Stornoway; Sunday, 22 June, 2025

Overnight the good weather had broken with some pretty hefty downpours that were still going when I woke up, had a shower and headed down to breakfast. I hung around in my room for part of the morning, in the hope that the rain would subside, and with just a couple of minutes to spare before I had to checkout at 11am the rain had eased off to a light drizzle, so I checked out, left my luggage with reception and headed out into town.

Sunday’s on the Outer Hebrides are still treated differently, and it was only the previous November that Tesco had taken the controversial decision to start opening on Sundays (Ferries and planes have only been running on a Sunday for the last 20 years or so, and there are no busses on a Sunday anywhere on the islands).

Consequently the town was very quiet and there was almost nobody else around, other the other tourists, trying to find things to do – with the main attraction being put on by a couple of seals who were playing around in the harbour and drawing a small crowd of tourists to watch.

I had a wander around the rest of the town centre before heading back over into the grounds of Lews castle to have more of a wander around there, and to take advantage of the café attached to the castle – because it’s a hotel the café is open on a Sunday, so I had a coffee break there, before heading off for a longer walk around the grounds, ever cautious of the potential for the weather to change at a moment’s notice.

After a decent walk I crossed back over into town and headed over to my hotel to grab a late lunch, before heading out for a final wander around town, making it over to the CalMac ferry terminal in time to see the 3pm departure sneak out 5 minutes early, and just as the first squall of the afternoon struck, thankfully I was right by a bus shelter so was able to head under that to keep dry.

There was a brief pause in the rain, and I used this as an excuse to head back to the hotel to pick up my bag and wait for the taxi I had booked out to the airport which was already waiting for me when I popped my head out of the door at 15:25.

A much quicker journey back to the airport than it was into town from it, but I wouldn’t have wanted to walk in the blustery and wet conditions that hammered the taxi all the way out to the terminal. Thankfully the weather appeared to be quite localised and brief as both the inbound flight from Glasgow, which was heading back there, and from Inverness, which was forming my flight onto Edinburgh, arrived early and pretty soon we were ushered through security and out onto the plane.

We were all closed up and ready to go 20 minutes early, at which point the pilots dropped the news that we’d been given an air traffic control restriction and we’d have to sit here for about 50 minutes, thankfully the delay only turned out to be half that and we departed just a couple of minutes late, and with a quick and smooth journey landed in Edinburgh 5 minutes early.

The steps up from the tarmac where the plane parked very conveniently came out in the terminal building right by the British Airways lounge so I didn’t have far to walk to sit out my two hour transit here before my final flight back down to London.