Bostadh

Bostadh (or Bosta) on Great Bernera island on the north-west coast of the Isle of Lewis is another of those atmospheric edge-of-the-world places - an outpost on an outpost. One crosses the narrow strait under the gaze of the Callanish VIII megaliths as if to remind us of a time before our own - for time is very much a theme of this magical place. The single track road across the island peters out beside Bostadh Cemetery’s rectangle of flat greensward. Overlooking a bay of skerries and islets, this place probably receives fewer tourists than visitors paying respects to the dead. At first glance, there seems to be more past than present here.

That the ground at this spot is deep enough to take a grave illustrates how on the Outer Hebrides geography and geology set the scene for human history. With the Atlantic Ocean’s remorseless arrival on these western shorelines, time has built up prodigious quantities of seashells, and powdered them into a deep, fine sand on which machair grassland has become established. On the eastern coast of these islands where this process doesn’t take place, the land’s surface is unyielding rock, but in this western corner of Lewis, the machair is classed as Grade A, “outstanding examples of the feature”. It provides a florally-rich habitat that supports low-intensity agriculture, simple rotational cropping and semi-subsistent crofting. (We have typically found as many as 40 - 45 wild flowers per square metre here - see below - many of which one can see elsewhere, although kept miniature here by near-constant wind.)

This western machair was also land that its historic owners reckoned would be more productive supporting livestock (often deer for hunting) instead of people, a murderous vision that led to the Highland and Island Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries. Residents of these western shores faced eviction at gunpoint either to Canada or the eastern shores of these isles where conditions could not support crofting. Walk these shorelines and this bitter history is ever-present, as much on Great Bernera as anywhere in Scotland.

Leave your transport behind beside the Bostadh Cemetery and the path to the beach below beckons. There’s a gentle insistence that you follow it down to the shoreline, small islands spread out before you, half-obscuring the horizon. To your right, Little Bernera, the biggest mass, barely separated from Great Bernera, and beyond it Cealasaigh, Campaigh, then leftwards and further out on the water, Flodaigh, Bearasaigh and distant Seanna Chnoc. These and others are variably humps or ridges, fringed with sand, fine shell sand or seaweed, uninhabited all, yet offering a protective shield to Bostadh Bay, as interesting out in the bay as the rising rocks behind it.

Towards the eastern end of the beach, straddling the last low-tide rock outcrop, is one of Marcus Vergette’s Time and Tide Bells. As if lowered into place by some alien craft, a graceful tripod supports a bronze tidal bell whose clapper - disconnected during winter to avoid damage - is rung twice each day by the advancing and receding waters. Along with the dozen or so built or planned bells around Britain’s coastline, they sound the knell of deep time “in the context of sea level rise”. Its near-total immersion at high tide now may see it similarly hidden during future low tides, as if this remote location fails to offer reason enough already for contemplation.

The Time and Tide Bell, Bostadh beach, Great Bernera, the Isle of Lewis (Monochrome version.)

Bostadh iron age house, Great Bernera, the Isle of Lewis (2023) (Monochrome version.)

The Time and Tide Bell, Bostadh beach, Great Bernera, the Isle of Lewis (Monochrome version.)

Bostadh cemetery, Great Bernera, the Isle of Lewis (Monochrome version.)

Bostadh Bay, Great Bernera, the Isle of Lewis (Monochrome version.)

The iron age house at Bostadh Bay, Great Bernera, the Isle of Lewis (2012) (Monochrome version.)

Behind Bostadh Bay and the iron age house, Great Bernera, the Isle of Lewis (2023) (Monochrome version.)

Shieling behind Bostadh Bay, Great Bernera, the Isle of Lewis (Monochrome version.)

Bostadh Bay, Great Bernera, the Isle of Lewis (Monochrome version.)

Hebridean machair (Monochrome version.)

By Outer Hebridean standards, Bostah’s beach is small, perhaps 250 metres across and 200 metres from low-water mark back to machair-covered dunes. Where the shell sand rises the furthest before the machair takes over, a grass-covered knoll appears. A sheep fence surrounds it, and inside that a low stone wall conceals what might be a trench. Good signage explains that the site is an ancient monument, with this single dwelling being a reconstruction. The place has a Norse history and before that supported a late iron age (400 - 800 AD), Pictish settlement. In summer months, one can enter at a crouch into a semi-underground space and play make-believe in the gloom. A thatched and turfed roof would have been supported by timber that in modern times is no longer available. Vestiges of three such houses have been found in the vicinity, all circular with hearths and linked chambers; each has a narrow south-facing entrance into the inner gloom. Middens found nearby attest to the meagre shellfish diet these early people would have struggled with.

A rubble-strewn hillside flanks the beach, providing protection against the westerlies, and the slope up behind the the ancient settlement offers further enticement. Choosing a route that hugs the rock-face on either side helps avoid the run-off that descends from the loch above. Several rectangular stone ruins line the route, evidence of more recent activity, shielings or bothies for seasonal occupation, rather than year-round crofts; in amongst these are stone sheep enclosures. Loch a’Sgaill, 700 metres back from the shoreline, is dark from peat. Rock pipits, bog cotton, mosses, ferns, lichens, heather, orchids, sedges, buttercups and dragonflies are fine distractions. Looking back down towards the shore, one’s rewarded with a panorama that brings all these pieces together as if a magic lantern is projecting flickering images from successive generations of precarious occupation. Recent history and near-eradicated past are sandwiched between each other in multiple layers, a ceaseless ebb and flow, like the tide below, now joined by a metronomic knoll from the water’s edge. Bostadh: a place of great beauty.

Wildflowers in the Outer Hebrides

The following were noted on Lewis and Harris in July/August 2023:

Links

• Machair (Joint Nature Conservation Committee website)
• The Time and Tide Bell project website
• The Bosta Beach Bell on The Time and Tide Bell project website