Iain MacDonald BBC Scotland

Back in 2003, Good Morning Scotland sent reporter Iain MacDonald off round the highways and byways of the country to document the Scottish parliamentary election campaign.

Now, four years on, he is doing it again. Older - but not wiser - this is his weblog of the 2007 Tour of Scotland.

It's a Wednesday morning and the sun is shining down on Inverness Airport.

As I sit. And sit. And sit.

Because where I'm going, the sun's not visible. And the plane I'm supposed to be flying on ain't going anywhere for the time being. And may not go at all.

Iain visited South Uist

So, I do all the things you do while waiting for a flight that may never happen. Drink coffee. Read the papers. Drink some more coffee. Read the papers again. Refuse to do the crossword. And wait.

I'm going to South Uist, or at least that's the plan. At least I'm better off than my colleagues, who're flying from Glasgow, so that Isabel Fraser can co-present Good Morning Scotland from the Western Isles.

They've already taken off and flown round Stornoway once. And finished up back in Glasgow.

Eventually, though - with the sun still hammering down on the Dalcross tarmac - we're told the weather has improved over Uist.

Once on board the (very small) Highland Airways plane, the chief officer has to stoop down at the front to do the safety stuff. And tell us cheerily that the weather's still bad over Balivanich Airport.

Plan B is Stornoway.

Pouring down

The weather's pretty bad there too, he says. So at least I'll get home tonight, he says, but I don't know about you.

We set down safely through the cloud cover around 40 minutes later. He's right. The weather's atrocious - the rain is pouring down.

As I pad out to my car I discover that my favourite shoes have - after years of faithful service - chosen this moment finally to spring a leak. And guess how many pairs of shoes I've brought with me? You got it. One.

So, you can tell where I've been. I make a squeegee-squeezing sort of noise everywhere I go and would be leaving one wet footprint behind me.

Except the other shoe has now collapsed in sympathy so make that two.

And to be honest, half of South Uist now appears to be under water, so I'm probably leaving no tracks at all.

Despite the weather, though, South Uist is facing forward to a bright new future.

Last year, they completed a �4.5m buyout of the South Uist Estate from a sporting syndicate, under land reform powers.

It's Scotland's biggest buy out and they're looking forward to new horizons. Under a new Scottish Executive, whoever that is.

So what do they want?

As we stare through my rain lashed windscreen, it may be hard to imagine, but you can already walk up onto one of the dunes and look down on to one of the greens. Finding the darker side of drink Toothy issues on election trail Meeting voters on election trail Politicians try to woo young ones

Well Angus MacMillan, the man who led the buyout and also heads up a hundred-strong workforce at his own salmon company, wants more of the same.

He's on Gordon Brown's list of a 151 business leaders who want to hang on to the Union.

And he's written a letter to the local papers, praising the help his own company has had from ministers in Whitehall and Holyrood, and being less than complimentary about the SNP.

It's noteworthy - as, it must be said, was the appearance of Lady Claire Macdonald on the SNP's list a couple of days previously (how many clan chief's wives have backed the Nats since Culloden?).

Anyway, I can't take the issue up with Angus in person - he's in Brussels on business.

Parish priest Michael Macdonald, on the other hand, is here.

He knows what he wants - the upgrading of the island capital Lochboisdale to make it a better gateway into South Uist, with a better ferry terminal, a marina and more.

He doesn't want an executive that would allow red tape to get in the way of that.

One survey has showed South Uist with the UK's third lowest average income; depopulation's traditionally been a problem; the entire drainage system on this low lying island needs to be improved.

There's no shortage of work to do, and people elsewhere must be ready to be as radical as the islanders themselves.

Sheep graze on the greens of historic Askernish golf course

Eighty three empty crofts, he points out, dot the island.

They're all on all utility services, like water and electricity, but they've been left to rot, because crofters couldn't pay the VAT to do them up.

Change the rules, he says, and we can become a template for marginalised communities all over Scotland.

Down the road at Askernish, they're going back to the future.

You may well have read about this, but there, among the machair grass and sand dunes, they are recreating a golf course first designed by the father of golf, Old Tom Morris.

There are still local controversies, but people like vice chairman Donald Macinnes believe this will become an absolute magnet for golf nuts from all over the world.

As we stare through my rain lashed windscreen, it may be hard to imagine, but you can already walk up onto one of the dunes and look down on to one of the greens.

It'll happen, he says - and now the infrastructure must follow for the golf fans who will flock here. From next year he says. That's definite.

Towards the end of the day I'm in the BBC's somewhat Spartan studio at Lionacleit taking part in a discussion with the political presenter Colin Mackay, known to all and sundry as Lord Mackay.

And after decades of having to put up with politicians in studios and at outside broadcasts all across the land, why isn't he?

After just a couple of weeks avoiding politicians I feel I'm due something from Her Maj myself.

Colin, though, is in Inverness and I'm in the islands. Miles and miles apart on what Norman Maclean used to call The Reservation.

And that's the point. Communities in the Highlands and Islands are not terribly similar, even if they look that way from other parts of Scotland.

A Shetlander and an Invernessian, a Black Isler and a Moravian (that's a native of Moray, to you) have very different ways of looking at the world - they have, in the end, mostly one thing in common. It's distance.

Transport issues will play large here whatever else does or doesn't. As has been proved over the last 24-hours.

Turn off your mobiles, we're told, we don't want to finish up navigating to Saint Kilda

Thursday morning dawns. And wouldn't you know it, it's glorious.

Not a cloud in the Uist sky. Moor and machair birds dashing around in ecstasies. And, sadly, me and my squidgy shoes are leaving.

The plane out is small enough to eavesdrop on the pilot and the first officer doing their pre-flight checks

Turn off your mobiles, we're told, we don't want to finish up navigating to Saint Kilda.

The plane runs down the tarmac and arrows into the air. It flies out over transparent greeny blue water, its shadow looking like a toy on the waves and people smile at each other just because it looks wonderful.

Yesterday's torrents are but a memory, brought back by the occasional squeak when I move my feet but there are new shoes and dry feet where I'm going.