Travel
The journey back was unnecessarily complicated. Taking a taxi from the B&B to Aviemore station, I then had to change at Perth and Inverkeithing stations, with only a few minutes transfer period. But I managed it, which was really surprising. The train from Inverkeithing went all the way down to Kings Cross. From there I took the tube to Liverpool Street and then a train home. Simple.
Conclusion
So with the holiday well and truly over and looking back from a couple of weeks since it happened, I can kind of evaluate its worth. So was the holiday worth it? Yeah, I thought it was. The aim was to see birds and we saw a lot. We had once in a life time views, especially of the CORNCRAKES. Put into the mix a lot of other birds, ones I did not expect to see, then, yeah it was good. The sheer numbers of birds on the island was fairly mind boggling when compared to the fairly gentle East Anglian countryside.
Perhaps the holiday ran out of steam towards the end, maybe because we had got all our target birds on the first couple of days. The target bird had been the CORNCRAKE, and seeing it and getting such good views maybe left a hole in the schedules. It maybe contradicting myself but the islands didn't really have a birding centre. The nearest was Balranald, home of the CORNCRAKE and the sea watch, but away from that, there weren't any other reserves or centres for birds. I'm used to birds being restricted to reserves, but those reserves to be intensively managed and therefore outstanding for birds.
Anyway that's only a minor thing. Even if you don't want to do the whole tour thing then I would recommend the Uist Islands for three or four days, they are worth seeing. I don't know the Western Isles well, so I'm not sure if they're worth visiting over other islands. But any place where you can bag several HARRIERS and EAGLES a day is well worth a visit.
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