Three days ago we paddled around Butt of Lewis. It was nice day on water, I really like days like this one, it was a wee butt bouncy. Well, this is how it started. There are some many sentences where one can use the word Butt, and once you are out paddling for long enough, then you start to think in slightly, or more than slightly skewed way. In the end our whole day was filled with the Butt variety. Butt I think it would be better to spare you of most of our conversation, otherwise you might never read what we would write again.
We were buttling our way up north in great expectation of what may be coming: swell, wind, huge tideraces and so on. We heard a lot abutt this, and especially remembered a story told to us by our friend Andrew W., who wanted to paddle past the butt some years ago with his friend David. The story went, that they rounded the butt from east, found the conditions too big to make it safe for them to continue, so landed. That’s what really struck us – conditions too much to paddle, yet landing on the west side. We would like to know where, as we would not be able to land anywhere on that stretch, even in these enjoyable conditions. The story then went on with them scrambling up the cliffy bit and to a farm, where a lady let them camp while one of them made his way down to Tarbert, then on a ferry back to Uig, to get car to rescue the other one with boats. So we were very curious.
Fortunately, as I said, our experience was different one, could almost be called buttiful. We even got to surf down waves past the lighthouse. And landed safely in the picturesque harbour of Port Ness. The beach here reminded us of Dureness, the harbour itself brought memory of entering Dunbar harbour, a mixture of natural and manmade.