1 EAGLETON NOTES: The Drive Home

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Friday 22 September 2023

The Drive Home

Many of you may already have seen and even viewed the return journey from Gisla. If not, here it is.



If you want to avoid the bits you have already seen, albeit going the other way so the view is quite different, then at 11mins 30 seconds into the journey, when you come down into the first roundabout in Stornoway just after the 30 mile per hour speed limit starts, you can get the journey through Stornoway and out to my house in the sticks.

17 comments:

  1. No noise and light pollution where you live, Graham:-)

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    1. Janice, just the sound of the sea and the wind.

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  2. I enjoyed the ride.
    There are a lot more houses there than I imagined, although your home is more out of the way. Peaceful.

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    1. JayCee, Stornoway has a population of around 12,000+. The Outer Hebrides in total is about 26,500 (2021 estimate) and decreasing. There are just 19 houses in the township of Eagleton.

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  3. I like seeing where you live. You must have a nice view there.
    If you meet a car on those one-lane roads and you are not near a pull-over spot, who decides to back up? Is there a rule about that?

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    1. Thanks for posting this Graham.
      Ellen you give way to vehicles going uphill. I give way or reverse for trucks, tractors and vehicles towing. It works very smoothly and efficiently for the most part as I generally recognise the vehicles and the drivers approaching. Most adjust their speed to pass at a passing place. Town is a different matter as folk stop to chat window to window on the two lane.
      In our glen we have three folk that can't reverse and at least three more or who are only middling competent so even with the twenty tonne low loader trailer on one has little choice but to back up and wait whilst they creep past whilst I inch forward to give them the yard they deem safe, it can take a while. It's all good fun as the pace of life is slower. A new family moved into the glen a year ago. Mum, Dad and daughter were all rubbish drivers, I do wonder how they got three cars here. I persuaded them to pop up to the farm and I'd put cones out on the concrete and teach them. The dad and daughter soon learnt the art. Mum not so much but she always smiles and shouts thanks and gives a thumbs up as she nudges the bank her side and pops another little dent in her sQuashqai.

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    2. Ellen, I'd been wondering how to answer your question because there are no rules it just 'happens'. Adrian's explanation is a perfect explanation written much more entertainingly.

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  4. It's very pretty. Thanks for the mini road trip.

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    1. Adrian, I have to admit that 'pretty' isn't a word that had occurred to me in relation to Lewis.

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  5. The word that springs to mind is unspoiled. What a beautiful place you live in.

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    1. Debbie, thee landscape is relatively untouched by humans compared with most places.

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  6. No big ugly blocks of flats, hardly any building higher than two or three floors, no concrete-glass-steel office towers... So different from where I live! I envy you the wide open skies.
    Somehow I had it in my head that your house was miles away from any neighbours; I didn't realise you actually live in a village/settlement.

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    1. Meike, I've never thought of that before but the number of buildings which I can think of, other than some of the old private houses, which have more than two stories can be counted on one hand. The other big buildings tend to be things like the electricity generating station and a few industrial buildings. Big skies are definitely the norm. Most townships (which is what villages on the Island are called) are linear because of the crofting system. So my township has, I think, 20 houses in it. The numbering system for dwellings on the Islands is bizarre to anyone but an Islander or someone from the crofting counties in the Scottish Highlands.

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  7. Thanks for the ride. It's so nice to see the island you call home. X

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  8. Funny, the last part of the way I really had a kind of sense of "approaching home" (I guess a combination of numerous photos I've seen through the years + knowing the video would be coming to an end soon...) Like some others above also say, a few more buildings close to yours than I expected, though (probably because most of your photos have been of the view towards the sea!)

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    1. Yes, Monica, the views in other directions are not really photogenic.

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