Friday 10 July 2015

Outer Hebrides tour part 2

Well the last few days have been chilled and challenging at the same time, we caught the boat from Oban to Barra,a five hour crossing. The plan was to camp but as we arrived it was windy and raining horizontally so luckily I managed a bit of negotiation on the price of a Hotel room. Heading the next day from Barra to Eriskay we followed the small single track road through pleasant scenery, as we went to board the ferry, the BMW did what its good at, it broke down, we push started it with the help of a fellow motorcyclist and boarded the ferry and spent the crossing unsuccessfully trying to diagnose the issue. The cali MacBrayne guys helped me push it up the steep slipway and i bump started it heading down the slipway to the boat, very dodgy indeed. I did have a bit of a panic as they started to lift the loading ramp with my Norton still on board, it gave the guys a laugh as i sprinted back towards the boat, they were only moving it back to compensate for the ebbing tide, luckily i didn't suffer a heart attack in the panic. We stopped at the Politician bar to take a photo (named after the SS politician which sank nearby in 1941 and which led to the making of the film Whisky Galore)
After crossing to south Uist we found an excellent campsite at Kilbride, possibly one of the cleanest and best equipped campsites i've been to. Nice cafe with wifi on site also which was a bonus. After making camp I called base camp (Alex) to ask him to look on the internet for possible causes to my issue, much poking and hoping later we found the issue, a wire had come off the starter solenoid and had fooled the bikes electrics into thinking it was in start mode shutting down mos of the bikes electrics. At the end of the day an easy fix and much relief! A couple of days doing not much followed, photos tell the story

Oban harbour, ships busy serving the Isles
On a wet and windy Barra
The bay at Barra
Teletubby posing for picture
Broken down BMW on the boat
Off and bump started
Adventure riding with the Norton
Birthplace of Flora MacDonald (saviour of Bonnie Prince Charlie)
Dram on the beach next to the campsite
Some blue sky
Fiona doing cartwheels on the sand in a panoramic phot, funny effect
Daily excercise
Enjoying the sun 
Pretty
These 3 bottles all came from the SS Politician, the one on the right still has the original whisky in it, 
I liked this

No comments:

Post a Comment