When we arrived at the ferry terminal, there were only a couple of cyclists, but quite a few more turned up before the ferry arrive, including 4 e-bikes. We saw quite a few e-bikes being used for touring (judging from the panniers) on our trip, and not being an e-bike user myself I find it difficult to understand the logistics regarding battery life and range. Still, I guess it gets more people out and cycle touring. 

The Berneray-Leverburgh ferry arriving

The ferry arrived in good time and left promptly for Leverburgh. The crossing was smooth and uneventful, we saw cormorants, gannets diving and of course seals. Apologies for the low resolution photo!

After disembarking from the ferry, we pedalled over to the community shop for supplies. The Gaelic name for Leverburgh is An t-Òb, and the reason for the disparity from the English name is rooted in the early 20th century when William Lever (1st Viscount Leverhulme, who made his fortune in groceries) decided after a holiday in the Hebrides to buy Lewis in 1918. he later extended his ownership to include Harris. Leverhulme had a desire to improve the local economy by starting industrial scale fishing (he even set up a national chain of fish shops). Unfortunately for Levehulme his grand plan, which modern eyes would see as rather paternalistic, failed as demobbed soldiers returned from the Great War with expectations of access to crofting land that had been promised to them. Leverhulme died in 1925, and the estates in the Hebrides were subsequently sold off quite cheaply. A good account of the events can be found in The Soap Man by Roger Hutchinson. Leverburgh remains the second biggest settlement in Harris after Tarbert.

The west and east coasts of South Harris are very different. The former has amazing golden beaches and extensive machair, while the east is more rocky with many inlets. The road round the east coast (known as the Golden Road due to the expense of building it) makes for pretty tough cycling as it continually goes up and down and is all singletrack. On one of our early cycling trips to Harris, we rode our Dawes Super Galaxy tandem, with full camping load, along this route and vowed to think twice before doing it again!

From Leverburgh, we cycled to the Temple cafe in Northton. We’d visited this cafe some years ago when we were last on Harris. On that occasion we met a couple of students on their first cycle tour to the Hebrides and sort of envied them as everything was new to them! We sat outside in the sunchine and had tea/coffee and flapjacks.  

The Harris beaches come into view

At the Temple cafe - some view for our coffee break!

After that, we pedalled down to Northton Bay, which is really close by (and I can’t for the life of me understand why we didn’t do this the last time were were at the Temple cafe!). This is a really lovely little beach. We sat for a while chatting to two ladies with little dogs in tow before getting back on the bike.  

Northton Bay

Carol on the beach

Negotiating our way past the bin lorry, we made our way back to the Tarbert road, where we rode a short distance before we stopped at a favourite spot to heat up couscous for a light lunch. A lot of today's route is on singletrack road, and there seemed to be a lot of camper vans out there.

A favourite spot on Harris

At this point, we were taking our time in an attempt not to arrive too early at the B&B, so we dawdled and took our time. We watched a seabird circling round the shallows on the beach occasionally dropping to catch some morsel of food. 

Yellow flag irises are everywhere on the Outer Hebrides

After that, we trundled on, pausing for traffic on the singletrack, and joining a roadmending convoy at one point – they were surface dressing the road. For a spell at least we were doing 20mph!

Eventually we began the long climb up through the rocky landscape of Harris. Since our early visits to Harriss, there's been some upgrade to the road here. It's alldouble track now, which makes things musch easier when you're trundling a heavily laden tandem up a long climb.

We eventually reaching the Roedean Guesthouse B&B at about 3.20pm. Unsuprisingly, there was nobody in! So we went for a brief walk before the landlady arrived. 

Panorama of the rocky hills of South Harris, near our B&B

The Roedean guest house was very nice, with comfortable accommodation. Sadly, we weren't going to be able to have breakfast the next morning, as we were catching the early ferry from Tarbert to Uig, and latest checkin for the ferry was around 6.35am! I particularly appreciated the views and the bumblebee themed soft furnishings.

Rather than going in to Tarbert and, more to the point back again up a steep road, we just had some oatcakes and cheese.

This had been a really nice and relaxing day out on the bike and despite the omnipresent wind, the weather was pretty sunny and warn with only one brief outbreak of drizzle. he hit the sack wondering how the weather would be on Skye the following day.