Scotland, day 11: Lewis.

Here's daddy buzzard fetching breakfast for his wifey I reckon.

Flying back with breakfast in its talons. What stunning animal. Fantastic. And how lucky that I got to see it :-)

There are not many trees on the island. This row of trees looked particularly special.

We needed to get cash out (coz you can only pay b&b's in cash here) so we cycled to the 1 post office that has a cash machine in our village. Very handy. And of course it's broken! ARGH!

The post office is almost next to the stones so we used the opportunity to take some more shots. It was early morning and we got in just before a busload of tourists was dropped off.

To get the money we had to go to the capital "town" of Stornoway. They have 3 cash machines...

This is a hooded crow. We don't have them anymore in The Netherlands. Very nice bird.

We spent some time in the harbour where little fishing boats were parked.

A few grey seals have figured out that hanging around here gets you free fish. And I get free seal-photos :-)

"Fish PLEASE!"

Back at the b&b to have dinner. The sunset we got was beautiful.

And because the b&b doesn't have a license we brought our own wine!

Scotland, day 10: Lewis.

Good morning Mr/Mrs Buzzard! And bon apetit! It was sitting in the field outside my window. Beautiful bird.

(Click to enlarge)
Today we went cycling to all the nearby stone circles, the most famous one being the Callanish stones.

Nobody really has a clue what the site was used for. it's almost 5000 years old and the only scientific evidence for its use suggests it was used for some kind of calendar. But even that could be speculation I think.

In the middle a small, roofed cairn was build that over time had different uses according to archeology research.

Marjolein in front of the center stone.

Remains of the cairn.

The whole "structure" these days has the shape of a celtic cross. This would be looking "down" to the bottom of the cross.

Some of the stones have spectacular surfaces.

View.

Stone.

In the same area there are 4 more stone circles. Well, some have turned in to semi-circles ;-) Great sites nevertheless! This one is closest to the Callanish stones.

This one is a tiny bit further. You can walk here from the previous one.

Somehow we came across this old abandoned house. It was next to a bit of land where some piggies lived. The weird thing was that it looked like people lived there not too long ago. There were still plates and a bottle and a mug etc. Very weird.

There was even still cloth on the lamp and some furniture as well.

Stairs going up. We couldn't really go in but I think that might've been a tad dangerous...

The current occupants :-)

These are our bicycles. Very different from the ones we had in Harris. No pain at all, excellent pair of wheels!

When we got off our bikes to walk to another stone circle we spotted this tiny rat or big-ass mouse. No idea which one it is?! It was very scared of us though and tried to hide as good as it could.

A lot of people still burn the peat. You see ridges like this everywhere!

Another stone circle!

And remains of another one...

The UK is actually covered with sites like this. But none is like Callanish!