Benbecula is one of the smaller vertebrae that comprise the spine of the Outer Hebrides’ island chain.
Just eight miles long and eight miles broad in the beam, nature has neatly slotted it, in a pleasingly jigsaw-like way, between North and South Uist. Many visitors traverse this pebble in the Atlantic by car in just 10 minutes, but in so doing they miss an island that punches, from a historical and wildlife perspective, above its weight.
In case you were wondering, the stress is on the second syllable, ‘ben-BECK-you-luh’ and the island’s Gaelic name, Beinn na Faoghla, translates as ‘the mountain of the fords’.
The ‘mountain’ in question is Rueval (Ruabhal), which rises to the mighty-mouse height of 124m (406ft) amid a surrounding land of unrelenting flatness, and those who reach its summit (an easy
