>> By that time (about 1993-94) the "lager lovelies" were no more.
As I've recorded here before Mrs B and I are addicted to the Western Isles and particularly Harris.
Our first visit was in 1984, just before the Isles Council went on the offensive over the locals habit with waste. We arrived on the Ullapool to Stornoway ferry to discover that we'd bitten off a bit more than we could chew with the bike ride to Stockinish Youth Hostel on Harris. My memory of the slog down the spinal road along Lewis is of the ditches full of broken glass and rusting beer cans. Roughly an equal mix of Tennent's lovelies and McEwans together with the odd 80/- ale Most croft houses were surrounded by decrepit cars an machinery in varying states of degradation to iron oxide.
Eventually made the Youth Hostel about 21:00 but fortunately still daylight in late May. Saw more than one person on roadside fields hand milking a cow into a steel pail.
Our final hour waiting for the ferry was close to where the Harris Distillery is now watching a few Terns dipping around in the air and the tide creeping up a Ford engine dumped on the shore. The ferry, like the present on was named Hebrides but this one dated from 1964. Cars and pedal cycles loaded by driving onto a lift which then lowered onto the garage deck. Poor bloke driving the Triumph Acclaim which shared the lift with us was wearing a kilt and the vigorous wheel turning and clutch shifting meant he was in danger of provding an answer to the 'is anything worn' question.
We must have loved it though because we returned a year or two later, by which time the 'tidy up' was complete. Since then we've made a couple of dozen further visits and will return again post Covid.
That was meant to be an anecdote about lager cans but became a travelogue. I'm supposed to be working but people needing help claiming Universal Credit seem few and far between so I'm bored as well.
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