Cuppa: Keemun Daybreak* black tea blend with milk and sugar
View: Bosta beach on Great Bernera.
Look at that machair.
The machair is a crucial feature of Hebridean landscapes. It's not beach, it's not dunes, it's a grassy meadow full of wild flowers, like an embroidered blanket stretched thin over the sand. It's a fragile, ethereal place, abounding with life.
In days past, the machair was maintained by cattle - delicate grazers who search for their preferred plants and leave the rest alone. This allowed a multicoloured haze of flowers and herbs to rise above the close-cropped grass.
These days, the grazing is mostly by sheep, who will eat (almost) anything, so in a lot of places the machair, while still beautiful, is not what it was.
In some places, projects are underway to restore sections of machair to their previous state, and they are little slices of heaven on earth.
There was a village here once, back in the iron age. Their homes and belongings were unburied by the sea, lovingly studied, and are now tucked back beneath the grass to protect them from time. A reconstructed house is there, where you can sit in the peaty darkness and listen to a guide tell tales of things lost and found, believed and unknown, of battles and troubles and a daily life that was buried in the dunes for a thousand years.
*Keemun Daybreak is by Rosevear Tea, one of a growing community of small tea merchants based in Edinburgh. It's turning into a proper tea party over there 🫖.
