Memories of St Kilda

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.

We sailed out of Oban and through the Sound of Mull at 10:30am and after a brief stop in Tobermorry continued on our way. The plan was to spend the night in the harbour at Lochmaddy on North Uist rather than tackle the difficult Sound of Harris at night since rather alarmingly our skipper had never been that way before. Our route took us past Ardnamurchan towards Rhum, through the Sound of Canna and along the west coast of Skye before starting our crossing of the Minch. Great northern diver was about the best bird we saw.

Rhum.

Approaching the Cullins on Skye.

That's Eigg to the right of me.

I’d been asleep for a while, but woke up around midnight and noticed that John wasn’t in his bunk. I went up onto the deck and found him in the cabin with the skipper poring over some nautical maps. This didn’t inspire confidence to be honest but they asked me to make myself useful and make a brew which I duly did. Carrying three mugs of tea from the galley up a ladder and then walking across the deck of a small converted fishing boat which was being tossed around as it crossed the Minch in the dark was certainly an experience, or perhaps madness judging by the height of the gunwale in this photo, and it was made all the more surreal when I noticed in the moonlight that there were five dolphins jumping alongside the boat. We arrived at Lochmaddy at 1am

We were underway again at 5:30am and after safely navigating the Sound of Harris we entered the open Atlantic. We all stayed on deck now because already we could see to the west the towering cliffs and stacks of St Kilda getting ever closer. Fortunately the weather was kind to us, we had a force 4 wind blowing from the north and it was sunny with about 50% cloud cover. We were approaching St Kilda from the south east and impressive though the island of Boreray and its stacks were, we had no plans to sail close to them today, we were heading straight for Hirta. As we got closer to our destination, we started seeing a variety of seabirds including storm petrels, shearwaters, auks and skuas. A very impressive spectacle. Finally we entered Village Bay and arrived at Hirta at about 2:00pm.

Approaching Village bay, Hirta. On the right is the summit of Connachair, the highest sea cliff in Britain, although you can't see the main part of the cliff in this photo. In the centre is Oiseval.

At that time there was a small army base on the island and they must have known that we were on our way because a gemini craft could be seen approaching from the shore and without them we wouldn’t have been able to land. The army guys helped us load our gear into the boat and took us ashore.

The campsite was at the back of the army base close to the deserted village and close to one of the cleats.

The Danbrit in Village bay.

The area close to the village was scattered with cleats, small stone buildings unique to St Kilda which were used for storing food, especially seabirds which were collected in the summer by the former residents of Village Bay.  

We used "our" cleat for cooking and at times sheltering, though we were very lucky with the weather. There was also a St Kilda field mouse living in the cleat and at night a storm petrel was purring in the wall next to it. Other cleats had St. Kilda wrens. 

Although we were in a party of 12, once on the island we pretty much split up and did our own thing. Most of the time myself, John and Ronnie (in the photo above) stuck together.

The island had been evacuated in 1930, 57 years before we arrived, and now the only residents were the army and National Trust volunteers or occasional private groups such as ourselves. The volunteers were helping restore the houses in the village but I don’t remember them being there during our stay.

A turtle dove was an unexpected find in the village.

Looking across Village Bay from Ruaival, towards Oiseval (right) and Conachair (left). In between is the Gap.

Dun from Ruaival.

This is the Mistress stone. On the left of the photo you can see the top of Mullach Bi and the cliff known as Carn Mor.

A closer look at Mullach Bi and Carn Mor.

The boulder field of Carn Mor is relatively quiet by day, but many thousands of birds breed here, petrels, shearwaters and puffins. On one particular evening we made our way carefully down into the middle of the boulder field and stayed there quietly all night. At first there was an incredible flypast of puffins returning to their burrows, but the real action was after dark. My notes from the night read: 

"The Leach's petrels started calling first at about 12:30am. Soon the whole hillside was alive with their calls and if we listened carefully we could also hear the soft churring call of storm petrels in amongst the rocks. Suddenly overhead there was a swoosh as the first Manx shearwater went past like a rocket and their eerie calls filled the air. In the moonlight I could see the dark shapes of thousands of birds flying all around us. Weather: 30-90% cloud cover, calm, no rain, cool."

Photographed at Carn Mor, this is one of the very few prints I have from the trip.

Puffins at dusk.

There were also plenty of St Kilda wrens at Carn Mor, and elsewhere on the island.

We sat and sunbathed for a while on the Cambir, overlooking Soay and it's stacks. Amazingly a flock of 12 white-fronted geese flew between Soay and Stac Biorach (the stac closest to Soay). My notes don't say any more than that, but presumably they were Greenland white-fronts. 

The route to the Cambir took us through a bonxie colony in Glen Mor with all of the hazards that pertained and as a bonus on the way we saw a female red-necked phalarope on a bonxie bathing tarn.

Mullach Bi on the right, Glen Mor in the middle and Mullach Mor and Conachair on the left, from the Cambir.

The Tunnel from the Cambir with Boreray and the stacs behind.

John in the Tunnel.

The Cambir and Soay from Mullach Mor.

Village bay from the summit of Conachair.

Village Bay from the Gap, with Dun behind.

Village Bay and the Gap from Ruaival.

One late evening in the middle of our holiday we walked up to the Gap with our sleeping bags and prepared to spend the night there, at least until dawn which at this time of year was about 4:30am. Our hope was to experience some of the sea birds returning to their burrows at night. We did use torches sparingly but we didn't follow birds as they flew we shone them on a rock face and watched and waited to see what came in. My notes read as follows:

"We had an incredible morning. Petrels were flying all around us and although I only positively identified one Leach's petrel (by it's split white rump) there must have been many more."

Photo: Storm petrel being released at a ringing
 session on Anglesey 2005.

"The views of the storm petrels were the experience of a lifetime. We sat on an outcrop of rock and shone our torches at a rock face about 10 feet away. Storm petrels flew into the light and hung in the air like miniature black fulmers, their white underwings clearly seen. One landed on the bank with it's back to us, turned, looked at us and walked into it's burrow.

Before we went up to the Gap we heard storm petrels calling in a wall alongside the campsite.

Weather (early morning only): cool, moderate northerly wind, cloud building from 10%-100% cloud cover, wind increasing, showers late on. "

The army base may have been a bit of an eye sore but actually it was the army lads who made the trip extra special. Not only did they help us ashore when we arrived, they also had a bar that we could use, the famous Puff Inn, which when it was open was the most remote pub in the UK. Apparently it wasn't allowed to make a profit and they didn't have draft ale, but they did sell cans of beer and other drinks at knock down prices. We spent most of our evenings in the bar and in the nine nights we spent on the island they had two fancy dress evenings and a horse racing night, the latter involving little wooden horses and dice! We were camping and there were no shops on the island so we had to resort to collecting flotsam and jetsam in order to make our fancy dress costumes. I'm supposed to be Robinson Crusoe in the photo above!

On at least one evening the army chef also provided us with food. Some of the lads had been out fishing and came back with some huge edible crabs which the chef cooked and served up for us all for free. We'd only taken the most basic of food supplies with us so this was real luxury.

The army also took us out in their gemini craft which allowed us to land on Dun, an island which we wouldn't otherwise have been able to visit.

Thrift on Dun.

Village Bay from Dun. At the time, there were at least 30,000 puffin burrows on Dun alone, with an estimated 155,000 burrows across the whole of the archipelago. 

Puffins on Dun.

Razorbill.

Bioda mor, Dun.

Going through Dun passage.

The south side of Dun.

Opinions differ on which is the highest sea cliff in Britain, some say The Kame of Foula, others say St. John's Head on Hoy, but many say it's this, Conachair, Hirta at 430m. It all depends on what you class as the top of the cliff e.g. does the cliff have to be shear all of the way down or can it be in steps and if so how large can the steps be before it's no longer a single cliff? 

These days fulmars are virtually ubiquitous around the coasts of Britain and Ireland, yet right up to the end of the 19th century St Kilda was the only UK colony. In 1987 it was still the largest UK colony with 63,000 pairs and Conachair was at the epicentre, with at least 10,000 pairs.

On the crags above Conachair we came across the archipelago's only tree species, dwarf willow Salix herbacea, a creeping montane species which occurs in the UK mainly in Scotland.

Boreray with Stac an Armin (left) and Stac Lee, home to all of the gannets in the St Kilda archipelago, over 50,000 pairs in 1987. Photo from near the summit of Conachair.

Mark Tasker and the Seabird Survey Group were on Hirta during our stay in June 1987 and three of their colleagues were camping on Boreray, we could see their tents from the Gap. When the day came for these people to depart Boreray John somehow managed to get himself invited onto their boat "Ocean Bounty" to help bring them off. It's very difficult to land on Boreray due to steep cliffs all around the island and a large swell, and very few people have achieved it, but John managed it in later years and also managed to land on Stac Lee, which is even more difficult.

On the day that we left Hirta we spent a couple of hours sailing around the awesome cliffs of Boreray and the stacs, taking in the amazing gannet colony, before heading back to Oban. My first long-tailed skua which flew right over the boat was the highlight of the journey back.

Stac Lee. Somehow John landed on this in later years, with the then St Kilda warden.

Stac an Armin

Goodbye St Kilda. Stac Lee in the foreground with Hirta behind and Soay to the right.

St Kilda camping party 1987, minus John (who took the photo) at Arinagour, Isle of Coll. For reasons I can't remember we came back aboard the "Charna". 

Our trip to St. Kilda was over and I've not been back since. I guess that there will be opportunities in the future to visit again, but the army base is now gone, the Puff Inn closed, Dun is probably inaccessible and I'm not sure that it's now possible to camp for nine nights. What an experience it was, well up there with the best of my life.