A belated post of our St Kilda Trip from Lewis in 2016.

We spent 10 days on the Isle of Lewis and Harris (two islands in one) about this time last summer and, because of dubious wi-fi at our rental cottage, I had to leave blogging a travelogue until we got back home. Of course, I never got around to it but, reviewing some photographs recently, I thought I'd at least describe the highlight of our stay - a day trip to St Kilda. Although we don't have a 'bucket list', if we did, this would feature near the top for us both. The story of the islanders has long fascinated us and it was great to be able to see it first hand. It is a unique place and its story a blend of romance and myth. The common perception is that the islanders were part of an isolated and patriarchal community, in thrall to the austere demands of the Free Church of Scotland. The reality was more prosaic: the life of the St Kildans' has to be seen in the context of other neighbouring Hebridean islands. In most respects they were very similar and not as different as early chroniclers would have their readers believe. Or, indeed, as they thought themselves as many had never visited any other islands and had no basis for valid comparisons. After all, tales of taciturn folk suppressed by the dictats of the manse make more sensational reading than islanders quietly going about their business and carving out a living as and how they could. St. Kilda was continuously inhabited from the Bronze Age until the last St Kildan’s were evacuated, at their request, in 1930, leaving behind everything they had known and leaving behind a story that continues to beguile and attract.

The group of islands that makes up St Kilda is the most remote in the British Isles, 40 miles from the nearest land. St Kilda has the highest sea cliffs in Britain (Conachar) at 1400ft, the highest sea stacks (Stac an Armin and Stac Li) at 643ft and 564ft and the largest gannetry in the world (Boreray). It is a World Heritage Site owned by the National Trust for Scotland; it is also a Scheduled Ancient Monument, National Scenic Area, Site of Scientific Special interest and European Union Special Protection area. Just these titles by themselves indicate that these islands 'at the edge of the world' are pretty special. Maybe a few photographs (just a few out of around 300) will help put these claims in context.

For those who can't place St Kilda, it's way out to the top left of Scotland. It's actually an archipelago, with the main islands of Soay, Boreray, Dun and Hirta, the latter being what most people think of as being St Kilda.

We used Seatrek, sailing out of Miavaig on Uig, to take us to St Kilda. This is the boat we spent around 8 hours on. It was a long day as, in addition to the time spent sailing, we had around 3 hours on land on Hirta. Was it worth it? Oh, yes. Would we do it again? Oh, yes.

At this point we were about 5 miles from St Kilda, with Hirta to the right and Boreray to the left. The sea stacks of Stac an Armin and Stac Li are in front of Boreray and can't be seen. We were very lucky with the visibility and could see the islands from some 10 miles out.

The only safe landing on Hirta is via Village Bay, which is, in fact, the only bay in the archipelago. This is where the St Kildans' lived, with the bulk of Conachar looming in the background. One thing that surprised as we motored in was the sight of a helicopter landing to the left. And then we remembered that there is an active military base on the island, acting as an outer monitoring point for the missile station on Benbecula in the Hebrides. The large building to the right is the rather incongruous generator for the base. There are some other military buildings by the generator but they do not intrude into the ambience of the place. After all, they are as much a part of the history of St Kilda as anything else.
The last 36 St Kildans left on 29th August 1930 because life had become too difficult. But summer can see as many as 35 people living on the main island of Hirta, almost as many as were living there at the time of the evacuation. They are a mix of staff from the present owners, the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), Ministry of Defence workers, volunteers and scientists. Their occupations would have been alien to the weavers and crofters who once lived here. Over the winter, the military station has about 10 staff, each living on the island for a month at a time and being ferried in and out by helicopter from Benbecula. NTS employees leave the islands for the winter.

This is The Street where most of the islanders lived. There's also a manse for the vicar, a schoolhouse and a place for storage. And that was it for many years until the military moved in and built a few things. It's a tranquil place, with the name of the last occupants on a plaque by each door. When fully occupied (was it ever fully occupied?), it would have been a busy place as people went about what was necessary to survive in such a harsh environment.

The original dwellings were the round buildings that you can see between the houses. These were single room dwellings built to withstand the elements and were in harmony with their environment. They would have been dark and pungent as the smell of bird oil would have permeated everything and everywhere. But the 19th Century and the age of the steam ship saw many tourists visiting the islands, so efforts were made by the absentee owner to improve life for the islanders. One of the so-called improvements was 16 new houses that were built in the village in 1860, which are the ones that can be seen now. These new houses were cold and it was necessary to import coal from the mainland, the supplies of local peat not being enough to heat them. Neither could they be repaired with local materials, for example, they had roofs of corrugated iron. I presume that they weren't asked what would work for them. 
During World War I, a Royal Navy detachment to Hirta meant regular deliveries of mail and food for sailors and the islands' residents. However, the end of the war and withdrawal of the unit reinforced a feeling of isolation among the community. The winter of 1929 was so hard some inhabitants died and the remaining 36 islanders wrote to the government asking to be taken off and start a new life on the mainland. Hirta was abandoned the following year.

Dotted all over Hirta (and there are some on Boreray and Soay) are these domed structures. They are unique to St Kilda and are called cleits or cleitean, They are small stone sheds with a roof of a large flat stone covered with earth and turf. The walls are built of stones with little gaps between them. This means that the wind can whistle through and help things kept inside them dry and cool. In a windy place like St Kilda it's a perfect design for what some have called 'stone fridges'. They were used to store, amongst other things, salted seabirds, eggs and feathers, crops and peat and turf. There are 1,260 of them on Hirta and were built where they were needed and were owned individually rather than collectively. Today they are home to many birds, including Storm and Leach's petrels.

The most common flower on the slopes of Conachar was the Bog Pimpernel, which is delightful but not that common across the UK.  It's quite a small flower with 5 striped petals: the leaves are even smaller. Look closely at the centre of the flower and you'll see something really interesting: there are 5 stamens with cream-coloured pollen and a single slightly longer stigma and these are surrounded by a mass of thin white staminal filaments which lack anthers. The Latin name is Anagallis tenella: Anagallis means 'to delight again' and refers to the reopening of the flowers each day when the sun shine, while tenalla means 'delicate and tender'. This really is a very delicate 'don't touch or else' wildflower: pick them at your peril and watch them fall apart as you do. So why would you?  I love the precision of the Latin names for flowers.

The native sheep of St Kilda is the Soay. Derived from domesticated sheep a long way back, these became feral on Soay. They are sure-footed and are particularly adept at surviving on the barren terrain of the islands. They have been exported to other sites, including Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel. Once upon a long time ago, Soay sheep at Beckenham provided me with anti-sera for the development of immunoassays.

Just two of the many puffins we saw. We've seen thousands of them in various places but they never lose their attraction. And very attractive to the islanders they were too. One book I've read said that they ate dried puffins as a snack, rather like crisps. And why not? But I don't see Walkers marketing that flavour, although I can imagine Gary Lineker dressed up in a puffin suit. The puffin is much more than an orange beak and a portly manner as tracking birds with geolocators shows. Their life cycle is fascinating and well worth reading about. And here's a puffin-factoid that has stuck in my mind: the female puffin lays an egg that is 20% of the female bodyweight. That's equivalent to a 11 stone woman giving birth to a 30 lb baby. Ouch!

The same goes for gannets. An elegant and acrobatic bird. This one is a young one as its plumage shows.

See all those dots? Puffins every one.

Cormorants. Lots of cormorants. Lots of noisy, smelly cormorants. Is there any smell more distinctive than that of guano, lots of guano?

Stac an Armin, at 643 feet, is the highest sea stack in Scotland and, indeed, the British Isles. It really is an impressive sight close up and it hits you that people can actually  land there.  It was not inhabited year round and was used as a seasonal sea bird hunting ground by the St Kildans, climbing the rocks to collect eggs and young birds. Apparently it is still used for climbing as a recreational sport but strict rules exist to protect the bird habitats and breeding grounds. It is, after all, one of the largest gannetries in the UK. I should also mention that it has hosted an involuntary extended stays but more of that later.

Gannets? You want gannets? There's plenty of them on Stac an Armin. For the St Kildans, this amounted to an avian supermarket and meant that they were adept at leaping from rock to rock to harvest the 'crop' at the appropriate time of the year. They were in tune with nature and they never took more than could be sustained. The present day large populations of birds are a testament to their guardianship.

 

I mentioned an involuntary extended stay previously and it was not unknown for hunters to be stranded on the Stac for a while due to inclement weather. There is no set landing place as such and getting ashore meant leaping from a boat onto the rocks as the waves allow. You can see that this feat of acrobatics was very weather dependent and could only be done when the conditions allow. Back to the involuntary extended stay: the 'normal' length of stay was around a couple of weeks but the longest recorded period anyone ever spent on the island was about nine months. Three men and eight boys from Hirta were marooned here from about 15 August 1727 until 13 May 1728. As luck (or Sod's Law) would have it, Hirta suffered a smallpox outbreak while the eleven were on the stack and the settlement was almost wiped out. Consequently the surviving islanders were unable to man a boat and retrieve them and this had to wait until the following year when the numbers in the community had been supplemented by immigrants from other islands . Those on the Stac survived by fishing, catching birds and trapping water. They constructed a shelter which is still just about discernible when someone points it out to you. It's in the photograph, I think, but I can't make it out. Have a go and let me know if you can.

A gaggle of Guillemots.

Lots of Atlantic Grey Seals around as well. This one gave us a cursory glance before it slithered back into the water.

Not sure what these gannets were looking at but I like looking at them.

And we bid farewell to St Kilda, with Boreray to the right and Soay in the background I'll confess that I spent most of the trip outside. Normally I'm a pretty good sailor but this trip did make me feel rather queasy every now and then. Four hours of thumping from wave to wave was a bit much for me - but nothing that the fresh air couldn't help with.