NSA Special Qualities
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Extract from: Scottish Natural Heritage (2010). The special qualities of the National Scenic Areas . SNH Commissioned Report No.374. The Special Qualities of the South Lewis, Harris and North Uist National Scenic Area • A rich variety of exceptional scenery • A great diversity of seascapes • Intervisibility • The close interplay of the natural world, settlement and culture • The indivisible linkage of landscape and history • The very edge of Europe • The dominance of the weather South Lewis and Harris • The wild, mountainous character • Deep sea lochs that penetrate the hills • The narrow gorge of Glen Bhaltos • The rockscapes of Harris • Extensive machair and dune systems with expansive beaches • The drama of Ceapabhal and Tràigh an Taoibh Thuath • The landmark of Amhuinnsuidhe Castle • The distinct, well-populated island of Sgalpaigh • The enclosed glens of Choisleitir, Shranndabhal and Roghadail The Sound of Harris • The dramatic, island-studded Sound of Harris North Uist • A watery maze of lochs, lochans, bays and fjards • The distinctive peninsula of Lochportain • The low, expansive north machair coast • The island of Beàrnaraigh – the Uists in miniature • The dynamic, shifting land Special Quality Further information • A rich variety of exceptional scenery The different island landscapes of The major landscape types are mountain, moorland, croftland, coast and • Mountains sea here come together to create an • Boggy moorland area of exceptional scenery. • Rocky moorland • Cnoc and lochan The bold, rugged hills of South Lewis • Rock and lochan and Harris complement the islands in the • Rocky indented coasts • Coastal mosaics Sound of Harris. These islands in turn • Wide sandy machair beaches contained within rocky appear an extension to the remarkable promontories landscape of North Uist, where water • Sand dune systems and land are intricately interlocked. • Saltmarsh and tidal zones • Islands A rich scenic variety results from the juxtaposition of the different landscapes, both north to south and east to west. Sharp contrasts are encountered between hills and low-lying lands, between sandy and rocky shores, between peat bog and machair, between island and sea. Additional variety is introduced through the contrast between the settled, crofting landscapes and the uninhabited moorland beyond. • A great diversity of seascapes The sea is rarely far away. The deeply On South Lewis views vary greatly to include narrow, indented coastline and the combination enclosed views across Loch Ròg and wild, exposed seascapes seen from high cliffs along Mangurstadh Head. of rock and sand provides seascapes On Harris visual containment is formed by the dramatic which are hugely varied. mountains and rocky headlands that contain small to medium scale seascapes. Views on the peninsulas are Some views of the sea are restricted by directed outwards to sea because of the high landform of a narrow frame of rock or an enclosed the interior that restricts any landward physical and visual movement. beach or bay. Others show an interplay of land and water through an intricate North Uist’s seascapes vary greatly. They can be complex, arrangement of islands, promontories with thin slivers of white sands far out to sea indicating and bays. In some places there is such a distant island shores, tidal islands, extended lengths of confusion of sea and land that it is not machair or long sand spits. Elsewhere, seascapes can be contained and restricted by extensive dune systems. In the clear whether it is the sea at all. east, where the watery landscapes of Loch nam Madadh extend, confusion as to the location of the sea, or loch is a In contrast, there are grand, open common experience to the visitor. seascapes with islands providing a sense of ever-receding oceanic An unusual characteristic is that of land-locked islands and backdrops. There are panoramas over islets within sea lochs. This further emphasises the intricacy of boundaries and interfaces between land and water, peninsulas, islands, islets and skerries to especially where combined with complex lochside margins distant shores, or further afield to the and shores. Minch and the Isle of Skye. Westwards the expansiveness of the Atlantic ocean is a constant reminder that this is the edge of Europe – reinforced by far distant St Kilda visible low on the horizon. • Intervisibility The intervisibility between landscapes – Different combinations of landscape intervisibility contribute views to another landscape type – is an to the NSAs extraordinary richness. Examples are too many to itemise but, in terms of combination, the following are outstanding quality of this NSA. The eye examples: is continually led to distant horizons. • Cliff-top views from Camas na Clibhe over to the bay- heads and machair crofting at Clibhe. Views out from high vantage points are spectacular in terms of their extent and • Views from the Losgantir machair out onto Harris’s dramatic mountain massif. expansiveness – as on a clear day from • Seascapes and coastal islands from thin machair The Clisham (799m), when views extend strands. 2 from Cape Wrath to the Cuillin and St • Views of the Harris and Lewis massif from North Lewis’ Kilda. extensive boggy moorlands. Although the low vantage points are more localised, the Even low vantage points can include panoramas are no less important in terms of scenic quality intervisibility between different and the resulting rich visual variety. landscapes within the Long Island, A major distinct quality of landscape intervisibility here is adding to the rich visual variety. that focal points – eye-catchers – tend to be made up of views of different landscape types, rather than man-made features. Thus one’s eye may be caught by the glimmer of a white sand beach on the horizon, or the recognition of a particular summit within a hill-range. • The close interplay of the natural world, settlement and culture The physical character and location of ‘Harris, where a mere one percent of the land is cultivated human activity has been determined by and where 96 per cent remains as peaty moorland or ice- scoured rock. In this inhospitable wilderness the settlements the natural world, with settlement sparse are entirely peripheral; J.B Caird describes it thus, “no in a landscape where nature comes dwelling is beyond the sound of the waves… Small paths across as the dominant force. The wind down the ice-etched valleys among the minute lazy- greater part of the NSA’s vast interior beds to the source of the fertilizing sea-ware (seaweed) and land mass, is largely uninhabited the sheltered anchorages of the small ring-netters and lobster boats…”’ Whittow (1977) moorland and bog, cnoc and lochan, and bare, ice-scoured mountain massif. ‘The interior is thickly clad with peat in the north, while in the southern part of the island, bare, ice-scoured mountains rise Although the area has been long- to over 800m. The agricultural potential is thus extremely populated, habitation has always been low, and only on the coast, where slightly richer land resources coincided with the possibility of fishing, did constrained to the fringes of this vast permanent settlement take place.’ Lewis and Harris outer landscape of mountain, moor, rock, described in Ritchie and Mather (1970). loch and ocean. Where development does occur it is small scale and located on the edges of the mountains or the sea. However, its general sparsity does mean that the eye is drawn to the distant view of croft or building. • The indivisible linkage of landscape and history Throughout the isles, scenery and ‘The links between landscape and human history are so landscape is permeated by a sense of close as to be indivisible much of the time.’ Angus (2001) history. Human activity has left subtle, In Gaelic ‘place’ equates with a person’s identity; each yet perceptible traces that give a strong identifiable feature, ben, glen, loch, lochan, field, burn, cnoc, sense of continuity and place. tree clump and rock, is named with a story behind it. Humans have influenced the landscape over time throughout the area, in the form of prehistoric and later Sometimes, these traces are only settlements and field systems, crofting landscapes, hill obvious to the onlooker in terms of the grazing and peat extraction. Machairs result from a complex varied texture that they add to the interplay of natural and cultural factors. landform or vegetation – the feannagan Archaeological remains, although many are invisible to the beds (lazy beds) and old peat cuttings naked eye, attest to man’s long-settlement and activity being prime examples. Elsewhere throughout the Long Island. Particularly noticeable visually, are the islet settings of remains within lochs in peatland activity is more obvious as structures or landscapes. The remains of stone causeways can often be features contributing to the scene – for delineated linking the island to the shore. These date to long example, crofts, dry stone brochs and periods of activity, like at Eilean Orabhat where remains duns, and the Bunavoneader whaling range from Neolithic, through Iron Age to medieval. station. 3 Less visible, unless revealed by natural erosion of the machair, is ancient coastal settlement. • The very edge of Europe The perception of remoteness is strong, ‘From the inside edge of the Atlantic to the outside edge of the islands themselves being physically Europe. ’ British Library (1999-2001) remote from the centre of Europe, and The islands are relatively inaccessible from the core much of the NSA itself being remote population centres of Scotland due to the greater from settlements and public roads. geographical distance, time and cost in travel to get to them. Europe’s Atlantic coastline really represents ‘ the physical This marginality instigates a strong edge’ or the ‘fringe of the continental land mass, or at the sense of identity, culture and social very least its oceanic frontier.’ Garrod and Wilson (2004) cohesiveness that in turn finds direct However, the greater distance, time and travel cost needed expression in the landscape.