Ten days on Zuza - 11th June - an afternoon on St Kilda

 During the Cold War St Kilda was chosen as a venue for an early warning radar outpost, and subsequently a road was built in 1957 from the jetty to a point overlooking Dùn and then across to Mullach Mòr (430 metres high). Originally the stone from the houses in the village was going to be used for the road but the plan was successfully vetoed by the National Trust for Scotland and the Nature Conservancy group and a small quarry was created which now lies halfway up the road. At the base of the road just back from the shore lies the military camp for the MOD. It is a bit of an eye sore, although the roofs of the blocks have been covered in turf to blend in more with their surroundings. The MOD buildings, the Village and also the long wall that was built in the 1830's to keep animals out from the houses and the surrounding fields can be seen in the picture below.

From OS Maps, I have marked the masts in red

The fog was a bit flukey and would descend unexpectedly but we got views down to Village Bay, and once we had got up to the southern radar post we could see down to Dun, an extension of Hirta which is now cut off by a narrow channel.

Curiously there was a welcome sign marked out on the road, perhaps ironical! The installations looked bleak on this remote road.

We walked back up the road to the other installations on Mullach Mòr, passing cleatean which stood out against the skyline. The whole view was peppered with cleatean.

Before we got to the other set of masts we could look out over Glen Bay. On the slope going down to the sea we could just make out the 'Amazon's House', remains of some prehistoric dwelling, fabled to belong to a great female pagan warrior. In the picture below you can also just see the island of Soay, covered in mist.

We walked around the other installations, a couple of which were mysteriously humming. We saw great skua and Arctic skua flying low up here. They must have had nests close by because some others from the boat were dive-bombed by a skua and they were forced to move on!

It was time to return to Zuza. On the way back we saw in the distance the 'Lover's Stone'. Apparently before a young man could marry he had to prove his worth as climber. He had to stand on this overhanging rock, hundreds of feet above the ocean, with only the heel of his left foot on the edge of the rock. He then had to raise his right leg over the ocean and bend down and place his two fists over the right foot and not topple to his death. It is not told how many didn't make it. There is a recreation on this old piece of film footage https://scotlandonscreen.org.uk/browse-films/007-000-000-153-c

Retracing our steps down to the jetty we passed some sheep skulls. Fitting maybe.

We had seen a large vessel anchored offshore and all afternoon people had been ferried on and off of it. While we were on the jetty there was group of men and we asked them if they were working for the Navy. 'Nah" they said, 'the government' and wouldn't elaborate. I don't if they wanted us to think MI5 but we found out it was a Fisheries Protection ship.

We had to move Zuza away from the jetty that evening as we were told there was an exercise and a Naval vessel would be coming in around 3.00am. We imagined that the beach would be stormed in the early hours and I was actually awake at 3.00am and went out to see if anything was going on. But there was nothing  .....  unless they were very clever!