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Photo: Boreray and the stacs from Conachair St. Kilda 1987 |
In June 1987 I ignored a mates advice that as a young man in my mid-twenties
I "shouldn't be going camping to St Kilda, I should be going on a lads
holiday with him to Malta" and decided instead to head for the island on the
edge of the world. Looking back on it, it was one of the greatest experiences
of my life. Most of my photos from that period are on slides which I very
rarely look at, but recently I've been thinking that I need to get copies of
them before either the slides deteriorate or my ancient projector stops
working. So I present them here for posterity with a short(ish) write up
before my memory fades also. The photos are of generally poor quality, but
they've been kept in the attic for 30 years and subject to extremes of
temperature, so I'm happy enough with them. I kept meticulous notes of my
trips even then, including departure and arrival times, weather and exactly
what birds and plants we saw and that's what I've based this post on.
There were 12 of us on a private charter organized and led by my friend John
who knew more about St Kilda than was good for anybody. This was to be about
his sixth visit to the archipelago and it certainly wasn’t his last, it was
more-or-less an annual event for him back in the 1980’s. He had arranged for
our party to camp on the archipelago's main island Hirta for nine nights but it
was a long journey from Oban and would also require two days each way on a boat.
Our boat was a converted fishing boat, the "Danbrit". Looking at these
photos now I find it quite alarming that we were about to undertake a 26
hour journey in this especially since a large part of the journey would be
out into the open Atlantic ocean! I think that's John sitting on the quay
but I can't be sure.
These were our sleeping quarters on the boat. We were to spend at least one
night each way in here, but St Kilda is a difficult place to land due to
swell and wind, and it was perfectly possible that when we arrived we
wouldn't be able to dock for a day or two.
