Thursday 16 May

Situated as it is well off the beaten track, this wild camp spot was very quiet, only disturbed by the arrival of some birdwatchers who parked a little down the road anyway. There must be something special here as there were two sets of twitchers here when we arrived yesterday, although we've not seen anything we can identify.

Drifted over to Ardivacher Point, which is at the north end of the almost continuous white sand beach that makes up the west coast of South Uist, to find bright warm sunshine and a very light southerly breeze. Some photies and a quiet sit before crossing the causeway onto Benbecula.

From Ardivacher Point, looking south

As with most of the islands, Benbecula has a road running round the island with offshoots to the various communities, most of course being single track with passing places – easy to negotiate as it is almost always possible to see the next passing place and any traffic coming the other way. (As an aside drivers are almost universally ready to give way – it’s probably quicker than trying to force the way through – although we as visitors made a point of giving way as soon as we saw someone approaching, and also let following traffic past asap too).

Wild Hebrides pony

Our tourist map shows quite a number of “places of interest” on the islands, mainly connected with Gaelic history. The surprising thing is very few are marked from the road, or even possible to get to! Some can be seen but most appear to be approachable only on foot and there is nowhere to leave your vehicle. In fact there are very few parking areas at all and what there were we noted were shown as potential wild-camping spots on the database we got off the internet (a Satnav POI file for the technical).

Hebridean Croft. This one had been done up for holiday letting

So our journey became a wander around the wild-camping spots. However whilst we are not averse to using them, none appealed to us so having spotted one of the very few campsites we decided to return there. Shell Bay is, like all we have seen, a small quite open site which has all facilities and at £18 for two people, including hook-up, not over the top.


However the best point for us was its situation a few minutes’ walk from a nice hotel/restaurant. Today being our wedding anniversary, we took the opportunity of treating ourselves!