The Western Isles - The Rough Guide to Scottish Highlands and Islands - page 304

Shawbost (Siabost) museum
Old School Centre, Shawbost • April-Sept Mon-Sat 11am-4pm • Free • T 01851 710212
Two miles on from Bragar, at SHAWBOST (Siabost) - home to one of the main Harris
Tweed mills in the Outer Hebrides - there's a tiny museum in the Old School Centre ,
across the road from the new school. The exhibits - most of them donated by locals
- include a rare Lewis brick from the short-lived factory set up by Lord Leverhulme.

Norse Mill and Kiln
Signposted off the A858 • Open 24hr • Free
Just outside Shawbost, to the west, there's a sign to the restored Norse Mill and Kiln .
It's a ten-minute walk over a small hill to the two thatched bothies beside a little
stream; the nearer one's the kiln, the further one's the horizontal mill. Mills and kilns
of this kind were common in Lewis up until the 1930s, and despite the name are
thought to have been introduced here from Ireland as early as the sixth century.

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Garenin (Gearrannan)
5a Garenin • May-Sept Mon-Sat 9.30am-5.30pm • £2.50 • T 01851 643416, W gearrannan.com
In the parish of Carloway (Carlabhagh), with its crofthouses, boulders and hillocks
rising out of the peat moor, a mile-long road leads of north to the beautifully remote
coastal settlement of GARENIN (Gearrannan). Here, rather than re-create a single
museum-piece blackhouse as at Arnol, a whole cluster of nine thatched crofters' houses
- the last of which was abandoned in 1974 - have been restored and put to a variety of
uses. As an emsemble, they also give a great impression of what a Baile Tughaidh , or
blackhouse village, must have been like. The first house you come to houses the ticket
office and café . The second house has been restored to its condition at the time of
abandonment, so there's electric light, but no running water, lino flooring, but a peat
fire and box beds - and a weaving machine in the byre. The third house has interpretive
panels and a touch-screen computer telling the history of the village and the folk who
lived there. Next door, there are toilets, while several others have been converted into
self-catering houses.

Dun Carloway (Dùn Charlabhaigh)
Signposted off the A858 • Open 24hr • Free • T 01851 710395, W historic-scotland.gov.uk
Just beyond Carloway village, Dun Carloway (Dùn Charlabhaigh) perches on top of a
conspicuous rocky outcrop overlooking the sea. Scotland's west coast is strewn with
over five hundred brochs , or fortified towers, but this is one of the best preserved, its
dry-stone circular walls reaching a height of more than 30ft on one side. The broch
consists of two concentric walls, the inner one perpendicular, the outer one slanting
inwards, the two originally fastened together by roughly hewn flagstones, which also
served as lookout galleries reached via a narrow stairwell. The only entrance to the
roofless inner yard is through a low doorway set beside a crude and cramped guard cell.
As at Callanish (see below), there have been all sorts of theories about the purpose of
the brochs, which date from between 100 BC and 100 AD; the most likely explanation
is that they were built to provide protection from Roman slave-traders.

Callanish (Calanais) standing stones
Loch Roag • Stones Open 24hr • Free • Callanish Visitor Centre April, May, Sept & Oct Mon-Sat 10am-6pm; June-Aug Mon-Sat
10am-8pm; Oct-March Tues-Sat 10am-4pm • £2.50 • T 01851 621422, W callanishvisitorcentre.co.uk
Overlooking the sheltered, islet-studded waters of Loch Roag (Loch Ròg), on the west
coast, are the islands' most dramatic prehistoric ruins, the Callanish standing stones .
These monoliths - nearly fifty slabs of gnarled and finely grained gneiss up to 15ft high
- were transported here between 3000 BC and 1500 BC, but their exact function
remains a mystery. No one knows for certain why the ground plan resembles a colossal
Celtic cross, nor why there's a central burial chamber. It's likely that such a massive