Today it rained. Oh did it rain! So I drove to the Port of Ness (the northernmost tip of the island of Lewis). Lovely (but sodden) sandy beaches. The journey was through bleak peat moor and yet more peat. But, as I couldn't see much through the windscreen, it hardly mattered.

Turning south again I went off the main road and towards the Blackhouse villages. The last inhabitants left as late as 1974 - by then there was electricity and running water but no young people.

It was fascinating to watch a Harris Tweed loom in action; what amazed me was the sheer mechanical complexity of the thing; Oh, and the deafening noise when the weaver threw the shuttles (travelling at 78mph). Amongst other vague things I learned was that the weavers' yard is eight feet.

Soup and a sandwich and then off again, the rain beginning to clear. Next stop was Callanais: that extraordinary monolithic neolithic construction erected at the same time as Abram was leaving Ur of the Chaldees.

The landscape towards the west and south is much more rocky and hilly but not yet mountainous. The rain has cleared and blustery clouds permitted brief glimpses of a weak sun. The wind was strong and the walk up to the monument quite strenuous. I discovered when I got there I could have driven up to them: but really that would've been cheating. Mainly I just stood there touching some of the stones, stroking them almost, thinking of people like us who 4000 years ago erected them with purpose.

Coffee and Tiffin in the nice warm interpretation centre. I was tempted by the Lewis copy chessmen but they looked as if the mould have been used for way too many years and they seemed flat so I didn't buy one.

While journeying I've been listening to a BBC adaption of the Norse tales -- all very appropriate in these settings.

Back to the hotel now and I'm going to look for a meal in town rather than have yet another hotel meal. Tomorrow I head to the south and Harris.

I reflect on the fact that most communities seem to be just strangling clumps of houses, fairly bleak, in an almost uniform grey pebble-dash. Survival is the only goal. Each community has at least one massive religious building and each of these chapels has a massive car-park; there are no pubs, at least none I have found. (Excludes Stornaway). Hebredean Revival and Calvin?