- A SHORT BREAK IN HARRIS & LEWIS

GRAEME GREEN takes a relaxing tour of one Scottish island which actually sounds like two… coast TRAVEL

Harris and Lewis form the main island of the Outer Hebrides (also known as the Western Isles), far off the west coast of Scotland. Although they’re often referred to as two islands, the Isle of Harris and the Isle of Lewis occupy just one land mass or island, the two separated by mighty mountains and divided for historic and cultural reasons, with Lewis occupying roughly the northern two-thirds of the island, Harris taking the southern third.

Not just the largest island in the Outer Hebrides archipelago, and not just the largest island in Scotland, Harris and Lewis is the largest island in the UK outside of the main island of Great Britain itself.

Two for the price of one for travellers, then. Stornoway is the main town of Lewis and the island’s ‘capital’, the main port for ferry arrivals and departures, while Tarbert, the largest town on Harris, is home to Harris Tweed shops, a beer brewery, and a whisky distillery. Elsewhere, you can find ancient standing stones, medieval churches and the crumbled remains of crofters’ cottages.

It’s the island’s remarkable natural beauty that is the real draw, though, a wonderland for hikers, cyclists, dog-walkers, road-trippers, and photographers, not least the immense beaches of white and golden sand and clear bluegreen water, such as Luskentyre, Nisabost and Kneep, which, on sunny days, could double for the Caribbean or south east Asia.

There’s fantastic diversity in the scenery, including surreal, lunar, grey rock landscapes (Stanley Kubrick used parts of Harris to double for Jupiter in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey), towering mountains, gleaming lochs, and dramatic coastlines.

The island is home to Highland cows and hardy sheep (the latter contributing wool to the worldfamous Harris Tweed), with other local creatures including dolphins, porpoises, seals, red deer, whitetailed sea eagles, puffins, and guillemots.

CHECKMATE

Starting out in Stornoway, we take an early morning walk around the quiet town and harbour, popping in to check out galleries filled with Hebridean art, from collages to ceramics, at An Lanntair arts centre on the waterfront, before heading to Museum nan Eilean in a wing of the restored Lews Castle.

Among the museum’s many Hebridean artefacts, there are several Lewis Chessman pieces in glass cabinets. Carved from walrus tusk, the detailed figurines are just a selection from the 93 pieces discovered in sand dunes off Lewis’ Uig Bay back in 1831, all created by craftsmen in Trondheim, Norway, more than 80