“Met this wee fella on a mountain pass just after Tarbert, on our way north to Stornoway. The second picture is from the night before: we sipped drams of whisky from Talisker on the stunning Seilebost beach and splashed our sore feet in the icy sea. I have dreamed of visiting these places for many years now but cycling through the Hebrides is something I never thought I would do.
Goes to show what four months stuck inside can make you do!

I’ve written a prose poem about the experience, which you can read below.”

– Ross, 29, Bun Abhainn Eadarra

Reflections on a landscape

What I expected I do not know. The first days were painful and I longed for the comforts of home, so smothering only days ago. I imagined an experience on the road, drinking in forgotten spirits and landscapes fully alive but the road was brutal and, suddenly anticipating monsters, I almost gave up on the boat to Skye. On the other side of anguish, I ridded myself of a promising but weighty loaf of rye and was reborn. Leaping windward, gliding with the hills. There is no inherited memory here; no songs, no language, not for me. The only psychological response was to the pedals and the rain. But at night the bog graces our camp and the foreign sand spoils the machines of the mind. The sun stains the sky like the dim rose of the grey brain. Swarms of midges infiltrate mangled tins of spaghetti, whisky is smuggled under our head nets. We do not belong here, but the still sea embraces our naked bodies. In the morning ghostly sheep call out to their mothers, separated by roads. Who is this riding in the moorland?