There and back again (hopefully) - Molly's Hebridean Adventure Day 10

Today was one of the days I was most looking forward to on my trip, a day trip to St Kilda. The story of this archipelago of islands is fascinating. I have read Tom Steel's authoritative book (thanks to my kids) and watched a few films. Peter May's brilliant Blackhouse trilogy has a description of the Guga hunt which gives you a very vivid sense of just how remote the place is, and how hard to people were that lived there.

However, nothing prepares you for the real thing.

I travelled with Kilda Cruises who were first class. 12 of us travelled on their Interceptor 55 boat having been told yesterday evening the forecast was good for us to go. In fact the weather was brilliant all day. The journey from Leverburgh takes 3 hours. We had very benign conditions, but this is the Atlantic and so there is some swell and a few of our number were unwell on the way. I think they made the mistake of staying inside when sitting outside, and seeing what is coming and going with it, whilst open to the wind and a bit cooler, helps you travel better.

We landed at Hirta at Village Bay. This involved 6 at a time going in the rubber dinghy (I thought several times that I am the only member of my household that could have coped, let only enjoyed the trip there and back!).

The houses in the "Main Street" of the village are the houses that were built in the 1890's for the St Kildans to replace their blackhouses which were left in tact next to the new houses. It was a way of life, so remote, and totally different and cut off from the rest of the UK. A series of circumstances had reduced the population to 36 by 1930 which, with only 8 able bodied men to do the physical work, was un sustainable. Those 36 were evacuated in 1930.

They left behind an existence that relied on harvesting sea birds. Living on their eggs and meat and trading their feathers for their rent. Peter May describes the danger of collecting the birds from the rocky islands and stacs surrounding St Kilda. Whilst he was describing what happened from the Isle of Lewis, it explained the St Kildans' practices as well. My poor photos cannot capture the dramatic nature of the stacs. The St Kildans landed on these rocky outcrops, climbed up near sheer cliff faces (in bare feet), harvested the birds on cliff faces and edges and then stayed in bothies (tiny caves in cliff faces). One group was stranded in the 1870's when there was on epidemic on Hirta and no one could come back to collect them. They lived on a rocky cliff for 9 months, and survived! It was the factor coming to collect the landlord's rent that came to get them eventually.   

The funny round stone constructions in the photos are Cleits which were built to store the birds, they are all over the island in the most inaccessible places.

After looking round the village, I walked over one of the hills to a part of the island that looks out onto one of the gannet colony rocks one way and the village the other and had my lunch there. Gannets are everywhere. St Kilda has 25% of the world's population of them.

We left at 3.30 just as a cruise liner was mooring. We then went to see the Island of Boreray, Stac Lee and Stac Armin. Hirta was a staggering place, and difficult to imagine how these people survived living that existence so cut off from society. But getting close up to Boreray and the Stacs was something else. It was like a scene out of the Lost World, completely surreal. My poor photos will not do justice to the drama of the sight, the tens of thousands of gannets and even the seep grazing on the most perilous cliff edges. It was the most fascinating place I have ever been (and I've been to the Great Wall of China twice and the Great Barrier Reef).

I can't articulate how it affected me (it's been a long day and I'm tired). Spending it with my new chum added to the experience. A truly great day.