Mostly moss

There are several owls that live here in Carradale that hold deep and meaningful conversations for long periods of the night, gently disturbing our sleep and many of our neighbours’ too. At the bus stop one morning this was the main topic of debate, in a pleasant way, not by way of complaint but more spoken of with a quiet smile over our fortune, that we are sharing our world with such creatures. So we are not alone in feeling this way. Then again one of the things we noticed on viewing our house for the first time was that the grass in the back garden was short, but not as if cut, more like as if grazed. So it didn’t greatly surprise us to learn from our immediate neighbours that we can expect rabbits, hares and even the odd deer has been know to wander in from time to time.

As it happens, in our garden there is little enough grass for such creatures as moss has blanketed everything with a pale green sward, to such an extent that it disguises the shape of anything that might lie beneath.

One morning I set myself the task of exploring some of the strange rounded hillocks I have been stumbling over and I pulled out a good collection of timber, fencing pieces and posts, long ago abandoned before being overwhelmed by the vegetation. Some pieces were well on their way to becoming part of the soil itself and had to be torn free from stringy roots but here and there I noticed something else, something I hadn’t expected. Beneath the long lost pieces of wood there were paving slabs, in fact a large paved area just in front of the house which had long disappeared completely from view. The physical effort of uncovering this was considerable, such was the depth of the turf layer holding on tenaciously with roots burrowing down into every crack, but two days later the full extent, with paths extending out into the garden towards our shed and again diagonally out beneath our washing line towards our heating oil tank, was revealed.

Pat, who lives next door, came out mid way through and told me where to dig, for she has lived there long enough to remember our garden as it was before nature was allowed to overwhelm it. Her memories proved correct too. The paving was dark and damp from being so long hidden from light but it is slowly drying now, the lost colour returning. It may not be pretty but it will enable us to move around outside when it is wet without feeling we are walking on a damp sponge. We do not object to our moss carpet, however, as it is a testament to the clean air here.

Lichen is another organism that thrives best where there is little pollution and it can be found here in prolific quantities. All over Kintyre you will find tree branches dripping with long strands of the stuff and the shoreline rocks are carpeted with many-coloured varieties. Even on the smooth PVC of our house windows, hardly the most ideal of surfaces, there are sprigs of grey-green lichen starting to colonise.

Needing to get away from the chore of unpacking and organising things, Kate and I take our first walk up the hill behind the house. This is known as Deer Hill, or Cnoc nan Gabhar if you prefer, and it delivers splendid views to the south past the tip of Arran towards the Irish Sea. Although we were walking under cloud cover we could see that the Irish had the sunshine until mid afternoon when finally it burst through over Kintyre as well.

Higher up the hill we kept finding owl pellets lying by the path, the size of which goes some way to explaining why our sleep is being disturbed. These are packets of fur mixed with pieces of bone and other indigestible material which are disgorged by owls and left lying about. They can be teased apart, so long as you have the stomach for it, to provide evidence of the owl’s diet. Soon our path was descending into dense forest, a place where little light penetrates the trees and just like in our garden, here the moss covers everything, boulders and fallen branches alike. Where there is a clearing the light blasts down from above to create a magical stage effect, the trees being the actors with gesturing limbs frozen unmoving before their non-existent audience.

Leave the path here and you will quickly lose your way as you stumble through the avenues of conifers. The smooth covering of moss is deceptive as despite the lack of other plant growth the ground is almost impossible to walk over. The moss layer is thin and what lies beneath is rough ankle-wrecking stuff, damp and unforgiving, primeval lumps of rock balancing there waiting to ensnare a passing leg, or more.

I now realise that somehow or other I have managed to write over eight hundred words in this blog entry without once mentioning our biggest piece of news. This week, for the first time in nearly three years, we have once again become car owners. The bus service to and from Campbeltown will continue to see our custom but having a car will now enable us to venture out after five pm when the last bus leaves town, it will enable us to carry bulky and awkward loads without risking injury to fellow bus passengers, to stock up our freezer from time to time and in due course to visit Cirrus Cat when she is berthed here. We always knew it would come to this and we have been pleasantly surprised to discover how easy it is to buy what we wanted. The choice of models is very limited here as indeed is colour, so we consider ourselves fortunate indeed to acquire such a brightly conspicuous example. The daffodils in our front garden think so too, seen here craning their long necks in wonder… or is it lust.

Carradale home

The news from Libya is troubling and is all over the television at the Lancaster Travelodge where we spent the night en route to Scotland. Nineteen pounds buys a bed here with clean sheets, a cup of tea or coffee and hot water in which to bathe, many thousands of miles away from the men with guns. But prior experience has taught us to avoid Travelodge breakfasts. These come in a tough plastic bag within which is a series of small hermetically sealed packs – cereal, milk, spoon, crunchy bar, fruit – the contents of which are digested with difficulty to leave behind a cloying aftertaste and a mountain of packaging waste. The best part by far is the tough plastic bag of which we already have several serving as handy receptacles for our muddy walking shoes. (This is called recycling, Travelodge please note.)

After stuffing ourselves full with a more sustaining breakfast we head northwards on the M6 towards the Lake District, Kate doing a sterling job piloting our heavy vehicle. At first low cloud blankets the road as we ascend steadily then suddenly we crest Shap Fell and the sky clears, the air sparkling and radiating sunshine.

Descending now towards Carlisle the only dull note is when we spot a Tunnocks lorry heading south, full to the brim, no doubt, with delicious caramel wafer chocolate bars destined for the undeserving English. This is Scotland’s least talked-about and most underrated export product, unrivalled and unchanged since my childhood it brings back a host of memories at each bite.

M6 becomes the M74 as we cross the border. Now only Glasgow stands between us and our new home. The motorway fills as we navigate around the metropolis, many lanes of traffic weaving about pointlessly but purposefully, then across the Erskine Bridge and suddenly it feels like we have dropped into another world. We glide along Loch Lomond’s shore, Loch Long, Loch Fyne and finally Loch Gilp where we turn south for the first time in two days of driving. There is a thin neck of land between the east and the west Lochs Tarbert but for which the Kintyre peninsula would be an island. It takes but a moment to drive across this, to transit from the cul de sac of the Clyde estuary to the Atlantic Ocean, and years ago sailors would drag their boats across this piece of land to avoid a long and dangerous sea passage around the Mull on their journey out to the Western Isles. Our road now follows the Atlantic shore where today the air is clear, just a faint salty mist drifting in where the swell pounds jagged boulders at the water’s edge. The Isle of Gigha lies closest but beyond this we can see Jura with its naked rounded paps peaking cheekily out of the sea. The road surface is still cratered from last winter’s frosts, holes cannot be avoided and our heavy van’s wheels crash noisily beneath us, distracting us from the horizon smudge that is Rathlin Island, another country just visible across the sea. We peer out to see if the surf at Westport has lured any wave riders before driving into Campbeltown where in an estate agents’ office there is a key waiting for us, the key to our new home.

I clutch this smoothly worn precious object tightly in my hand as I climb back into the van for the last leg of our journey. We head back north now along Kintyre’s east coast past Davaar Island which guards the entrance to Campbeltown Loch. Ailsa Craig squats in the sea away to the south east and the Isle of Arran shows off its massive summits just three miles away across Kilbrannan Sound. This is the road that takes our village’s inhabitants into Campbeltown but there are no concessions here to make a driver’s job easy. There are twists and turns, narrow bridges with tight corners and hard stone parapets, hairpin bends which enable the road to drop to sea level when it wants to show the traveller some feature, a quiet cove with a sandy beach or a rocky inlet. This lively piece of tarmac is now taking us to our new life.

It is very mild, with almost no wind so there is a tropical feel to the day. The vegetation is lush, daffodils in full bloom are scattered here and there making a startling contrast against the dark vegetation covered rocks. The moss under the rhododendrons is bright green too, springing back to life freshly emerged from winter. Our key turns in the lock and we enter. The empty house blinks back at us.

All we have to do is fill it with our belongings to make it ours so up goes the loading door, down comes the tail-lift and away we go. Despite all those potholes and the twists and turns of long road from Glasgow nothing has moved or come adrift inside the van, nothing is broken. Peter and Liz soon arrive to help out having made the long journey from their home in Leeds and by dusk we are all sweaty and exhausted. Our bed is reconstructed, our visitors retire to their B&B in the village, and we all sleep the sleep of the just.

The next day, our first full day in Carradale, and the van is empty. Peter and Liz have departed and we make time for a five minute stroll to the sandy beach of Carradale Bay. The rocky point lures us in and before we know it we are in full adventure mode, clambering over rocks, splashing through soggy tussocks and wading through last year’s bracken. We already know that this place is home to a herd of feral goats – perhaps we’ll be lucky.

We see their hoof prints in the mud and follow them but they could be behind any piece of rock, hiding in a crack where the strata have twisted in on themselves. Goats could even be laughing at us while hidden from view close by.

We turn a corner and suddenly we are confronted by them. They, of course, see us first but stand and stare, captured between curiosity and caution, jaws munching on regardless. The message is clear: approach thus far but no further. Such wild animals ought to be living free from any human interference but the ‘freshly-shorn’ appearance of these two suggests that they might have given up their coats to a higher cause.

Countdown to Kintyre

According to news reports we now follow, the Type 22 Frigate, HMS Campbeltown, made a farewell visit to the Wee Toon this week, her last before she is sent for decommissioning.

The event required firing of guns across the loch in salute, something we would have loved to have been there to see and hear. The moment of her departure might even have been captured on the Campbeltown webcam if it had been possible to swing it in the right direction, across the loch to the naval pier – bah!

Then over in Machrihanish on the west coast there is news that the windfarm proposal has now been dropped and also that the wind turbine tower manufacturing plant may have been saved from bankruptcy, both of these items being very good news for the local community.

As our focus turns ever more towards our new home the last week in Yeovil proved a tough one indeed. It seems as though our lives are on hold as we get everything ready then sit around waiting for the moment of departure. It is at times like this that I almost wish I was still amongst the ranks of the employed as this would at least provide a distraction until the day actually arrived. It occurs to me that in the past this is always the way things have in fact worked out, that over the years our numerous house moves around England have been initiated by the need to follow employment, usually mine I have to say, and not therefore really driven by free choice. This time, however, things are different. At last we are embarking on a venture to a place we ourselves have chosen, with no outside influences.

This is not to say we have made anything like a snap decision to live in a remote part of Scotland; far from it. From the moment we decided to live on board Cirrus Cat we knew we had started down a particular road - we had temporarily freed ourselves from the constraints of the house-on-land concept of living and thus has started a process which we both secretly knew would end at some point in us choosing another home location where we could settle. Although neither of us ever stated this as an objective, from the moment we retired from work and floated our boat-home downstream from London we were embarking on a search for that new life. The mental process was a fluid one which took place as we moved from place to place, following the coast of Britain in an anticlockwise direction, stopping here and there as the weather or our inclination dictated, but always there at the back of our minds was the question, ‘Could we live here?’

Scotland’s magnetism has taken us both a little by surprise, but in different ways. For Kate there is the blood, which comes to her from her Scottish father, the memories of childhood holidays spent in the Western Isles and the nationality she has always felt herself to be, Scottish. A little later in my life I discovered Scotland as a mountaineer and rock climber and returned time and again in winter and summer to clamber over many of its peaks and valleys. But new to us both was the opportunity to see the country from a different angle, the sea, and also new was the chance to spend more time there, beginning to integrate ourselves into the culture that makes the place so special. We began to feel we were no longer just visitors, despite our being yachties, normally a transitory group, and whilst travelling about the Western Isles and the Clyde we were getting glimpses of something else, a way of life that was enticing us, drawing us in. Trying to describe what was doing this is difficult. There is a sense of confident self-sufficiency plus a very trusting nature about the people who choose to live in remote places and these are traits we admire. We think we can expect those living in Carradale to be there because they want to. We need to be prepared for the fact that few drive along the road to Carradale to go anywhere else.

Counting down to our removal day, Kate’s brother Peter and his wife Liz have arrived to lend us a hand. They are planning to live here in Yeovil when we are gone so this is an opportunity for them to see and admire our freshly refurbished property. They seem impressed.

We rope them in for transportation duties so we can dump essential equipment on board Cirrus Cat in her boatyard across the border into Cornwall then finally our removal day arrives and they help with the loading. Here Peter stands back in a calculating sort of way finding it hard to believe that we have, finally, managed to get everything to fit in. Hiring the largest van that we can legally drive on British roads was always going to be a calculated gamble but so long as we can persuade it to go along ‘the long and winding road’ to Carradale then it will have paid off for us. Thank you Mr Hertz.

One way or another, the next blog entry will come from north of the border.

Scheduling dilemmas

Reading just now about our friends Maryanne and Kyle on board SV Footprint who are preparing their boat for departure from the UK, we realise that we are just weeks away from our own removal to a new home in Scotland and we too are facing scheduling dilemmas. Surrounded as we are by our possessions, for each item a decision has to be made as to when it can be packed away, moved from view and therefore out of use. Since this involves quite a complex thought process, one that is repeated many times each day, exhaustion generally sets in from early afternoon and henceforth all higher brain function grinds to a halt.

Take a simple example like our wellingtons [this word probably ought to be capitalised - another decision]. Can we be absolutely certain that a need for rubber footwear will not arise before our departure for Scotland? And then again, when we eventually come to sail Cirrus north from Cornwall to Kintyre, surely we might have need of them with us on board? Maybe so, but they sound like useful things to have ready to wear in Carradale too so we can plod along the Kilbrannan shoreline with dry feet. Ah, but take them north now and we’ll have to bring them back south again, maybe on an plane, in order to have them on Cirrus and to wear them when stepping ashore from our dinghy in Ireland whilst on passage up the Irish Sea. Simple, you might say, buy another pair. Except that this type of decision applies to so many things and we simply cannot duplicate the lot.

Thankfully Kate quietly takes care of most of these decisions without reference to me and all I notice is that some item is not where it used to be, a shelf has become bare or a cupboard empty because things have been packed into a cardboard box. My primary role is to deal with the suppliers of everyday services, deciding when to terminate our supply of gas to the present house or how to ensure a telephone is connected to the new house when we need it. I also take care of the transport arrangements, both for us and for our belongings, and this can prove to be a considerable challenge too.

We have opted for the DIY approach to house removal since we are both confident of our capability as regards piloting the largest type of van the law allows us legally to drive on British roads. Unfortunately the question as to whether this size of vehicle will hold all our belongings, even with our well-practised packing skills, is one that will not be answered until just before the moment of our departure from Somerset and this adds an element of unpredictability and excitement to the whole affair which keeps our reactions sharp. The logistical challenge of putting each of our belongings and ourselves just where we need to be is a little bit like getting a man on the moon, but without the backup of NASA Mission Control Centre.

Our neighbour’s cat, Jelly, will surely miss us when we are gone. She sits beneath our ornamental willow in the front garden oblivious to the sparrows perching calmly in the branches overhead, or at least pretending to be so. She has the wisdom that comes with age (and perhaps some infirmity) that tells her how futile any efforts at catching the birds would be so she gives them a brief glance then focuses her attention on absorbing the rays from a weak March sun. She doesn’t notice my photographing her through the window and really doesn’t care who lives at No 20, just so long as she can rub her flanks along a friendly leg when she feels like it. We’ll miss her antics though.

Back to another scheduling decision, this time it is the freezer. We are struggling vainly to eat our way right to the bottom, down to the last frozen chip and pea as by moving day it must be empty so that it can be loaded into the van. The space inside can be used to pack some breakable items, how convenient.

We also keep a close watch on the weather we will soon be exposing ourselves to up in Scotland. This is done via the Internet and a couple of ‘gadgets’ that rest on my computer desktop. Earlier today there was a surprise in store as whilst both in Yeovil and Carradale the sun was shining, there was a twelve degree temperature difference, Carradale being the warmer. We are not fooled, of course. Spring has arrived here in Somerset – the daffodils are in bloom, tree buds are swelling, even the magnolia trees are about to burst into flower – but we know that at fifty-five and a half degrees north the seasons will lag far behind. The good news is that having enjoyed one Spring this year we have a second one in store waiting for us.