It’s 4pm on a Friday. I should be in the office. Instead, I’m sat on the edge of a cliff looking over a deserted beach with a beer in hand, watching the surf roll in below. This is the Isle of Lewis and Harris, the most north-westerly island in Britain, and there’s not a soul in sight.
It all started with a competition. One Wednesday night after a few beers, I entered a competition to win a weekend’s stay in a high-tech inflatable tent from Heimplanet. You just had to pick a destination in the UK you’d like to visit and say why.
I pulled up Google Maps. With the same deliberation that a monkey might give a dart flung at a dartboard, I chose the Outer Hebrides. A week later, I received an email saying I’d won. “Shit!” I texted my boyfriend Ed, “Now we actually have to go to the Outer Hebrides.”
I’d done no research. The flights were gobsmackingly expensive. All I knew was it’s very far away and they chain swings up in playgrounds on Sundays so children can’t play on the ‘day of rest’ – and I wasn’t even sure if this was true.
Three months later, we touched down in Stornoway airport on a tiny 36-man propeller plane. Air Traffic Control was waving to the pilot as we came to a halt. I could tell already this was going to be a place like no other.
Read the full piece on Mpora.com. Photos by Nina Zietman.