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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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
The Tunnel from the Cambir with Boreray and the stacs behind.
John in the Tunnel.
Puffins on Dun.
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."
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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.
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.
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