Month: May 2019

Of all the places I saw on the Isle of Lewis, there was one that completely stole my heart and instantly became one of my happy places: the sandy beach at Tolsa. From a nondescript car park that is literally at the end of a road, I found a winding path across the dunes, along a wire and wood post fence. As I crested the top of the dunes, it was a beautiful sight as far as my eyes could see.  More than a mile of sandy beach at low tide, with the sun and light breeze just begging me…

If there was one thing I hadn’t expected on my Scottish tour, it was the Callanish Stones. I went to see them a lark after reading about them on a list of things to do whilst on the Isle of Lewis. They were fascinating! Huge, rough, and not at all like Stonehenge except for the basic “upright rocks in the middle of nowhere” theme.  The textures of the Lewisian Gneiss were beautiful and I wandered around and through them over and over, looking for ways to capture the experience with the camera.  There’s a stone circle around a huge central…

My home base for the week was a croft house: sheep next door on one side, a weaver for Harris Tweed on the other side, and walking distance to beautiful spaces.  At the end of the road–which was also the edge of the island–I could walk there in a few minutes time and see the sunset on the Atlantic Ocean, and know that the nearest land straight ahead was the southern tip of Greenland. I was way up there as far as North goes. The cover photo for this post is the view of the sunset from the edge of…

Before I started vagabonding in a tiny trailer, I traveled around the world as part of my job. When my responsibilities extended to Dublin, I took the opportunity to jump on over to Scotland and visit what became one of my favorite places on the planet: the Outer Hebrides. It was a total bucket list destination for me and it did not disappoint in any way. So while I’m on vacation this week, I’m sharing a series of memories of that trip, which was five years ago this month. After a few days in Edinburgh, I made a mad dash…