Isle of Lewis Beach Camping

Continuing my rather excellent 40th birthday trip in Scotland after hiking the Glen Feshie circuit and lording it up on the north of the Isle of Skye, we thought 'What should we do next'? The whole trip was designed to be flexible in view of the Scottish weather reputation, and I'd checked off my two must-dos on the trip, so we were free to do whatever we wished for the week remaining.

We scanned the map and saw that the nearby port of Uig on north Skye had ferries going over to the Isles of Harris and Lewis. Strangely these two isles share the same island land mass, but let's not examine that in any more detail. It looked a lot more remote than Skye (no bad thing as half of Skye is back-to-back B&Bs), so it was appealing. We didn't want to rack up a lot of hotel bills so we had a look for nice camp sites. After reviewing a few so-so descriptions, we stumbled on one called Traigh Na Beirigh in Cnip near Maibhaig. Erm, hello? Did we accidentally take a ferry to a mysterious land? Seemingly so. The camp site reviews talked about 'stunning white sand beach', 'crystal clear water', 'dunes' and other elation. This needed to be checked out.

We had one problem though. We left north Skye early Sunday morning with no supermarkets en-route and arrived in Tarbert on Harris at 4pm. I realised on the ferry that we might have limited choice of camping supplies given Sunday trading hours on a remote Outer Hebrides island. We headed to Stornaway to find a shop or something to get supplies, but everything was shut. The town was desperate to say the least. The only food shop open was an Indian takeaway. We improvised with a takeaway Garlic Chilli Chicken and a Chicken Korma.

After an hour of driving along small roads to the camp site, we arrived at the place to find the reviews were spot on. Remote Scottish paradise, white sand beach, clear water, stunning views and a handful of campers enjoying this little gem of a place. Welcome to the real reason to visit the Isle of Lewis.