There is only a couple of hours til the ferry takes us away from this hard yet idyllic island so a few sites closer to the ferry terminal are what were up to now, a souterrain to start off with.
Heading north on the B893 take second left, then at the T junction turn left and go to the end and look left. You'll see a couple of long mounds, the one on the right has some stones on it, so I headed across the field towards that, Eric reckoned it was the other mound, and so it turned out to be, we'll get him stone hunting on his own one day.
I didn't know where the actual entrance to the souterrain was, there's a fence with the beach right below it, from field to sea is maybe ten yards, it wont be down there I confidently assert. But where is it, I look all over the edge of two fields and its not there, there are some half buried stones, and I was beginning to convince myself it was a buried none get-into-able site. But just for the sake of completion I hopped over the fence down to the beach and found it almost straight away.
The entrance was covered by stones, so I peeled them away and revealed a strange little thing. A square stone lined hole no more than 18 inches tall, I stuck my head in and could see that after a yard or two it turns left. Should I crawl in? I decided not to, it's very cramped, I took too long to find it and flies are beginning to swarm on me, they're not midges, unless someone has been doing gamma ray experiments on them, big stupid flies that you can catch in your fingers.
I've never seen a souterrain on a beach before, and I never would have if I'd stayed at home, god save the outdoors.
At NF 8627 7532 there are the remains of an earth-house in an eroded sandy cliff on the north side of Vallaquie Strand.
It is situated approx 1.7m below the present ground level and consists of an entrance passage 0.6m wide, of which 1.6m of walling is still intact, with a lintel at its west end. The height of the passage is unobtainable due to debris.
The chamber, thought locally to be oval and corbelled, seems to be about 2.5m in diameter, with the roof supported by a central drystone pillar. Around the earth-house is a dense scatter of shells, animal bones and potsherds both above and below the earth-house. About 5.0m of walling can be traced in the sand to the west of the entrance, and may be a continuation of the north wall of the passage.
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