Until 1953, Bernera was an offshore island, linked to the mainland Lewis only by the sea.

It is without doubt a fact that if the bridge to Bernera had not been built, there would be nobody living in Bernera today. There are many small islands around these shores that once had a thriving population, but are today uninhabited. As the population declined with many of the young people seeking work on the mainland, there were fewer able bodied folk to undertake the arduous work of carrying all goods off and on the island. When you consider that everything not procured on the croft had to be brought in, (peats, paraffin, dry goods, mail, livestock, looms, agricultural machinery) and everything to be marketed had to be taken off, (tweeds, livestock, fish,) it is easily understood that strength of body was required. There were no roads other than cart tracks and on many a day the weather made a crossing impossible.

It is difficult, even for those now living in Bernera, to envisage life with these constraints.

Today almost every house has access to at least one car, there are mobile shops, library and bank, and a doctor's surgery twice a week. Mail is delivered by post bus instead of by foot or latterly horse and cart. Coal and oil for heating delivered to the door have now largely replaced the hard labour of cutting a years' supply of peat, supermarkets giving choice and a journey of under an hour to the hospital or to work in Stornoway, all encourage people to stay in the island of their birth.

For more information on the history of the campaign for the bridge and the benefits it brought, see www.HebrideanConnections.com