Today we went for a long bike ride up north. Cycling in Lewis is fun and the weather looked OK today. Our first stop was Dun Carloway broch. These blackhouse remains sit at the bottom of the hill.
On top of the hill stand the best preserved remains of an iron age roundhouse that was called a "broch". A broch was home to an important person or chieftain. It's a double cylinder structure where the inner and outer cylinder are connected by mostly stairs and bits of flooring. The whole structure is made of "dry" stone meaning no cement was used. Creating something that stands for over 4000 years by using dry stone is quite an achievement!
The info board.
Inner and outer walls.
The awesome thing about these remains is that you can still walk through parts of the wall. People walked these stairs 4000 years ago and today I walked on them.
The doorway is very small, you have to squat to get through.
Dun Carloway Broch on the right. Abandoned blackhouse in the front and new "white" houses in the background.
Great visit!
Next up was the blackhouse village of Garenin, just outside of Carloway. This used to be a tiny crofting village of about 5-6 so called "black houses". One of them is left as it was when the last occupants left. This was also the very last black house in use.
As I said they left all their belongings in there. I don't really know what happened to these people. I think they were quite old when they left and were looked after in a nursing home. This was their bedroom.
Beds and heater.
Looking out of the bedroom in to the kitchen/living room. The fire was almost out.
Notice that you can see clearly!
Kitchen/living room the other way. There's also a bed in there.
Stuff.
The shed/working area. Lots of people in villages like this took to making the famous Harris tweed.
The last occupants.
Living conditions in a blackhouse were not exactly ideal as this picture illustrates. The man looking after the fire came back after lunch and put new peat on the fire. It was a bit wet and therefore created a lot of smoke.
More smoke was coming out of the window instead of the chimney...
Moving on! The last place we wanted to visit was a
water mill which is a reconstruction of a mill that stood on this site once built during the iron age. And we found it, with a nice rainbow in the background :-)
The building in the front contained a drying area where a fire was heating whatever was being milled. The back building contained the actual watermill.
The mill.
The midgies :-( There were so many midgies around here (there was no wind and it had rained) that I could hardly stand still for taking a photo.
On the way back I spotted this house. I had already seen it on the way up and knew I had to stop for a picture. Love it.
We had to pull in to a hotel to shelter for the rain at some point. This rain wasn't funny anymore. Thank god we were nearly home and had seen all we wanted to today without getting wet!
Had a fantastic time cycling and seeing all these historic things today! :-)
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