‘The sands of Handa are pearly white, and the machair [me adow] above them stretches like an emerald carpet along the shore. At the north end of the machair you will fi nd a sheep fold, a row of ruined foundations, and a tiny graveyard close by. There are only a few upright stones in the graveyard, with one flat table slab on which is carved the name of “Peter Morrison”. Further on there is a solitary shepherd’s house without a tenant. That is Handa today – a group of ruined shielings [hut-like houses], a handful of graves, 200 shepherdless sheep, a bastion of terrifi c cliffs all splashed with the lime of sea fowl, gleaming sands on the eastward shores, and the never ending music of salt sea winds that blow from the lone Atlantic’.