Ten days on Zuza - 13th June - we leave St Kilda for Barra

We had a very early start in the morning to take up the anchor in Village Bay and get going back east, across the 69 miles of open ocean, to Barra on the very south of Uist. The weather was clear first thing on Hirta but, passing Dùn and reaching Levenish, the fog came down again and the visibility dropped to nearly zero.


Goodbye to Village Bay on Hirta



I had taken some sea sickness tablets which, again, only partially worked and made me feel groggy. There was little wind and no thought of putting up the sails. We chugged across the sea until late afternoon when land came into sight as we arrived on the western coast of Barra. We passed though the channel south of Vatersay and came up to the moorings in Castlebay, the principal village on Barra.



We passed some beautiful beaches with white sand


And islets, white with guano and crested with cormorants 



Kisimul Castle dominates the bay at Caslebay. It was abandoned in 1838 and then bought by Robert McNeil, the Chief of the Clan MacNeil, in 1937 who made an effort to restore it. It is now leased to Historic Scotland but is in too poor a condition for tourists to visit.  By the time we had eaten it was too late to explore much of the village, for that is what Castlebay is, in spite of having a supermarket and a school.


Neil's plan for the journey










 

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