Walking in the Hebrides

This guidebook has 50 walking routes throughout Scotland's Hebrides, including Arran, Jura, Islay, Colonsay, Mull, Coll, Tiree, Muck, Eigg, Rhum, Canna, Skye, Barra, Beenbecula, the Uists, Harris, St Kilda and Lewis. Geographical and historic information.

The myriad islands of Scotland’s western seaboard cast a spell, some sort of magic. The people of the Hebrides are part of this charm but the strongest power emanates from the wide seas, the complicated topography, the very rocks and the lichens and limpets upon them, the birds and the seals and island creatures and the remnants of human cultures little known or dreamed of and the wide, sad skies.

Though the purist would include all the islands of Britain’s north-western coast under the general heading of the Hebrides, from the Isle of Man northwards, I shall limit the region to those isles which lie off the western coast of Scotland. I have not included a description of all the islands and islets of western Scotland in this book as that would require a volume considerably larger than is possible here, and to visit all rocks, reefs and remote shores of the region would require more than one lifetime!

Generally speaking, the northern limit of the region described here as the Hebrides is the remote islands of Sula Sgeir and North Rona, 50 miles (80kms) north-west of Cape Wrath; the southern limit is the Firth of Clyde; the eastern limit is the west coast of the mainland; the western boundary can be taken as the brink of the Continental Shelf to great oceanic depths beyond St. Kilda and Rockall.

Island-going can become a thrilling and life-consuming activity. There’s no doubt that small islands are very attractive on account of their limited scale which can be readily appreciated. Islands are complete units of a natural order, each with its definite limits, its own eminence, its streams and lochs, its human settlement and native flora and fauna. Even that most sinuous of natural features, the coast, is limited and explorable in a relatively short time on islands.

Beyond this especial attractiveness to the nature lover, islands of the Hebrides must inevitably appeal to the mountain lover for are not all islands, especially the steeper ones, mountain tops partially submerged so as to be isolated? Herein lies a special charm, an explainable charm of the Hebrides - they are a complicated mountain region which would be beyond man’s reason to become intimate with were it not for the fact that so much of their lower slopes have been submerged. The adventurer must explore one island, one mountain top, before passing over this limiting factor of water to the next objective.

As one goes about the Hebrides three types of island scenery will be noticed. First, there are the often bleak looking, broken, rocky profiles of Coll and South Uist and others. A second type is the tabular or shelving form of islands like Canna and Muck. Thirdly, the jagged mountain profiles of Rhum and the Cuillins of western Skye.

These three scenic types have been formed in special ways and at different geological times. Most of the wild mountains of the mainland and Outer Isles are formed of the oldest rocks known, pre-Cambrian - Lewisian gneiss in the Outer Isles and Torridonian sandstone and other old rocks on the mainland. Between these two stable blocks there occurred during the Tertiary era - some seventy million years ago - great movements which produced the huge mountain chains of the present day (Himalaya, Andes, Caucasus).

Associated with this great Alpine Storm many weaknesses of the surface resulted and through these fissures and other openings molten volcanic material was able to pour onto the surface. On Skye and other related islands basalt is the most extensive surface rock today. That this was originally molten is easily proven by the abundance of bubbles found in the upper parts of the flows. These bubbles once contained gas but now are filled with mineral matter left by later infiltrations. The lava (now it is extrusive rock) was poured out onto the surface and cooled rapidly, hence the small crystals making up basalt.

What fossils are present in Hebridean basalt are those of terrestrial plants, proving that the outpourings were not submarine. The basalt was produced by a large number of flows, each cooling and solidifying before another flow encroached over the top.

Basalt forms the surface rocks of most of northern Skye, Mull, Canna, Eigg, Muck and other small islands and reefs in the Sea of the Hebrides. The resulting scenery is typical - plateau moorland with much terraced stepping. This stepped terracing is nowhere better seen than on Canna, where there are many 30ft (10m) high cliffs of the ‘organ-pipe’ structure typical of this rock stretching for hundreds of yards across the isle’s length. This organ-pipe structure is due, incidentally, to the peculiar formation of basalt crystals upon cooling.

The third type of mountain form, the ragged and pinnacled profiles of the Rhum and Skye Cuillins, are formed of another volcanically-derived rock - the world renowned gabbro. Though of the same chemical composition as basalt it is an intrusive rock (i.e. the molten material forming gabbro was poured out beneath the surface and therefore cooled slowly, giving rise to large, coarse crystals). The gabbro has been more resistant to the effects of erosion than the basalt sheets so that a mountain mass remains where this lava issued up towards the surface in Tertiary times.

Gabbro is a very sound rock and has been called “the perfect mineral answer to the rock climber’s prayer”. Frank Smythe referred to the Cuillins of Skye as “Britain’s only true mountains”. The only real parallel with this range is the peaks of the Lofoten Islands lying off the coast of northern Norway.

And so it is that the entire Hebridean scene reflects the rocks near, often upon, the surface. Not just the shape of an island, its hills and headlands and corners of lowland, but the activities of man and the resulting details of the view depend on the soil derived from those particular rocks.

Improvements in roads and communications along them (and by sea, air and telephone) have given the island farmer a better chance than in earlier days to gain a decent living. There is now much better and easier cultivation of the soil (where it is deep enough, as on Tiree and other favoured islands) using modern machinery, improved strains of grasses, clover and cereals. Still the dominant cattle type is what may be referred to as the “Hebridean”, a mixture of breeds but often with the characteristics of the long horned Ayrshire or Shorthorn or the shaggy, dun coat of the typical Highland. Continental breeds are seen more frequently, too. The true Highland cow is still fairly common throughout the islands and its often fearsome appearance should not deceive the timid rambler because this beautiful, ancient breed can be the most friendly and placid of animals, though some herds roam semi-wild with calves at foot and then the dams will take steps to keep the curious at a respectable distance.

Scottish Blackface sheep are the characteristic breed of western Scotland though flocks of the Roman-nosed Border Leicester and some Cheviots are now kept where conditions allow.

If the walker wishes to contrast farming patterns in the Hebrides I can do no better than recommend that he/she wanders over Tiree’s fertile countryside, where spring bulbs and corn grow in intensive, small fields, then crosses the breadth of an island like Skye where the acid soils support only heather and bog grass and the crofters cut peat for fuel still, catch fish and lobsters and shepherd the hardy Blackface flocks over an infertile though dramatic landscape.

The Hebrides is fortunate in having two of Britain’s finest Nature Reserves - the mountain-hearted Inner Hebridean island of Rhum and the unique and utterly remote archipelago of St. Kilda, also a World Heritage Site. Both reserves are described in this book.