Hay's Way by The Scotsman - Dailymotion

The Scotsman

The Scotsman's rural correspondent Katharine Hay is on a months long adventure visiting people across Scotland

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00:00Hello, so I've made it to Callowish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. It's one of the most

00:24popular sites that people come and visit when they're visiting the Outer Hebrides. So behind

00:29me you can see the Standing Stones. They date back, well, about 5,000 years and back to the

00:36Neolithic period and they actually also predate England's Stonehenge. But I mainly came here to

00:44talk about tourism and just how the site is keeping up in the face of more and more visitors

00:51coming to the island. And just walking around it's quite clear you can see where there's

00:56signs of erosion, where there's been a lot of people walking around the stones.

01:00And I was just talking to a local archaeologist who was saying that they are very concerned

01:07about the wear and tear on the site and apparently there are talks of maybe having to close it off

01:13just to allow some of the land to sort of regenerate and get back into a stronger position

01:17to accommodate all these people coming to visit. Interestingly, they also told me that they used

01:23to have heather around the stones which would have been more robust but that was removed to

01:30make way for kind of a grassy plain to make it more accessible for people to walk up to the

01:34stones and visit them. But it looks like that's, yeah, there's been an unintended consequence

01:40perhaps with the land around the stones just not looking very stable. As I said, just walking

01:47through I can see where the grass has kind of worn away quite a bit and it's muddy. So yeah,

01:54I can understand why people are a bit concerned and want to perhaps talk about closing it off

01:58for a period of time just to allow the land to regenerate. There's also a bit of a worry that

02:05there's a new visitor centre being developed which means that the current one is closed.

02:10It also means that one of the two entrances to the site will be shut over next year whilst the

02:15building work is taking place and locals were telling me they're a bit concerned about the

02:20congestion that will happen at the entrance that remains open because it's already heavily

02:27congested in the summer when a lot of people come. So limiting people to just one entrance is going

02:32to cause problems they said. So yeah, it's just interesting to come here and I've just been

02:38walking through the Highlands over August and September where there are similar concerns about

02:43local infrastructure and whether it's capable of supporting tourists to these more rural areas.

02:52On the Isle of Lewis specifically, the port at Stornoway has been developed so

02:56it's going to be able to accommodate larger cruise ships coming in which means more visitors.

03:02And a few people I've spoken to said yes, one option is to kind of improve the infrastructure,

03:07for example build bigger roads to accommodate these buses and camper vans. But there are also

03:12people who say that's not what they want to happen. Mitigating the effects of tourism

03:19needs to come from the source rather than the island having to respond and develop

03:25which would end up changing quite a lot of why people like to come here.

03:31That being the single track roads, the less developed areas, it's something that

03:38gives the island its charm and makes it distinct from other places in the UK and around the world.

03:44So yeah, I'm going to be staying on the island a little bit longer for a few more days and then

03:48I'll head down to Harris and hopefully visit Uist as well just to carry on documenting and hearing

03:55the important conversations that are going on in these island communities. As always you can

04:01find my stories on the Scotsman website under a section called Hay's Way and I also have an

04:06Instagram page where I add pictures and anecdotes of my trip which I've been doing for the last

04:12seven months now which you can find by searching at rural underscore cat with a k.

Hay's Way: Katharine visits the Calanais Stones on the Isle of Lewis

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