SCOTTISH GETAWAYS Give ‘em a Minch
‘U p here, you really just have to appreciate the weather by the moment,’ says Marion Fordham, as she picks us up from Stornoway’s tiny airport to drive us out to Broad Bay House, the guesthouse she and her husband run in a crofting community right on the edge of the Minch.
This proves to be excellent advice for spending a weekend on Lewis – with nothing very much planned beyond ‘relax’ and ‘appreciate scenery’, and conditions ranging from blazing sun to near-gale rain – we’re quite happy to let the weather determine our activities. We arrive a week after Lewis’ religious community has made the papers protesting at the advent of ferries on Sunday, a reminder that weekend activity will be necessarily restricted by the particular tempo of island life. However, mostly, Broad Bay House itself sets the pace for our break. I’m trying not to fawn, but really the house alone is an exceptional holiday destination. Marion and husband Ian built it themselves three years ago. Like an increasingly large number of Lewis residents they’re from England, but came up one year for the annual Hebridean Celtic Festival, fell hard for the island and moved up from London. It’s not completely isolated: there are neighbouring crofts dotted along the coast, and a quick walk up the road gets you into Back village. But step out of the garden gate, and you’re alone on a cliff top covered in wildflowers, above sea that is actually turquoise, white sand, the only noises waves and the occasional seagull. Broad Bay House caters happily to ramblers, cyclists, surfers and sea canoeists, but even just existing, being on the beach, aligning your breathing to the motion of the tide and watching the birds, feels like time well spent. Broad Bay House is one of the only Visit Scotland five-star destinations on Lewis, and independent review site Trip Advisor has picked it as the top place to stay in the
8 THE LIST 6–13 Aug 2009
Hebrides. It’s a deceptively large house (there are four gigantic double bedrooms and a large dining/living space with three glazed walls looking across the bay) with a faintly Scandinavian feel to it; beautifully minimalist furnishings, glinting, wild paintings and pieces of sculpture by local artists pick up the colours from the sea at various times of the day. What’s really, really special about the house, though, is that while everything (from the pin-sharp in-room sound system and Molton Brown toiletries to mattresses so dense they practically compel you to sleep) testifies to that five-star rating, there’s nothing of the anodyne luxury retreat about Broad Bay. It’s suffused with personality: idiosyncratic grace notes ranging from the excellent selection of books and DVDs in the
M A H D R O F N A
I : S O T O H P