Qualla: Benbecula https://qualla.com/benbecula en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:24 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/y/benbecula-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: Benbecula https://qualla.com/benbecula Benbecula: Introduction https://qualla.com/benbecula/ Photo credit edited by M.Minderhoud, Public domain. In August 1980, a grizzly bear named Hercules slipped his tether on Benbecula and ambled off into the boggy interior. He had been on the island to film a Kleenex commercial, of all things. For twenty-four anxious days he was nowhere. The local joke ran: have any of the Irish maids' costumes been taken? The reference was old, but everyone on Benbecula got it.

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Image: edited by M.Minderhoud | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/y/benbecula-wk/gf4y-benbecula-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Benbecula: The Island of Fords https://qualla.com/benbecula/ Photo credit Mipmapped, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name was a medieval mispronunciation. Beinn nam Fadhla, in Gaelic, would mean something like Mountain of the Fords. Except there is no mountain. The highest point is Ruabhal at 124 metres, more a swelling than a peak, and the island is otherwise so flat that almost all of it ...

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Image: Mipmapped | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/y/benbecula-wk/gf4y-benbecula-the-island-of-fords.mp3 0:06 2 full Benbecula: Over the Sea to Skye https://qualla.com/benbecula/ Photo credit Ivanbalich, CC BY-SA 3.0. In July 1746, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, three months after the disaster at Culloden, washed up here in a storm. He was the most wanted man in Britain, with thirty thousand pounds on his head. The islanders did not turn him in. Flora MacDonald, then 24, dressed him in the clot...

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Image: Ivanbalich | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/y/benbecula-wk/gf4y-benbecula-over-the-sea-to-skye.mp3 0:06 3 full Benbecula: Iron Age Echoes https://qualla.com/benbecula/ Photo credit W. L. Tarbert, CC BY-SA 3.0. Benbecula's history before the Jacobites is longer than its history after. A stone circle at Rubha Bhidein sits next to the old ford to Grimsay, and chambered cairns from the Neolithic dot the moors. The Iron Age built brochs here, drystone fortress-towers that once stood across ...

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Image: W. L. Tarbert | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/y/benbecula-wk/gf4y-benbecula-iron-age-echoes.mp3 0:06 4 full Benbecula: Catholic, Gaelic, Wind-Battered https://qualla.com/benbecula/ Photo credit Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0. Benbecula remains predominantly Gaelic-speaking and Roman Catholic, the only major island in the chain to keep both. The Catholic identity matters culturally and visibly: the white statue of Our Lady of the Isles, a few miles south on a hill above South Uist, was raised in part t...

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Image: Richard Webb | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/4/y/benbecula-wk/gf4y-benbecula-catholic-gaelic-wind-battered.mp3 0:06 5 full