I'm currently exploring the Outer Hebrides in my motorhome. I'll be honest, I didn't expect the beaches or the scenery to be so incredibly beautiful- or the weather to be so lovely.
Here are the first few days on the Isle of Lewis and Harris. If you're planning your own campervan trip to the Western Isles of Scotland, I hope you find it useful.
Safe travels,
Kat xx
-------------- ABOUT WANDERING BIRD
In 2018, I quit my job as an air traffic controller to travel in a van. That's adulting, right? Since then, I've spent most of my time living in a motorhome, touring the UK and Europe and sharing my tips and travels for motorhoming and vanlife on my website: www.wandering-bird.com
Wandering Bird was created to help motorhomers and campervanners make the most of their time on the road. We share weekly tips, tricks and reviews to encourage and inspire your next adventure, whether you're a complete motorhoming beginner, or a more experienced owner looking for new ideas or places to visit.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video. Safe travels!
Hey guys, I'm Kat from Wandering Bird and I'm currently exploring the Outer
Hebrides in my motorhome. Here are my adventures from the first
couple of days on this beautiful island, including where I've stayed, to help you
plan your own trip here. Good morning, it's about 6.30 in the
morning and today is the day! I am packing up and heading up to
Ullapool and getting the ferry to go across to the Outer Hebrides.
I am very excited, Mac is very excited too, aren't you puppy?
And yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be an adventure. I'm not sure what to
expect, mixed reviews about motorhomes in the
Outer Hebrides, but I will go and discover it and share it all with you
here. It was such a beautiful morning that we
stopped for a bacon sandwich and to walk Mac
on the shores of Loch Broom, just south of Ullapool,
before continuing on to the ferry.
So here we go, I am waiting at the line for,
oh hello, you've got a dog! We are waiting to board the ferry and
it's going on so far. Stuff's been very friendly,
so yeah, all good. If you are taking a dog to the Outer Hebrides, you've got two
options. The first is to leave them in the vehicle, which is what I did with
Mac, but you can take them into certain areas
on board the ferry. Obviously you can't take them into the canteen or the toilet,
so if you do want to go into those areas, you would need to leave them with
someone. If you're on your own, like I was, it doesn't work taking them onto the
ferry, but the option is there if you want to.
We're nearly there, nearly there!
We've reached the Outer Hebrides! I hadn't planned a route for the Isles of Lewis and
Harris, and I could go either way, but given that
the forecast was due for beautiful sunshine,
I decided to head south straight to the beaches of Harris,
which are apparently some of the best in the entire area.
This is the main road south from Stornoway towards Tarbert and the Harris
beaches. As you can see, it's perfectly fine for
larger vehicles like motorhomes and camper vans. As you turn off the main
road, they do get a little bit smaller, but there's plenty of passing places and
nothing that a motorhome can't handle, at least not that I've found so far.
The island isn't large, it only takes about two hours to drive from top to
bottom, so it really doesn't matter which way
round you do it, and if the weather is with you, then
heading south to the beautiful beaches is definitely a good idea.
Good morning! So we spent last night here by Luskintyre beach.
Just look at that, isn't that absolutely incredible? £5 from the West Harris
Trust. You can pay on your phone, you don't need cash,
which is brilliant because I didn't have a fiver, and I wanted to keep my coins so
I can use them at the services as we go around. So today
I think we're going to do the Isle of Harris because, as you can see, it's
beautiful and sunny. So there's like a loop around the Isle
of Harris that should take about an hour, an hour
and a bit to drive, and then we're going to go and find, I have a place in mind
for tonight, but I don't want to spoil the surprise.
So let's see where we end up.
I'm on the road again, this is insanely beautiful.
I'm going here, you can go in there.
There's a lot of water.
Very kind of you.
Very kind of you indeed.
I have no clue where this boat is going to lead me.
This is crazy, absolutely crazy.
This is the A859 still, this is the main road.
Okay, I literally swung around a corner and I've arrived on the moon.
It's an astrologer trying to show you this.
So things have taken a turn. I was trying to find a safe parking place to pull up
and cover the drone up in unfollow me mode,
and I couldn't, until I went past like a headlandy bit. I was one side of it,
the drone was the other side of it. I lost signal with the drone, normally not
a problem, normally it hovers, apart from the fact that it was obviously quite low on
battery, started returning to home, and I thought
that I had it set as my controller in the home, turns out I didn't.
So it was going all the way back to the other thing, and
I managed to turn around, only to discover that the drone is trying to
land itself in the water, because it was running
really really low on battery. So I just about managed to get some height on it,
just managed to get it for a bit of land. So I've managed to identify where it's
sat now, luckily it was near some fishy salmon pond.
So we're going proper off-road now, this is not motorhome country.
There's a lot of mounds down here, it's amazing.
It's about 0.4 of a mile away. Some nice lady let me
park right outside her house whilst I go for a walk.
I haven't brought the dog, too many sheep around,
and yeah, I haven't had my inhaler either. Here we go.
Why does it have to be on a hill? Don't get me wrong,
I'd rather be on a hill than in the water,
but still, does it not know I've got no lungs?
That's the thing there that it tried to land next to,
so it's on that bit of headland.
It's not dry, my poor little feet are soaking.
Something's just occurred to me, I'm really hoping these are the only fishing
pods around here, because I'm not doing this again.
I hope it's all right, I hope I find it after all this. I think I
could take it being broken, I just want to find it.
Getting close now. Nice view, and there are the pods that it
tried to land on. It's just down there somewhere. I'm now
having to scale the sheer cliff side to get to that bit.
I think it's on here somewhere. God help me. Oh, it might be on there.
Might be on that one. I'm just looking into all the
the nooks and crannies and crevices, hoping that I might
spy it. I can hear a noise. I very naively did just sort of think it
was be sitting on a rock somewhere, and I
can't find it. I'm at the top and I can't find it.
Gutted, absolutely gutted. I'm sulking, genuinely devastated
and gutted and really upset and really annoyed at myself,
because I should have brought it down at the first parking spot. I didn't expect
it to be so far to the next one. I also didn't
want to pull over in a passing place, because that doesn't help if anybody
else comes along. I just, oh, I can't believe I couldn't
find it. I spent two hours, two hours trying to find that thing,
and I just couldn't find it. So whether it slipped back into the
water or not, I don't know. But either way, it's not there, and I'm
sulking and I feel a bit sorry for myself. So
instead of going to the place that I was planning on going to
tonight, I am going to a nearby park up, and I'm just going to lick my wounds
and spend the night there, and then continue the adventures tomorrow.
Got it. Shall we see where we are? Not a bad view.
And we are honked again. I say good morning, but it's actually now lunchtime,
because I have spent the morning working and answering emails and doing things
for the Wandering Motown Club, which is my new group that's started up this
week. So yeah, loads of content and the Facebook
group and stuff going on with that, because I have spent the morning doing
that. I've had a very pleasant morning, chilled
out in the little, I don't know, campsite parking lot that we
were. And right now, we're going to go do a
crazy road on the way to the beach. And everyone's
like, it's very narrow and a bit weird, and if you're brave enough, it's worth it.
Well, this is me, and let's face it, I'm not worried about this particularly
crazy road. So we're going to go drive down the
crazy road. There's a fabulous eagle observatory thing on the way too,
which will be quite fun. But that's what we're doing today. We're just driving
through this very beautiful landscape. It's sunny, it's
20 degrees, according to my bag, so it's quite a bit much.
And yeah, we're going to head off and see where we end up.
So this is still the 8859 on Harris. We're heading to Thorpe-ish,
where we'll be eventually. For anybody worried about the size of
their motorhomes in the Hebrides, this thing is doing all
the roads. Single roads, double roads,
all the roads. So yeah, you'll be absolutely fine.
There'll be caravans, motorhomes, big RVs. I wouldn't want to do it in a
caravan. That's bigger than about eight, maybe eight and a half metres.
But yeah, this is fine.
I appreciate the truck might not be the most interesting, but the look of the
view around it is absolutely beautiful. This is a midget
who's parked in a parking space.
I just can't believe the people.
And we're going in a second, because that's got really steep.
Oh, I see a car park. Can I get in there too?
Yes. So that big hill, mountain, big bit of rock
on the right hand side is the Eagle of Derby. That's where you can see
Golden Eagle. Seems it's like a two, two and a half
kilometre walk up to there. But there is absolutely nowhere to park
a motorhome. Just this little parking area here.
And thirdly, there ain't no roof. So we'll try and do it tomorrow, but for now
we shall head to the beach. This is the main road.
We're going past a bit of a castle. It's really weird.
And at the end of the road, I found this most incredible
beach. I still can't pronounce it. Hushweenys? Hunishwish?
Something like that. Frankly doesn't matter what it's called.
It is amazing. You'd be forgiven for thinking I was like
in the Mediterranean or something. Look at this beach.
It's 23 degrees, although the water is not warm.
Despite what the dog tells you, it's not warm. It's beautiful.
Parking is £20 a night for a motorhome or campervan.
You can then pay extra for all your services like toilet emptying, grey waste
and getting fresh water. They've also got toilet
and showers and then it's £5 for the day.
So it's actually £25 to save for 24 hours.
And frankly, it's so incredible that I've stayed here for two days.
That's where I am right now while I'm editing this video.
I'm going to go relax on the beach for a little while. Make sure you follow along
so you can tune in for the next part of the adventure.
See you then.