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I
amble up the Scalpay jetty and turn to watch the Canna
as she bumps away to tie up for an hour or so. She is
a pretty little boat, about 15 years old , with a neat
red funnel and capacity for six big cars.
I
straddle my bicycle and head purposefully up the gentle
brae towards the main village, straddling the isthmus
between the island's two fine harbours. The island of
Scalpay, which lies off the Harris coast some miles
south-east of Tarbert, is surprisingly little known.
That seems rather a pity, on a day like this when every
rock and boulder on the Harris mainland glows in the
light of an early sun, when the hills of Harris are
dusted with light snow as delicately as doughnuts with
icing sugar, when a lark is singing on and on and on
high in the deep blue sky. It is one of those wonderful
Hebridean days early in the year, a day after sodden
and determined rain and sleet, when the sun rises in
a clear sky upon a world made new.
The
well maintained road crests a small hill and turns over
a little bridge at the head of a tidal inlet, running
along the seaside slope towards the harbour and village
centre. Wrack floats calmly in the sucking ebb of the
tide. The remains of some ancient ship - her rotted
ribs deep in the mud, her great boiler rusting beneath
a skeletal wheelhouse - lie embedded in the shore. And
then I bowl round the corner and there is the main village;
the primary-school, a shop or two, the harbour with
its modern pier, and a fine view up East Loch Tarbert
towards the distant chimneys of Tarbert itself.
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