On Thursday 29th September, Ellis and Lara piled into the car to meet Granny Caryn and Grumpsy at Inverness Airport. The plan was to spend until Sunday travelling together through Lewis and Harris, Lara and Ellis would then return to Aberdeen while Caryn and Frank continued through the Islands and through Scotland also to Aberdeen the following Friday.

We arrived at Inverness Airport to meet mum and dad and all had lunch in the airport. It is a teeny airport with lovely views! I had decided that it would be easiest to jump into mum and dad’s hire car rather than drive two over to the hebrides so we shoehorned buggy, bags and people into a peugot thing and set off for the West.

We spent a lovely evening in Ullapool where we had dinner in the Arch and stayed in a hotel called the Riverside. Ellis managed to pee on the floor in the room but I managed to soak it up so you couldn’t tell…

We caught the morning ferry to Stornoway. Mum was prepared and had travel sickness prevention pills so we popped one of those each before setting off. The crossing was pretty tame (mum and dad had been told it was rough) so we were lucky.

It was a typical grey Scottish sky which made photos a little uninteresting so we did the best we could with my limited photography skills! The best photos are the people shots!

Friday we thought we would head over to the Iron Age House on the western coast of Lewis. It is on a beach and supposed to be interesting viewing, according to the tourist websites. It was a shame therefore that they didn’t mention that it was closed after the 9th September, especially since it is about an hour’s drive from the capital. Nevermind we thought, at least we got to see some views and sheep. We headed back to Stornoway to go to the museum and catch a glimpse of the famouse viking chessmen. Unfortunately this was also shut so we trotted to the art gallery which we knew to be open as we had seen people coming and going. We were out of luck again though as that was the day that they changed the exhibitions over… All in all a rather unsuccessful day of tourism.

We stayed in the Jannel B&B which was fabulous. The owner was very accommodating and chatty and the rooms were very clean and well done. It was a very comfortable place to spend a couple of nights.

I had done a small amount of research and discovered the eatery of choice was called Digby Chick. We headed over there on the Friday night but of course it was fully booked. We took the recommendation offered by one of the staff there and headed to a restaurant called the Boatshed. We had a lovely dinner where mum and dad had the most enormous and delicious lingoustines and I had a lovely rack of Lewis lamb. We should had taken a photo of they food becasue it looked incredible!

Saturday we headed to look at a Blackhouse, where the Islanders used to live and then off to the Callandish Standing Stomes for a lovely sunset and some Henge style masonry.

We went back to the Boatshed for dinner on Saturday where Ellis tried to shove chewed bread into Grumpsy’s mouth.

Unfortunately Granny was Tom Dick on Sunday. Dad and I visited the first beach (pics in gallery) and Ellis came with us for the 2nd. I reckon it was all the kisses Ellis bestowed on Granny before dinner on Saturday that caused her being ill…

All the pics can be seen by clicking here