The middle-of-the-night alarm is one of those unwelcome but necessary disciplines of anchoring somewhere remote …up to check the transits still line up and that Heydays hasn’t decided to go for a wander of her own. As it turned out, our concern was entirely wasted…she sat rock solid all night, unmoved and unmoving, while we lost sleep on her behalf.

Morning brought glorious compensation, a loch entirely deserted but for us, lit up in early sunshine. There is something properly magical about that kind of isolation, not another soul in sight, and it seemed almost a small betrayal to be thinking about leaving. But time was pressing, and Barra, one of the southernmost islands of the Hebrides, was calling, so coffee was made in mugs, breakfast promised for underway, and Heydays readied for the day. We weighed anchor in the early light, hauling up a good quantity of South Uist mud in the process, almost certainly the only part of the island we will actually touch, which seems a shame.

Out of the loch and past an island of disgruntled cormorants, we turn south. The wind is kind enough to stay in the west and give us a fine sail past South Uist and Benbecula. Then, at last, Barra itself, and the business of finding the entrance to Castlebay, a channel with enough rocks scattered about it to concentrate the mind. The name, it turns out, is not merely decorative…there is indeed a castle sitting right in the middle of the bay. Kisimul Castle (we learn later!) is Norse in origin, the MacNeils’ seat for several centuries, and a reminder that these waters were Norwegian long before they were Scottish.

The marina is tiny, community-run, and home to only a couple of other visiting boats. We wandered up into the bustling metropolis of Castlebay itself…bustling being a relative term here…to discover we had missed lunch at the hotel by a single minute. Consolation arrived in the form of the Café Kisimul down by the harbour, which turned out to be rather better than the alternative anyway…excellent Indian-themed wraps, an oddly named beer, and a sunny spot outside in one of the loveliest villages at the tip of the Hebrides. We had assumed, reasonably enough, that the café’s name was a nod to its Indian menu. We were entirely wrong — it is named, of course, for the castle in the bay.

An all too brief wander around the little town and we have a feel for life at this southerly end of the Hebrides…

We fell to musing, as one does in places like this, on how small remote communities are obliged to pull together in ways the mainland forgets. One final observation…where the northern isles remain firmly under the Scottish Church’s Sabbath…everything shut on a Sunday… Barra feels different, and not only in temperament. It is the Catholic Church that dominates the town physically here, and, remarkably, there are places open on a Sunday.