Today was so calm and sunny that you could have easily imagined it was May rather than November. I noticed a stream of cars loaded with sea kayaks head for Reinigeadal late yesterday afternoon and this morning I caught sight of someone launching on the slipway. So after making a quick introduction I joined what turned out to be a party of paddlers from Stornoway Canoe Club for a glorious day paddling up Loch Seaforth and around Seaforth Island. Thanks folks. I’ll be back for more.

For me the highlight was landing at the abandoned house at Ceann Mhor (Kenmore) set on a headland that juts out into Loch Seaforth of the far Lewis shore .

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The 1841 census records John Mackenzie, a shepherd, his wife Flora and daughter Margaret living here with a young lodger John MacRae. By 1851, Roderick MacLean, a shepherd from Contin and his family were resident. The present structure is no humble dwelling though. It has cast iron fireplaces in each room, fine slates fixed with beautiful handmade nails and lots of lead flashing which is still lying around as well as cast iron guttering and evidence of drains.

Both Bill Lawson’s new book ‘Lewis – The East Coast’ and Michael Robson’s recent ‘The Great Forest of Lewis’ are noticeably vague on detail, but it looks too well put together to be any earlier than mid-Victorian to me. So it was probably built by the Mathesons as a gamekeeper’s cottage. Apparently other houses at Bhalamus and Mulhagery are of a similar design and date from the same period, suggesting whoever owned Pairc had a job lot done.

Fellow paddlers told me a man died in Stornoway a few years ago who was said to have been born here early in the 20th century and judging from the amount of timber still in place, it does not look to have been abandoned until much later in the century.

Yet something else to ask Kenny.