Puffins, peace and solo cycling: one photographer’s escape to the Hebrides

Many of us dream of breaking out of the rat race and escaping to somewhere peaceful and remote. For London-based photographer Liz Seabook, this became a reality when she took off a full month to travel around the Hebrides in Scotland, mainly by bicycle, and often wild camping along the way.

For a photographer who usually centres people in her work, being so remote and spending so much time alone was a real departure from the norm. “I like an excuse to look into someone else’s world and see how it works and how other people live. I think I’m mainly telling other people’s stories, I don’t think my story comes into it an awful lot. Except for this trip, where it was just me on my own really for a month.”

The whole experience became much more unstructured than she had anticipated. Seabrook thought she might end up meeting people and documenting them as she went along, but what happened was something she describes as more akin to journaling with her camera. 

“I started it off thinking that I’d take portraits as I went along, of all the people that I met. And then I just didn’t – I just didn’t want to,” she says. Seabrook didn’t meet many people, and when she did meet some she opted not to break the enchantment by stopping to take a photo.

In the end, what she created photographically was a “visual diary”, documenting where she went, what she saw and what she was drawn to. “It was a bit of a challenge,” she says. “I was not sure what I particularly thought about. It was just like, well, I’m going along, so I’m going to document the landscape and what I see and what I do. It felt very informal and unstructured. I overthink stuff a lot. It felt almost like automatic writing.”

What she discovered was pristine, often empty landscapes, where wildlife roamed free. Seeing puffins in the wild was a particular highlight. “They’re just waddling around everywhere. They walk like little old men with their hands behind their backs and then they just go back down into their little holes in the ground.”

On Skye, where she spent several days, Seabrook was able to bed in and explore Glen Sligachan. “I could feel the spaciousness a little bit more,” she says. It’s a place, says Seabrook, where a person on their own can get away “to find space and to find some room to breathe and explore and hike and swim”. The water is pristine – if a little cold. “There are places that you just look into the water and up until about three meters you can see straight down into it.”

Another favourite shot was created when she went right to the end of the island. She saw a gate open onto a field with a path across it. With the route calling her, Seabrook followed her curiosity and was rewarded with a pristine white sand beach with gentle waves. “I was like, have I died? Maybe this is what heaven looks like. It was just perfect.”

For the majority of the trip Seabrook travelled by bicycle, but reflecting back she thinks this may have taken her past some places too fast. “A town’s still gone in five minutes if it’s a small inland town. And so there’s a part of me that wants to go back and walk the Hebridean Way rather than ride it so I can do it even slower and engage even more.”

And while Seabrook considers her next visit, she encourages others to do the same – especially solo-travelling women. “It’s super safe. And if it feels like something you want to do, do it – and don’t worry, I just left my bike leaning up against signposts fully loaded with all my camping stuff and electronics and things, and no one ever touched it.”