Being a Scottish hotel, breakfast was served at the decidedly ungodly hour of 8-9.30, and saw a selection of states of FTers (from the “not drunk the night before” to the “consumers of Irn Bru very early that morning” (and thank god it works)) creep in for breakfast, which was actually pretty good.

The first plane was due in about midday, with three FTers (GregM and Steady-EDI in for a day trip and ajamieson making his official arrival into the Do) arriving on it, and one BahrainLad hoping to leave. The plan for the day was therefore decided by the executive committee to be a beach party on the beach opposite the airport (we decided it wasn’t really appropriate for a bunch of drunken FTers to be found on an active runway). So with that duly decided Shuttle-Bored, BahrainLad and myself headed off to the bright lights of Castlebay, the islands main “town”. But en route, we decided to drive down and have a look at the island of Vatersay, attached by causeway now to Barra.

Once again the scenery was outstanding – and we found what was probably the most beautiful beach on Barra/Vatersay – with white sands and emerald waters. We also, in true FT fashion, discovered a crashed aircraft (fortunately it appeared to have been there for a while ), which of course we had to take photos of. We also very much liked the habit of putting postboxes in the middle of nowhere (complete with signs explaining that for customers convenience, it was necessary to bring forward the last collection time of the box to 8.30 am )

Having explored the delights of Vatersay, we then hit the big smoke – Castlebay. This centre of civilisation boasted a very small co-op which was the main shop on the island. Despite it being small, it had the random collection of goods one associates with shops which are the mainstay of the community – in addition to picnic food, we also managed to acquire some board games in case the weather turned nasty. The in store tannoy seemed to be playing a rather hardcore mix of Ibiza classics, which added to the surrealism of the situation). A stop by the island hardware store provided cutlery for the picnic (as the Co-op couldn’t provide, which had limited our sandwich options to those we could make up without knives), and we stopped to buy some diesel for the car at an eye-watering £1.04 per litre. We also picked up Bobnick and Helen, who had walked into Castlebay, but weren’t that keen to walk back as it was now raining very heavily.

A quick run back around the island and we were back at the hotel, ready to start taking people up to the airport for the party!

The last carload arrived just in time to watch the arrival of the first Twin Otter from Glasgow. Meanwhile BahrainLad was told he was still on standby for the departure, because whether they could take him depended on the weight of fuel the captain had onboard… once they checked that they’d know for sure.

The next group of FTers disembarked and made their way to the terminal, having enjoyed their flight as much as we had the day before. They also bore a copy of the article ajamieson had written about Barra, the beach landing and us in that day’s Scotsman – previously unavailable on the island as the days papers were just being unloaded from the plane. This was read with much appreciation by the surrounding FTers’. Meanwhile BahrainLad was cleared onto the flight, so we watched him leave us once more, with another excellent departure from the island.

At that point the sun came out once more, so the group was invited to cross over to the other beach to partake of the group picnic. Some invites had to be delivered really rather strongly, but in the full belief that once there, everyone would enjoy it! (I’ll let you, dear reader, decide what particular inflexion should go on that sentence). Indeed so keen was Dorothy to get to the beach, that she decided to attempt to hurdle the barbed wire fence.. unfortunately it was rather more difficult than it looked, but fortunately, while shaken, she was unharmed. (In typical Hebridean fashion, we had to cross a barbed wire fence before reaching the sign welcoming us to the beach!). A quick yomp through the sand dunes, and we came out onto a beautiful Atlantic coast beach, with only the slight disadvantage that it was really rather windy and the wind appeared to be coming from all directions at once, which made finding shelter rather problematic. Nevertheless Spotwelder began to prepare the strawberries, Shuttle-Bored, Jane, and I began to make sandwiches, QF Hammer made an excellent wine waiter (yes the champagne was the first thing opened on the beach!), and various others handed out the other munchies. Despite our best endeavours in the Co-op, it was not the most impressive picnic in the world, as some FTers were at pains to point out, but it was probably still better than what tristan727 got on his honeymoon flight, and it certainly had a great deal of novelty about it! And on top of that, there were still my hand made muffins to be passed around – although the FTer who characterised them as evil and accused me of trying to poison him was probably being a little bit over-dramatic, as they seemed to go down very well. Rather less surprise when telling me how nice they were might have been appreciated though!

Those of us who had brought beachwear decided that we didn’t want to catch hypothermia trying to swim, so discretion proved the better part of valour. However as the champagne flowed freely (QF Hammer missed his calling!) some FTers decided that sandcastles were the order of the day… we do have pictures of an eminient employee of one of the world’s foremost architectural practices on his hands and knees, making sandcastles…

But all good things must come to an end, and a person can only ingest so much sand in a day. The arrival of the second flight was imminent and so we decamped back to the terminal to wait for the flight on which Brian_1, Dave_C’s other half , Pete (Him Indoors) would be arriving and upon which Globaliser, GregM and Steady-EDI would be departing for civilised parts.