two year trip| Distance cycled | 15.6 miles / 25.1 km |
| Cumulative distance cycled | 334.8 miles / 539 km |
| Islands visited (daily total) | Lewis |
| Total islands visited | 10+1 of 10 |
| Average speed | 11.1 mph / 17.9 kmph |
| Weather conditions | Drizzly rain |
In the Museum Nan Eilean we’d seen a photo and some drawings of a stone structure that we didn’t recognise, and so with our ferry leaving Stornoway early afternoon we had some time (if not the weather) for a final wee jaunt in the morning to make the most of our last day in the Outer Hebrides.
Memorial Cairn to the Grias & Coll Raiders, March 1919
The plaque nearby reads:
This memorial commemorates the events following the First World War, then returning servicemen took the law into their own hands and claimed the land that the government had promised them.
It is built at the place of confrontation between the crofters of the area and Lord Leverhulme, the owner of Lewis and Harris at that time.
Conflict arose when Leverhulme bought Lewis and Harris in 1918. He planned to industrialise Lewis and opposed the Board of Agriculture’s scheme to divide some of the farms into crofts for landless families.
In March 1919, some of the biggest land raids took place at the farms of Upper Coil and Gress. Land raiding continued throughout Lewis until 1921, when a disillusioned Leverhulme gave up his industrial projects for good. As a result, many people without work emigrated to Canada.
The government finally kept their promise to meet the demand crofts, and the people won the right to the land.
Before he left the island in 1923, Lord Leverhulme gifted the parish of Stornoway to the people, it is now run on their behalf by the Stornoway Trust.
While we were researching its location, we found that these memorial cairns are dotted around Lewis so we were surprised we hadn’t come across them. Then we found they’re of various different designs and we had seen one on the route – the one for the Pairc Cairn Deer Raiders.
Sheltering from the weather with a coffee and cake in Stornoway while we wait for our ferry
While waiting for our ferry we found out that the strike action by ScotRail was extended and as a result our train from Inverness to Edinburgh had been cancelled 2 days prior. Their call centre were very helpful – we were booked to travel on a Sunday, so we could use our ticket for any train on a day either side, and while there were seats for us, there were no bicycle reservations for the Saturday left. LNER have one train which was also fully bicycle-reserved.
Boarding the ferry from Stornoway and the end of our time on the Outer Hebrides.. for now :o)
We’d pre-booked a specialist bike transfer from Ullapool to Inverness with the excellent (in service and in name) Ticket to Ride, and spent the time thinking of ideas for getting us and our bikes home: car hire – ~£200 but none available; van hire – same; turn up at the train station and hope for a bicycle cancellation; coach – ~£50 a last resort and we’d have to pack up the bikes into boxes or bubblewrap; courier the bikes – ~£30 each packed up again, and we would have to impose on our lovely AirBnB hosts in Inverness for storage…
The excellent Ticket to Ride collecting us and two fellow Hebridean Way cyclists from Ullapool – hi Charlie and Alice!
Anyway, cutting a long story short, we decided that we’d rather have the full Saturday to explore Inverness, and ended up booking a taxi-friend of a taxi-friend of Ticket to Ride to take us and the bikes to Edinburgh to meet our onward connection home.
That first night we had a lovely evening at the Black Isle Brewery bar with Charlie and Alice drinking beer, eating pizza and talking cycles and holidays! As is so often the case, we came away from one trip with more ideas & recommendations for future ones!
Our day in Inverness, clockwise from top-left: Inverness Botanical Gardens; the view from the top of Tomnahurich Cemetery; real ales and wood-fired pizza (heaven!) at the Black Isle Brewery Bar – so good we went twice; Leakey’s book shop (also heaven!)
The first cemetery that we visited was Santa Ifigenia in Santiago de Cuba, a sea of white marble and palm trees against the blue Caribbean sky
Santa Ifigenia cemetery is the resting place of 
Inside José Martí’s mausoleum, the casket is draped in a Cuban flag and catches daily shafts of sunlight in response to a line in one of his poems about being buried with his visage facing the sun
There is a twice hourly changing of the guard ceremony at José Martí’s tomb. At 8.30am we were the only ones there, by 10.30am the audience lining the path was large.
All the cemeteries we visited had mausoleums for soldiers killed during the revolutionary fighting, this one honours those who lost their lives during the Moncada Barracks attacks
Most of the gravestones at Santa Ifigenia cemetery were white marble but there were a few exceptions like this metal canopy with a cross
The cemetery in Baracoa was much less grand than the one in Santiago but it had a beautiful setting overlooking the sea
Every cemetery we visited had huge blocks containing square niches, presumably for ashes (there was usually a crematorium building hidden in a back corner as well). Some were simply decorated with the deceased’s name either handpainted or scratched into the wet cement while others had professional plaques, flowers or other decorations
The cemetery in Camagüey was one of my favourites and with barely any other visitors (and no other tourists) we were free to have a good look around. These grand tombs are close to the entrance near the Iglesia de San Cristo de Buen Viaje (Church of St Christopher).
Further into the cemetery more dilapidation was obvious such as this fallen cross
Plots often seemed to contain whole families with a crowd of plaques on top of the grave, each carrying a different name
Columns that look as if they’re about to fall apart in Camagüey
In Santa Clara we didn’t visit the cemetery but the city is home to the most famous mausoleum in the country which contains the remains of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and 16 of the 37 fighters who were killed alongside him in Bolivia. Underneath the statue is a peaceful room of remembrance and an interesting museum documenting Che’s life.
Fresh flowers are placed below the statue of Che each morning.
The Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus cemetery) in Havana is enormous and worthy of this imposing entrance gate
The most famous grave in the cemetery belongs to Amelia Goyri, also known as La Milagrosa or miracle-worker. She died in childbirth in 1901 and was buried with her son. The story goes that when the grave was opened some years late Amelia’s body was uncorrupted and the baby was found not at her feet but in her arms. Since then locals have prayed for her to help with their hopes for children, new houses, etc and now several nearby plots have been overtaken with thank you messages from thoses whose wishes have been fulfilled.
We enjoyed some of the modern graves in the Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón (clockwise from top left): a modern take on the Pietà by sculptor Rita Longa; according to the internet (!), Juana Martin died while playing dominoes; the glass doors on the pantheon of the Baró family were designed by Lalique; tomb of Nuñes Gálvez
But there is plenty of beautiful white marble as well
There were a number of mausoleums for societies like this one for the Japanese Colony of Cuba. Inside are walls of square niches.
The Tobías Gallery is a 100m long underground gallery. We couldn’t enter but from what we could see from the doorway it looks to be piled high with small boxes like these which presumably contain bones or ashes
We visited the cemetery in Trinidad mainly to have a destination away from the tourist-filled city centre. We were rewarded with this tropically apocalyptic view.
Flowers dry out very quickly in the hot Cuban sun and many graves had fake rather than fresh flowers.
This grave is topped with a statue of Babaluaye, one of the orishas from Santeria, the religion fused from African animisism and Catholicism. It also holds what I think is the remains of a cigar
A forlorn and battered cherub tops a tomb in Morón