Bettina Selby, traveller and explorer, decided to spend a long summer idyll re-visiting the far flung islands of the Outer Hebrides. With an ‘all-terrain’ bicycle and a small tent, she sets out on a leisurely tour, following forgotten tracks and byways into remote deserted corners.
Camping amidst spectacular island scenery, teeming with bird life. Bettina Selby finds that neither wild weather nor midges, nor even an ankle in plaster, can dampen her enthusiasm for this fascinating threatened habitat. Her interest in the people of these islands, their history and traditions is equally strong and the pages are filled with a range of characters, from those whose families have crofted and fished for generations, to the ‘white-settlers’ from the South who have come to seek an alternative life-style to 20th century materialism.
With a shrewd insight and a certain laconic humour, Bettina Selby gives an informed and unsentimental outsider’s view. And through it all there shines a love and concern for these marvellous but Fragile Islands, and compassion for their people’s unenviable history.
Bettina Selby writes as well as she travels, simply, humourously, perceptively
