From the lush green machairs of the west and their shining white sands, to the
scarred black rock of the east, the coast is torn and fragmented by the ocean. Houses
perch on the barest of ground. Tiny cars glide along faint lines of road, across slender
causeways that link the merest slivers to the tiniest scraps of land. Beyond and
between, the ocean links and separates, striped in blue and purple, green and lilac
and mauve. On the horizon, St Kilda rises like the jagged teeth of an ancient sea
monster. In the midst of a glittering patchwork of heather and loch, the convoluted
shore line of Loch Scadavay bends and twists for miles, countless islands scattered on
its surface of darkest blue. The ferry, a child’s toy, slides into the mouth of Loch nam
Madadh, a pale, churning furrow left in its wake. From Lewis and Harris, to Skye
and Eigg; from Benbecula through South Uist, down to Barra and round to the
Monach Isles, an ageless archipelago hewn from the most ancient of Scotland’s rock.