Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
HARRIS TWEED
Far from being a picturesque cottage industry,
Harris Tweed
production is vital to the local
economy, with a well-organized and unionized workforce. Traditionally, the tweed was made
by women to provide clothing for their families, using a 2500-year-old process. Each woman
plucked the wool by hand, washed and scoured it, dyeing it with lichen, heather flowers or
ragwort, carding (smoothing and straightening the wool, adding butter to grease it), spinning
and weaving. Finally the cloth was dipped in urine and “waulked” by a group of women, who
beat the cloth on a table to soften it while singing Gaelic waulking songs. Harris Tweed was
originally made all over the islands, and was known simply as
clò mór
(big cloth).
In the mid-nineteenth century, Catherine Murray,
Countess of Dunmore
, who owned a
large part of Harris, started to sell surplus cloth to her aristocratic friends and helped kick-start
the modern industry, which still serves as a vital source of employment, though demand (and
therefore employment levels) can fluctuate wildly as fashions change. To earn the o
cial
Harris Tweed Authority (HTA)
trademark of the Orb and Maltese Cross - Lady Dunmore's
coat of arms - the fabric has to be hand-woven on the Outer Hebrides from pure new Scottish
wool, while the manufacturing process must take place in the local mills - currently in
Carloway and Shawbost, in Lewis - where the wool is dyed, carded and spun.
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North Harris (Ceann a Tuath na Hearadh)
If you're coming from Stornoway on the A859, mountainous
North Harris
is a
spectacular introduction to Harris, its bulging, pyramidal mountains of gneiss looming
over the dramatic, jord-like
Loch Seaforth
(Loch Shìphoirt). From
ARDVOURLIE
(Aird
a' Mhulaidh), you weave your way over a boulder-strewn saddle between mighty
Sgaoth Aird
(1829ft) and An Cliseam or the
Clisham
(2619ft), the highest peak in the
Western Isles. his bitter terrain, littered with debris left behind by retreating glaciers,
offers but the barest of vegetation, with an occasional cluster of crofters' houses sitting
in the shadow of a host of pointed peaks, anywhere between 1000ft and 2500ft high.
ACCOMMODATION
NORTH HARRIS
Rhenigidale (Reinigeadal) SYHA Hostel
4 miles off
the A859
W
gatliff.org.uk.
Simple hostel in an isolated
coastal community - there's a (request-only) bus
connection, or else it's a magnificent six-mile (3hr) hike over
the rocky landscape from Tarbert: ask at the tou
rist o
ce for
directions. No advance booking and no phone.
£12
/person
South Harris (Ceann a Deas na Hearadh)
he mountains of
South Harris
are less dramatic than in the north, but the scenery is
equally breathtaking. here's a choice of routes from Tarbert to the ferry port of
Leverburgh
, which connects with North Uist: the east coast, known as
The Bays
(Na
Baigh), is rugged and seemingly inhospitable, while the
west coast
boasts some of the
finest stretches of golden sand in the Western Isles, buffeted by the Atlantic winds.
Surprisingly, most people live along the harsh eastern coastline rather than the more
fertile west side. But not by choice - they were evicted from their original crofts to
make way for sheep-grazing.
The west coast
he main road from Tarbert into South Harris snakes its way west for ten miles across
the boulder-strewn interior to reach the most stunning
beach
, the vast golden strand of
Luskentyre Bay
(Tràigh Losgaintir), first of a chain of sweeping sands, backed by rich
machair
, that stretches for nine miles. In good weather, the scenery is particularly
impressive, with foaming breakers rolling along the golden sands set against the
rounded peaks of the mountains to the north and the islet-studded turquoise sea to the
west. A short distance out to sea is the island of
Taransay
(Tarasaigh), which once held
a population of nearly a hundred, but was abandoned as recently as 1974. Beyond lies
