Day 13 of my south-to-north treadmill trek through the Outer Hebrides took me from Tarbert to the border between the Isle of Harris and the Isle of Lewis. It might seem strange to talk about a border between two 'Isles', but although they share the same landmass, they are very different in many respects and the high mountains and hills near the border used to be a very real barrier between the two communities.
When we stayed on Lewis in 2017, we'd only been doing walking as a leisure activity for less than a year and I persuaded my wife that we should try climbing a small mountain. I found just the place in the south of Lewis - Liuthaid, with its three summits at around 1600ft. Shouldn't be a problem.
We began by walking along a track to the east of Liuthaid looking for a place to start our ascent. There were no paths at all and, looking at the OS map now, I can see we chose as steep a route as possible. We zig-zagged our way up through the heather and rocks and I worked on the basic principle that up must be the right direction.
The weather was quite reasonable before we began the climb, but it soon started to rain and we went up into cloud and it got windy. Eventually, the terrain began to level off and we went in search of a summit cairn - our plan was to use it as a shelter from the wind and rain while we had a spot of lunch. Of course we hadn't seen a soul since we began the walk, nor did we expect to in that weather. We found the cairn... and there were two people huddled into the sheltered side!!
We greeted each other, but they weren't in a hurry to leave so (making sure the other pair were hidden behind the cairn!) I took a photo of my wife...
...and she took a photo of me:
It wasn't too hard to find a second summit and we ate our sandwiches there. I think the cairn in the next photo was at the third summit, and that's me standing by a rock somewhere on the descent as the view starts to appear:
We'd ascended Liuthaid somewhere to the east and we descended to the south where I knew there was a path running east-to-west. We found it and headed off back towards the road a couple of miles away.
We had to make our way past the occasional group of cattle, like this one. Further along we negotiated a group that was obviously a family and the big daddy bull was lying across the track and not going anywhere. We went around!
Another encounter was slightly more concerning at the time. Two dogs joined us (there was still not a person in sight) and pestered us for food. One gave up and ran off, while the other followed us for a mile jumping up at our rucksacks all the way. Fortunately, the dog wasn't aggressive, but it was annoying all the same and we couldn't get rid of it.
It was some time before I could persuade my wife to try hill climbing again...