Snow in Uig

We’ve had a lot of snow in Uig lately, but nothing as bad as this report from the Stornoway Gazette, 2 February 1945:

Snowstorm in Lewis
Traffic still disorganised

Throughout last week traffic by road in Lewis was still disorganised by the snow. The fall has been one of the heaviest within living memory, and the snow has remained for an unusually long time. At the beginning of the week there were one or two half-hearted suggestions of a thaw, but by the end of the week it was freezing harder than ever, and at the time of writing (on Monday) road conditions are as bad as ever.

Conditions varied from district to district, but all have suffered inconvenience to a greater or less degree. Uig and Park were without grocery vans for a fortnight, and Uig was without a bus service for the same period. Travellers arriving by mail steamer had difficulty in getting home to the more remote districts. Some have walked up to twenty miles through the snow. Others have been unable to get home at all. On two occasions the navy sent a boat from Stornoway to Loch Roag with servicemen coming or going on leave. The vessels also carried supplies for service units. The civil population of Uig, without vans or buses for a fortnight, had to live by lending and borrowing, a process to which there is a very obvious limit.

On Friday a vessel chartered by the Ministry of Food sailed from Stornoway for Tarbert and Leverburgh in response to an SOS from Harris County Councillors. A boat from Glasgow also reached Tarbert on Friday, but until then Harris had been three weeks without supplies from Glasgow by sea, and a fortnight without supplies from Stornoway by road.

The vessel chartered by the Ministry of Food also took mails from Stornoway to Tarbert. Other mail services were maintained with remarkable regularity by the exertions of the van drivers, who in some districts were the only people on the road. Even to Uig a mail service was maintained (with difficulty) until Friday, when it proved to be impossible to get within three miles of a van which had stuck and been abandoned – fortunately without mails. On Monday a mail was sent to Uig by sea from Callanish. On one trip a post office driver had to dig his van out five times. Some of the bus drivers, too, maintained a remarkably good service, especially those on the West Side.