sailing to the Outer Hebrides, from Oban to Barra

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We headed into Oban to book our £75 island rover tickets, which would pretty much let us and our bikes on any Caledonian MacBrayne ferry for the next 15 days. The woman there told us that there was a problem with the Castlebay, Barra ferry (it was broken) and that they would book us on it anyway and send us a text to let us know if it was cancelled or not. So we headed to the cafe in Tesco where we overdosed on carbohydrates and both fell asleep in the car.

Never got the text but got confirmation that the ferry would set sail for Castlebay at 5.30pm, about two and a half hours late. As it was a five hour sailing this would mean we would arrive in Castlebay at 10.30pm rather than 8pm meaning it would be fairly dark when we arrived. We had no idea where we would be cycling to or pitching up for the night so this could be interesting in te dark. Feeling adventurous, we decided we would go ahead with the sailing anyway.

On the ferry we met a couple of women who were going to Lochboisdale, South Uist (where the ferry sailed after Barra), they were also at the beginning of their two week cycle tour but they were starting on the next island and doing a bit of their tour on the mainland from Ullapool. Was cool to chat to them as we sat up on the top deck passing throuh the Sound of Mull and then out on to the open sea towards the Outer Hebrides.

The journey passed pretty smoothly, a little bit of sea sickness towards the end. The sun probably set sometime between 9-9.30 pm while we were at sea, much later than had we still been in Tunbridge Wells. Due to their location on the planet, the sunsets much later than anywhere else in the UK during summer and this would become more and more apparent the further north we travelled.

As it became darker we could just about make out the silhouettes on the uninhabited southernmost islands and the humpback shape of Barra loomed closer and closer.

We pushed our bikes and panniers onto the pier at Castlebay probably about 11pm in pitch darkness. Having already consulted the OS map I decided that we should follow the ring road west to the machair and dunes where we would most likely be able to pitch for the night. So in total darkness on the practically dead main ring road, wearing headtorches we cycled approximately 3 miles to the west coast and pitched up on some ground close to an Atlantic beach.

Turning off all lights we had the night sky looked absolutely amazing, the biggest town Oban was far far away over the horizon and so there was absolutely no light pollution.

Absolutely knackered, we crashed out for the night, listening to the Atalntic rollers crashing in wondering what we would see the following morning when we woke up.

Total miles cycled: probably just 3

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