The BIG Storm
To Edinburgh, and Beyond
Leaving Germany was one of the points of fear I had for this whole trip.
This was our first time to take the harps on an airplane, and I'd never taken
a larger harp on a plane without a hard flight case before. We didn't have a
way to get flight cases in time to fly with the harps, so we just had to
trust it would be okay. We packed the soft cases full of most of our clothes
to give them protection. They managed to survive the flight just fine.
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We were met at the airport by Jo's good friend Andrea, who took us around
town while we waited to meet with our other friends who had our extra
suitcase. We bummed around town, and also went to the train station to sort
out our train tickets to Inverness, heading to our final destination, Lewis!
There had been major flooding in Scotland at this time, and we found that the
trains were not running that day, and were very fully booked the next because
of this. We booked the final train out on Sunday, hoping it would actually
go. We had a nice evening meal with Andrea, Jette and Colin, and then
headed south to Selkirk to stay with Andrea overnight.
Andrea was wonderfully hospitable, giving us her bed while she slept on the
sofa cushions. We played tunes with her into the evening, trying out the
harps, and then retired late. She had also arranged with Corrina Hewat
(another amazing harper in Scotland) and her husband David to come over for
lunch with us the next day. We slept late the next morning, had a leisurely
morning eating, packing, and playing harps. Corrina and David arrived, and I
played "North Brig o' Edinburgh" with her before lunch.
We had a great chat/lunch with them, and then headed back to Edinburgh to
meet our train. I tried calling Chrissie MacAulay (my landlady for Lewis) to
let her know when we'd be arriving, but the pay phones wouldn't work for me.
The train trip was fine, but it took longer than usual because there was
standing water on the tracks in areas that required us to take parts of the
trip at 5 mph. We caught a taxi to our B&B in Inverness and collapsed for
the night, knowing we'd need to get up very early to meet the bus to
Ullapool. This was our wedding anniversary - and we celebrated by toasting
each other with Coke and sandwiches on the train.
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The bus to Ullapool as fascinating - we had a great view out the big front
windows, and got to see all the flooding - many places where trees were
covered in water up to their branches. The winds were very high, so it was a
bumpy, swaying ride, but the views were fantastic. We reached Ullapool and
waited for the ferry, which was late due to the rough weather. The ferry
ride was choppy, with water crashing all the way up the boat in sudden walls
of sound and motion. A lot of people were green from the waves. We arrived
safely, and decided the easiest way to get to our destination
(Tolstachaolais) was to rent a car from Stornoway for the night, and sort out
our car down there later. We picked up a few groceries in town before
heading South to Tolsta, so we'd have something to eat.
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Settling In
We arrived before our landlady was home from work, so we took a quick driving
tour of the town and then returned to meet her. We learned the phone was not
installed yet, and we would have to wait until Thursday. She was quite upset
it had worked out that way (as was I, since it complicated getting things
organized, but it was okay.) The cottage is nice, if a bit
over-decorated. There is lots of space for various things, which is what I
had wanted. We settled in right away, and tuned up the harps before retiring
for bed. We also started up the laptop, and found the power converter
wouldn't work with it, which left us in a real quandary about how I'd
function.
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We got up fairly late the next morning, and then tried to find a way to catch
up with Dee, who was renting us the long-term car. Again, pay phones proved
problematic (it appears they are not kept up at all in the UK these days,
probably due to the proliferation of mobile phones.) We found a bunch of
phones, but most of them took my money but wouldn't work, and some wouldn't
even take my money. We ended up driving all the way to Stornoway (about 45
minutes from Tolsta.) to find a working phone.
We reached Dee and found the car wouldn't be ready until the next day, but he
suggested we stop by that evening and take a look at it. We rented the
short-term car for another day to get us by, and then started looking for
solutions to various other issues. We stopped at the library trying to check
email (which we hadn't been able to check yet to date) and found their
internet connection was broken, so we couldn't do that. We bought a hot
water bottle, more groceries, and found a computer store that was able to
solve our computer problem by selling us a UK cable for the laptop. At this
point I was anxious to get home and get the laptop charged and running, to
see that this solution would actually work.
The Storm Hits
We'd planned to visit Dee at about 5 pm, so we headed home with the
groceries, etc. When we arrived, it had gotten VERY windy, and we struggled
to get things out of the car. The wind grabbed Wayne's glasses and threw
them across the field, pulling the lenses out in the process. He started
looking for the bits right away as Jo unloaded the car the rest of the way.
It was getting dark by this time, and we were searching high and low in
violent wind for the glasses. Wayne had found the lenses, but we couldn't
find the frames.
Our landlady saw us out looking and brought a torch (flashlight) for us, and
that allowed us to find the frames. Sometime between when we arrived with
the groceries and when we found the frames, the power went. So, we had all
these groceries to put away and no light to guide us, and no power in the
fridge or freezer.
Then we got on the road to try to find Dee's place, but it was totally dark,
and the wind and rain were very violent by this time, so we couldn't find it
and turned back. We stopped back by our landlady's home, and she gave us tea
and penguin snacks and hot water to take back to our powerless and heatless
cottage. (They had a gas heater and a propane burner to use, but we had
nothing.)
She told us the news - the power was out on the whole island and the gales
were very severe, so we'd be without power until sometime the next day. We
were to spend the night in our cold, dark, unfamiliar cottage. We visited
for a while and got warm before heading out to our place. We had sandwiches
for dinner and then tuned up the harps and played some harp and pipe tunes in
the dark/candlelight. We used the hot water for more tea and to fill our hot
water bottle before going to a very cold bed. (The cottage had not really
heated up before the power went out, so it was very cold!) Thank goodness we
had bought that hot water bottle that morning!
The next morning the wind was a bit quieter, and we headed out to meet Dee.
We came out to our rental car to discover that a slate from a roof had
smashed into the driver's door and window, shattering the window. We cleaned
up as best we could and drove out in the cold wind with no window to meet
Dee. Dee wasn't home, but we met his wife Annella (and their Newfoundland
dog.) Annella went out to find Dee. He came back and showed us the car, and
we got that mostly sorted. Then he called Lochs garage for us about the
rental car and found we could return it right down the road - Stornoway was
pretty much closed from the storm due to flooding and wind damage. They
didn't want people coming into town. So, Dee led us to the alternate
location and drove us back to his place, where he sent us on with the car,
even though a few details needed to be finished. He was amazing!
We struggled to stay warm that afternoon with no power while we watched the
weather go by. The gusts were enormous, and the rain would pour down, but
there would occasionally be a brief respite of beautiful sunshine and no
wind. It seemed calmer that afternoon, so around 4 pm we headed out to
Leurbost to see if we could get Petrol and candles, but the store there was
closed as well. On the way back we stopped at Callanish for a few photos and
views at dusk.
We noticed some lights on in town there and got hopeful for power soon. We
reached home, had yet another cold meal, and tuned and played instruments as
it got dark. Then we went over to Chrissie's house again to get warm and
catch up on the news. She told us that the storm was big news, and it proved
true as she proceeded to get five or six phone calls from folks around the UK
area checking to see if she was okay. She is a school teacher, and she told
us that this is the first time she can remember schools being closed due to
weather like this.
We learned most everyone in the village had some damage from the storm -
mostly roof damage. Our cottage was not really hurt - just a few fence posts
down. We got more tea and hot water and headed home to bed, filling the hot
water bottle again. We had just gotten into bed (very early, around 9 pm)
when the power came back on. It had been off for about 27 hours at that
point. We got up and immediately started working on the laptop, to see if
the power cable was going to get the battery working so we could use it. It
did work, so I set to work downloading all the photos we'd taken on the trip
so far. We ended up not getting to bed until around midnight after all...
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