So what's so surprising about Harris and Lewis being voted the
World's fifth most delightful to visit islands in the World? Following close on that accolade are ones for
Mull and Orkney. Trip Advisor travellers
gave the Outer Hebridean islands top slot in Europe in their 2014 Travellers'
Awards announcement. Given the
competition both in Europe and World wide that is amazingly good news for the
islands themselves and for the whole of Scotland too.
As I proposed to my first and only wife, in a sand dune on
Harris's Luskentyre beach forty years ago this year I know well how enchanting
and bewitching this landscape can be.
But it's not just the landscape is it.
In coming to their decision the travellers who reported back to Trip
Advisor commented in glowing terms on just what effort the residents of all the
islands had made to make them welcome and to tempt them back. A lot has happened in those forty years to
build on the innate and natural open-heartedness of the islanders.
