Jult 22, 2024

We docked in a brand new facility that the city of Stornoway built for the cruise ships. It is still under construction and is a little bit away from the town. They also built some very nice walking paths to get to town that were quite scenic. You had to go through face to face immigration and everyone on the ship was assigned times to present with their passports. Our assigned time was 7:30 so that meant getting up at 7. Immigration took place on the boat and did not take long so we came back to the room to hang out for a bit until heading into town. We had a boat ride booked through Tripadvisor that was scheduled for 10am.

We walked into town through lots of woodlands and some streams. Lots of wildflowers and very scenic. We ran into lots of locals walking their dogs and everyone was very friendly.

Views from our path into town

They also had a shuttle bus but the walk took about 45 minutes. We met up with our tour and they had us all put on heavy coats and life jackets to keep us warm and safe.

Kathy in her long coat and the boat we were going on.

The boat holds 12 plus the Captain and it was the same saddle type seating as we did in Canada. The trip was booked as a 4 hour “safari” looking for whales, dolphins, seals and tons of sea birds. The water was so smooth it was like glass.

You can see how low the tide is and we saw lots of seals. Their coloring matched in with the background.

They were all curious about us.

We went looking for a sea eagle which has a wing span of 8 feet. We saw one at the top of a rocky cliff but it did not take off so we did not get to see how big they are.

The Sea Eagle. You can see the face looks just like an eagle. We also had a beautiful day with lots of sun. Our Captain told us that this is the first time in 5 days that they saw the sun.

We saw lots of sea birds and I will try to get the names right.

Blue Heron and shags on the rocks.

Unfortunatley I don’t remember all the names of the birds we saw

We started seeing some puffins flying around us and our guide told us that we would be seeing a lot more.

This is what most of the islands looked like so great places for bird colonies.

One of the coves we went into and in this spot there is a small community living there.

We also saw lots of sheep on the hillsides grazing.

All of the black dots in the water are puffins.

Puffins everywhere!

Puffins up close

I took a million puffin pictures but will share a few.

So many in the water close to us

Large group of them

When the boat got too close the puffins took off

We were surprised to see so many puffins in Scotland.

This seal got so scared when he saw us that he actually fell off his perch into the water. We liked the “Dalmatian” seal.

Running on water

We stayed out for a little more than 4 hours and we were glad to have the coats. We did run across another tour in a small boat and some of those people were jumping into the water to swim.

The port town of Stornoway

Kathy in her Viking boat with our ship in the background.

After our boat trip we walked briefly through town and then walked back to the boat. We sailed around 6pm

The Lews castle in Stornoway and some of the countryside as we set sail.

We have a day at sea, Tuesday and then 3 English ports in a row. About 1800 people will be getting off on Friday when we arrive in Southampton including one of our Mah Jongg group so now we have to find a 4th for the remaining 3 sea days on the next leg.

Next stop is Cornwall, England