After travelling hundreds of miles north, Arnold finally reached the telephone box at Einacleit.
Even then, the mission did not go completely smoothly.
According to the BBC, the kiosk had recently been repainted before he arrived — but the doors had apparently been painted shut. There was also a sign indicating "emergency calls only."
Eventually, however, Arnold was able to get inside and use the telephone.
He then began feeding his collection of coins into the machine.
The 52 calls were not simply a series of ultra-short attempts to manipulate a usage counter. Arnold called 52 different people, including people who had supported his project.
Some conversations lasted longer than expected. In some cases, people even called him back.
Completing the calls took just under two hours.
Outside, the Hebridean weather added another layer to the scene. Arnold told the BBC that conditions were poor, and the report described strong wind and rain during the project.
Imagine the contrast.
In an age when a person can carry a powerful computer in a pocket and make a video call from almost anywhere with adequate connectivity, one man had driven across Britain to stand inside a cast-iron telephone kiosk, dropping coins into a public phone while wind and rain battered the island outside.
It sounds like an image from another era.
Yet the calls were real.
The line worked.
And according to Arnold, the call quality was excellent.
Not Just Any Red Phone Box
The kiosk Arnold chose also has an unusual story of its own.
The familiar British red telephone box exists in several designs, but the Einacleit example is associated with the famous K6 type.
The K6 was designed by architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935 for the General Post Office to mark the Silver Jubilee of King George V.
Historic England describes the K6 as a milestone of 20th-century industrial design.
Scott had previously designed the larger K2 telephone kiosk. The K6 developed that concept into something more streamlined, compact and economical to manufacture.
More than 70,000 K6 kiosks were eventually produced, according to Historic England, helping make the red telephone box one of the most internationally recognizable features of the British streetscape.
Scott himself was responsible for far more than telephone boxes. His major architectural works included Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral, and he was also associated with the design of Battersea Power Station.
The little K6 therefore belongs to a much larger architectural legacy.
But the Einacleit kiosk is even more unusual than a standard K6.
It has two doors.
The BBC reported that it is believed to be the last remaining connected double-door telephone kiosk of its type in the UK.
The double-door arrangement is understood to be a local adaptation created to deal with the powerful winds and difficult weather conditions found on Lewis. A conventional single door could become hazardous in strong wind, so the unusual modification offered a practical response to the island environment.
That makes the kiosk an interesting combination of standardized national design and local adaptation.
The familiar red K6 form arrived on a remote Scottish island, and the island changed it.
Decades later, that modification helped make the box special enough for Arnold to drive hundreds of miles to use it.
The Decline of Britain's Public Telephones
To understand why Arnold's mission attracted so much attention, it helps to understand just how dramatically public telephone use has declined.
For much of the 20th century, public telephones were a basic piece of communications infrastructure.
Before mobile phones became widespread, being away from home often meant being away from your own telephone. If you needed to call somebody while travelling, working or simply walking through town, a public telephone could be essential.