Sunny AND Windy

So here we are on Tiree - This graveyard was the burial ground of the Clan MacLean chiefs when they were the proprietors of Tiree - but there are many more recent graves - and a sadly large group associated with Air Force and Navy activities during the first and second world wars - a Canadian grave next to an Australian.

Mrs Revilliod at her son’s grave in Soroby. (Courtesy of Grace Campbell)
The same scene but some 65 years ago.
An excellent history can be found in The Wind that Shook the Barley

I'm heading to the far end of the island - to take a look at the lighthouse - not many folks get down here - and the sheep seem to think I have come to feed them

And another mob in front

The boss comes and checks me over "false alarm lads - its only a tourist"

The Skerryvore lighthouse  - there is an excellent museum at Hynish that tells the history - tragedies, engineering failures and successes and about the people who built and staffed the light.  Its tall and thin so as to resist the hydraulic forces (29 tonnes per square metre- carefully measured before construction began)

Tiree is a flat island with a couple of isolated hills - what is this?  Surely not an escapee from "The Prisoner"

Its an air traffic radar - here is its entry in the "Scotland's Places"

Sunny and very windy - time to leave the hill and make for the machair - fertile because the alkaline seashells in the sand neutralise the humic acids in the adjacent/underlying peat lands

When the wind blows - there is nothing at all to get in the way

Down in the machair - excellent for orienteering but the £100 return ferry cost and the compulsory two night stay put it sadly out of practicality.

I spend a happy hour sneaking up on the (surprisingly tame) hares - with no foxes or other predators on the island there is a good population