B895

The dead-end B895 is driveable from the port of Stornoway but gasps its last at the head of Garry Beach. Here, “the unofficial road to nowhere meets the officially titled Bridge to Nowhere”: a Ferro-concrete bridge spanning a deep gully with a single 3-rib wide segmental arch carried on open arcaded spandrels. Once over the bridge there is just a rough path towards the cliff tops.

The bridge is a monument to the failed dreams of Lord Leverhulme, the pioneering soap manufacturer. Lord Leverhulme owned the Isle of Lewis between 1918 and 1923.

Leverhulme’s ultimate dream was to set up a fishing empire. A road up the coast from Stornoway to the Port of Ness, wrestling a route out of the moors and peat, was essential to make his plan a reality.

Garry Beach is where the bog defeated him.