Camas nan Geall Walk

Travelling east out of the village, shortly after the 7 mile milepost and just after one has crossed the small stone bridge over the Allt Torr na Moine, there's a neat parking place on the left (marked '1' on map) where one can leave one's car for a very pleasant walk around Camas nan Geall. This is what we did yesterday.

The walk starts with a view down into the bay immediately after one has passed through the gate into the field. On the low knoll here stands the remains of what is evidently a very old stone cairn, perhaps some sort of burial mound, but as....

....one walks down the field one enters the area once occupied by the ancient clachan of Camas nan Geall, a settlement which has probably been on this site for a minimum of a thousand years. The remains of three of its old houses have now been cleared of bracken and brambles by AHHA, our local heritage group, so their structures can be seen.

Passing through two gates, one is then able to access the ancient monuments in the bay area itself - a neolithic cairn, a bronze age standing stone with early Christian symbols carved on it, and the Campbell's 18th century graveyard - amongst many other things.  One then follows the track back to the gate and continues to the right up the hill to the car park, and....

....then on for about two hundred metres along the road before turning to climb the steep slope that runs along the back of Camas nan Geall. The higher one climbs, and....

....the more one walks along the top of this ridge, the finer the views become.

Now, here is a confession. This blog's pictures are usually taken using various Panasonic Lumix cameras, machines which have proved quite excellent, but yesterday the latest acquisition suddenly, and without warning, announced it had run out of juice and was going to sleep. So, for the first time, the three pictures above here were taken using an iPhone.

After we had returned home, and as the day wore on, so the weather deteriorated, until we had a very fresh southeasterly blowing which, later in the night, brought 20mm of rain.

These two CalMac ferries, seen during the afternoon, are the Lord of the Isles, left, and the Hebrides, the latter on sea trails after repairs following a recent collision with the harbour wall at Lochmaddy, North Uist, on 26th September.

Map courtesy Bing.