August 2021 bank holiday meant 10 days off work. With an excellent forecast we booked 5 ferries 1/2 week before to (finally) make it to the Outer Hebrides – 16 islands. The hopscotch route included Mallaig which meant we got to drive the Road to the Isles and cross to the Isles. We couldn’t leave Uig til the Monday so we thought we would have to have 2 days on Skye, but as we were driving north we spotted the Raasay ferry and as we hadn’t been before we decided to hop on and spend 1 night there 
. We visited ruined castles on both.
The first thing we did when we arrived on Harris was head to the beach 
. We spent a lot of time on beaches at all hours of the day 
. Great Bernera was very calm and we had it all to ourselves (which we took advantage of!) 
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We had a couple of locations in mind on the Uists that might not have other people near them and be next to a beach. One was right on the top of a very steep sand dune along a sandy track which we had our wheels spinning in when we tried to leave. The beach we liked best was actually the first one we stopped at – we both went in the water (one of us fully, one of us just two front paws) and did some scrambling about on rocks 
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Vatersay’s beaches are great 
but you have to trek through a cow field to get to them. We’d have liked to get to the beach at the south of the island but that didn’t seem to be possible for visitors.
I’m very pleased to say neither of us had a shower and 1 of us had 7 sea dips (1 per day) on the Outer Hebrides 
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