Saturday Night in Stornoway

It's a kicking, pumping place, Stornoway. From vibrant village to ghost town in the space of 20 minutes when the shops close at 5.30, then back to youth-filled drink-fest a few hours later.

With only six venues, each with six different single-malts, it's the ideal place for a post-dinner pub-crawl. You can have no music (McNeills and The Criterion), folk music (The Lewis and The Carlton Bar) or hard rock (The Clansman and the Sea Angler's club).

We started at The Criterion, an old man's pub where the old men (and young men) drink whisky chasers with their pints. Or in a couple of cases, rum-and-coke chasers. The whisky is a venemous-looking brand in a huge bottle, diluted with the same quantity of water.

This is the band at The Carlton Bar:


This is the audience:

This is the rest of the audience:


So not exactly kicking and pumping after all. The Lewis Bar was a bit more kicking and pumping, but not the place to take photos without being on the receiving end of the kicking. And just like every other small town in Britain, by 2am, the kicking and pumping has moved out on to the street.

Fortunately the youth of Stornoway receive excellent sexual health advice: