England for a while

Kate sits munching on a croissant, while waiting for the train which will transport us to London, the first visit for several years. We have business there, our home for three years prior to retirement is being sold and we have come to collect the remainder of our belongings, but we go there on sufferance only, not through choice. The pace of big city life does not attract us; in fact we cannot stand it for long at all!

The journey is a fast one, a bus ride from the Wee Toon into Glasgow (with entertainment provided by the driver’s commentary accompanied by some pretty bad jokes) then intercity train which zips along at amazing speed through the countryside, stations passing faster than we can read their names, the whole of a good novel being devoured before Euston. It is here that the pleasure ends, abruptly, as we descend the escalators into the crushing underworld of the underground. The Tube, an apt description that brings to mind lengths of toothpaste being squeezed through a narrow nozzle, is stuffed full of a million or so sweaty bodies most of whom have not just stepped out of the Kintyre countryside but instead have struggled through a day of work in the humidity of the city. We have to change trains onto the DLR but just before Bank station we decipher a garbled announcement which tells us that our train will not be stopping there – the station is over-crowded. We thrust our luggage-burdened bodies out of the carriage onto the platform to immediately hear, “Bank station is now open. I repeat: Bank station is now open”, so have to squeeze ourselves back on board the next train, which is equally full.

Fighting our way along miles of underground passages like termites the doors of the driverless Docklands Light Railway train finally appear in front of us and we haul our luggage on board. What a relief it is to arrive at Limehouse Basin, a place that was once our winter home on board Cirrus, a place where familiar boats still float quietly as we walk along pathways we remember so well and cross the lock gates to a welcome in the Cruising Association’s London HQ. This place is an island of peace in the mad city, a place where sanity rules once more.

We are not done yet though, for in the morning we venture forth for more craziness, this time on London’s roads in a brand new car hired from a dealership in the shadow of Tower Bridge.

Terrified of scratching this powerful beast’s shiny new paint we pilot through the stop-start maelstrom that is the capital’s full-time traffic jam. Buses loom over us, motorcycle messengers flick into view from behind, taxis U-turn directly in front of our bonnet and death-wish cyclists weave in and out of everything. The philosophy here is: To give an inch is to surrender – never surrender! There are rules here, but not those in any Highway Code. They are unwritten, hardwired into the genes of every Londoner but a terrifying mystery to all outsiders.

The London skyline triggers old memories but there is a newcomer here, a thousand foot shape is emerging from the ground, improbable and unfinished, it will soon dominate the skyline, taking over from lesser landmarks like the Gherkin and Big Ben.

This is The Shard – where do they think of these names? – still some way short of its full height but rising higher every day. This is just another hotel and office block really, and thank goodness someone had the sense to put it here and not on Kintyre!

The hired car has an acre of load space and twin turbochargers tucked away under the bonnet which give it the long legs we need to transport us and our belongings around the country. Once we have escaped London we begin to observe the finer points of the countryside we are passing through. To our eyes, which are accustomed to a lush green vista, the land seems impoverished and dry. The grass is pale brown where it is cropped close to the hard earth, trees are in full leaf but look tired from straining hard to find water and weeds have rushed through their lifecycle to produce seed quickly with what little energy they have left. The south-east of England which has seen little rain now for over a month. My mother grumbles about the state of her flower bed when we visit her down in Ticehurst. This corner of the country seems to have become more arid in recent years and her flower portfolio may need to change too if she wants to avoid constant watering to sustain life. But having said this, the colourful spread she does produce is still the envy of all her neighbours.

Our journey continued around the homes of some of our scattered family as we wrench our son Mike away from his computer to take him out for a birthday meal. It is also an opportunity to window-shop, to feast our eyes on exotic goods not found in shops close to home, to experience the novelty of being able to buy, well, anything we could possibly want and even more that we never will.

Our hire car takes the journey back to Scotland in its stride, only a deep rumble giving away the fact that the engine is even switched on. We run into showers somewhere north of Birmingham, strong winds across the Lake District then right on the Scottish border the sun pops out from behind a cloud and we know we are home. The ocean off the west of Kintyre sparkles for us, masses of white combed waves rolling up the golden beaches. Take away the million shades of green exhibited by the conifers and the bracken, the dazzling waterfalls bursting out of roadside crags, the sharp contrast of black rocks thrusting out of verdant mountainsides, remove the lochs and the mountain streams, wring out most of the water and take away all the road traffic and it could just be the southeast of England. Or maybe not.

Spring gale

From indoors the noise is the first thing we notice, a deep, machinery roaring that seems to be direction-less, like a far away aeroplane at first but then it rises in volume and there is a burst of sound as a gust tries to pick up the house and carry it away. Everything is in motion outside. The upper branches on the trees behind our garden fence thrash about in a frenzy, as if trying to shake off something unpleasant. Each leaf flashes its pale underside to the wind as it hangs on grimly; it is the first experience these leaves have had of this as they are not long unfolded. Now whole trees give before the blast, bending to an impossible angle, each young branch lining up downwind. The air is suddenly full of debris, green leaves, some still attached to twigs which have reached breaking point and been torn free.

There is a brief moment, a false calm where the gale seems to recede, to gather its strength, but it is momentary and the roaring comes again, hissing through the tree-tops, then flattening the grass, dropping down to ground level to pick up what it left before. The glass in the window through which we are watching creaks and gives slightly to the wind but holds firm. Leaf debris patters against it, a sprinkling of rain now, although the sun still shines down and warms us. Our garden birds have gone to cover, most of them, although there is one opportunistic blackbird pecking in the garden trying to ignore the indignity of having his flight feathers turned inside out by the wind. He flies off but remains low, picking his moment to dart into the shrubbery.

The sky darkens and more rain comes. It sweeps down from the hill in misty waves, moving rapidly along the conifer backdrop before it spatters angrily against our glass. The rain is there in the wind although we don’t see it as it moves too fast and hardly wets the ground. It comes in a squall which whines and screams under the eaves but the wind is invisible still, only its ghostly touch is felt and the clouds race by.

Although it is our first gale since moving here, we are not surprised to find ourselves in such an event. We are fully aware that we now live close to the usual track a depression tries to follow on this side of the Atlantic and a natural consequence of this will be periods of strong winds and heavy rain. There are many compensations to living here, too many to mention, but whilst we can see them, others may see only the worst. Strong winds can and frequently do cause havoc; we can expect them to disrupt our comfortable lives.

An hour ago I was speaking on the phone and just as the conversation ended our electricity supply was cut off, as if it was only waiting for the moment the receiver was replaced. Like many others in the village now we are without power and many of the things we take for granted are lost. We cannot heat ourselves nor cook. The kettle lies idle. The freezer is silent (now slowly warming) but daylight means we do not lack for light. So long as our mobile phone batteries last we can still communicate with the outside world but we assess our situation, making ready the candles and torches for later in the day. Our house is heavily reliant on electrical power, but no more so than those of many of our neighbours. Our plans to install a coal stove will eventually rectify this, so we are better able to cope with power cuts when they occur in winter, but this is some way down our list of priorities at the moment.

It is not just windy, it is exciting.

So unable to stand it any more, we pull on our coats, zippers are yanked up and we stride off to the beach just in time to catch a heavy shower which soaks everything that is not waterproof, drenching our legs and shoes. The cold water has barely time to penetrate though for within minutes the sun has popped out and we are drying again as we battle on against the gale, which now begins to taste salty from spray picked up in Carradale Bay and being blown ashore. The tide is high now, made higher with wind behind it, and the sandy beach has vanished beneath a veil of foam which comes streaming off the wave crests. Spume wobbles up against the turf of the dunes or rolls along the shore like big lumps of sponge. We struggle to stand, overawed by the sheer wildness of what we are seeing, thrilled as young children.

Returning home via the village shop and bakery we find that the electricity has been reconnected and our preparations for a cold, candlelit supper are put on hold. Perhaps the sense of excitement we feel is not shared by the whole of Carradale, it is not an unusual occurrence after all, but this does not mean we cannot enjoy it.

On and over the water

Expecting at this point to be able to show on this blog a series of exciting pictures taken from the deck of ‘Jochr’, a sailing yacht on board which I hoped to be winning Campbeltown Sailing Club races, I regret to have to disappoint. So few skippers have been turning up on race nights that the season has so far been something of a let down. Skipper Owen and his wife Joanna generally make a showing, whatever the weather, as does his regular crew Glen, who is another Carradalian, but we find ourselves standing about in front of the clubhouse watching the fishing boats come in from the sea instead of cranking winches on the sloping deck of a boat. I suppose it does take a certain degree of dedication, some might say determination, to race regularly and perhaps the enthusiasm of those who previously found the time to go sailing has been eroded by these recessionary times we are living in.

Whatever the reason, it is disappointing for those like me who are suffering withdrawal by not having a boat to sail on. It will be many weeks before we are back on board Cirrus.

Campbeltown Loch did at least give us something more interesting to gaze at this week as we had a visit from the sail training ship, ‘Stavros S Niarchos’ which was on a week long tour of the Clyde starting in Greenock and finishing in Belfast. This is a modern Tall Ship, sixty metres long and forty five metres high, built in 2001 to take groups on training voyages around Britain and sometimes further afield. And not just youngsters either – the age limit seems to be seventy five… we’d better hurry and sign up!

This last week or so has seen some changes around the house as we rectify some of the more glaring eyesores and gradually put our stamp on the place. We have stripped and painted the ceilings in two rooms, installed a new stair carpet and plumbed in two new radiators, putting my plumbing skills to the test. Kate has transformed our bathroom by some simple but effective cleaning and me by installing the new light fitting we acquired in Oban last week, something we had not realised we needed until we switched it on and saw the tiled walls in their true colours for the first time. Our ‘guest’ bedroom however remains in a transitional state, the ceiling prepared and the walls now lined with paper but with the rain penetrating the dormer ceiling and dripping into a bucket on the floor it would be a waste of effort to decorate fully. Further progress must wait until the flat roof is repaired, hopefully within the next week or so.

The pile of rubble which was once neighbour Pat’s coal bunker is gradually resolving itself into the base for our new shed on a rectangle of ground adjoining our back boundary.

The sledgehammer is once again the basic tool for this work, a blunt instrument that strangely seems to get heavier with each blow, as if the head is absorbing mass from lumps it makes contact with. The trick here is not to beat the concrete lumps so far into the soft ground that they disappear from view but instead to try to break them into small pieces to form a platform covering the ground on which the shed will float. There is definitely a technique to this and I am sure I will have learnt it by the time the shed base is finished.

But rather than show a picture of the evolving shed base (which is far from being beautiful) I have chosen instead this shot of Crow Wood taken on one of our little strolls. Only five minutes from our back door, this is a delightful place where the light filters down through the tree tops and the trunks have a beautiful symmetry, bursting out of the bare ground like magnified strands of hair on a bald head.

The Village Hall, which sits on the other side of the road at the bottom of the wood, was a mill in some earlier incarnation and the stream which used to power it slices through the wood at the bottom of a deep gully, the noise of its passing echoing through the timber as it splashes its way down the hill. This wood is a magical place where out of the corner of the eye one might see fairies peeking out from behind the stumps or bathing in the old mill pond, or am I imagining things again?

Carradale Village Hall still straddles the old mill stream but today it provides space for an assortment of activities ranging from sewing to badminton. At last week’s management committee AGM Kate, rather to her surprise, was nominated for the post of secretary, a speedy way to get involved in village life if ever there was one. If the speed of this integration seems unseemly – we are still only into our second month here – then perhaps it is because the village needs something from us, just as we do from the village. It is a small community which needs people to contribute rather than just occupy its houses and well, we have nothing else on, so why not. In many ways we hoped that Carradale would suck us in, although we had no idea it would happen so quickly.

Rainbows and garden birds

The rain descended like a waterfall, hammering on the roof of the car and bouncing up off the road to create a dense mist which flowed away to either side, the water taking with it anything it could pick up from the road surface. We were deep in the forest, driving along the winding single track road that follows the long edge of Loch Awe and just minutes before the sun had been shining, blasting down through the trees creating sharp bars of light against the under-dark. There is nothing like a good drop of rain to freshen everything up and clear the air - and this was nothing like a good drop of rain. This was solid water coming from a cloud as black as night which we had seen approaching from the west, a real tropical cloudburst. It hardly felt safe to continue so we slowed down and crawled along till it moved on, as we knew it would.

Minutes later again and as if a tap had been turned off, the rain ceased, the noise stopped and we had escaped from the shadow of the black beast; it was distracted and had turned its attention elsewhere while we sneaked away.

Such dramatic weather generates impressive rainbows, always elusive and hard to photograph, like this one sizzling as it touches the surface of the water from which it appears to emerge.

A little further on and our road was dry, as if it had not rained at all, when across the road in front of us ran a small red bundle of fur. Kate screeched in delight as we stopped the car and watched the squirrel as it loped back into the woods, aware of our presence but hardly bothered when there was work to be done, seeds and nuts to be gathered. Red squirrels do live on in Britain and the spruce and pine forests of Scotland provide a habitat where they can compete with the non-native greys. The reason for this is largely due to the presence of spruce cones which they strip for the small seeds that lie within. It is a meagre diet for the work involved but it is enough for them to live on whereas the grey squirrels need more substantial fodder and cannot compete. Red squirrels are a native species surviving competition from the invading hordes against all the odds, a condition shared by humans too, in many parts of the world.

It is easy to become blasé about the way the sky shows off around here.

On a windy day the clouds can be blown apart into long streaks that surely can only be the result of a paintbrush being liberally applied to the canvas above. Then there’s the way the sun catches the clouds as they slide over the hill behind our house and provide a full palette of tints and shades as the evening draws in. They are back-lit, so the colour the cloud picks up depends upon its translucence and on the angle of the sun as it strikes – the low sun of the gloaming being the best. The heavens fill with colour and this matches the reddened tints of the fresh leaf growth which spreads up from below. We have a dense barrier of green now just beyond the garden fence and this is where the birds that visit our garden will perch as they size up the competition on the feeders.

A typical thought process might be, ”Oh, I see a goldfinch is on the seed feeder. I’ll do an ascending fly-past to see if I can shake him off then just whizz onwards to the nuts for a small snack. Oops, I nearly didn’t spot that siskin there.” A siskin will often act aggressively towards a chaffinch, a considerably larger bird, and vertical-flying fights ensue, a no holds barred punch-up between the two as they rise from a feeder, wings, legs and beaks all in action. I have yet to see a chaffinch win such an encounter.

It is tempting to think of the birds as ‘ours’ or even ‘tame’ when they are slow to react to our presence at the back door, even right in the garden with them. They are neither of these things. They encounter few humans so do not assess us as a primary threat, or so I imagine, and they are in the garden only to visit our feeding station, not for our pleasure. Little do they know how much we enjoy them there!

Meanwhile work progresses in our garden on building the base for the new shed. Thanks to Pat next door, whose unused coal bunker succumbed to the power of the sledgehammer, we now have a small mountain of hardcore which will provide a firm base and after our trip to the Oban shed factory we now know the size we need. Laying a level base using large lumps of brick and concrete might sound like a simple operation but I continue to perspire freely whilst breaking up the pieces and flattening them into the ground. In the end though, between the rain showers and with the sun bursting through, things are gradually taking shape.

Moving sheds

Throughout our married life Kate and I have lived in many different towns and in many houses in many different places. Although this is unusual, most people move house far less frequently than we have, it is perhaps why we are able to settle here in one of the more remote but stunningly beautiful parts of our land. By moving about, living for only a few years at a time in each different area of the country, we have never acquired much of an attachment to a place, such that we could live nowhere else, and in the long term this has given us a rich set of experiences to look back on. It has also given us a set of guidelines so we can judge the merits of a place, and the ability to settle anywhere that meets our requirements.

Carradale meets our requirements, that’s for sure, but it is slowly beginning to have a different feel to it, something new to us. We are putting our roots into this place.

So many houses. But until recently it had not occurred to us that there were so many common elements to what we have done in or to them, things we have changed or work we have carried out whilst living there. From memory we can recall installing, for example, at least three fitted kitchens and the same number of wood or coal-burning stoves, in one house having a complete chimney constructed as well. Before winter arrives this year we hope to have stove number four securely installed here and the coal-bunker outside full to the brim with enough black stuff to see us through till spring. We are, in case you missed it, lovers of a natural fire.

Then there are the garden sheds. We cannot bring to mind how many of these we have erected or which gardens they were in. What we do know, however, is how many we have moved about from one place to another; the present one is number two. Both of these shed relocations have occurred within the last twelve months. Now most people would probably not, in all honesty, wake up in the morning and ask, ‘Right, shall we read the Sunday papers or shall we move the shed today?’ Even fewer would opt for the second choice and still less would know where to start even if they wanted to. Sheds are not, after all, light things. Once installed they do not want to be moved. Shed manufacturers would most likely fit wheels underneath them if they envisaged that people would regularly want to move them about. So take our advice, if you want to move a shed, consult the experts, us, and we’ll turn up with our two spades and a few lumps of wood and have the job done for you in no time at all.

I hasten to add that we would not be moving sheds were our particular specimen in the best of health. But it is not. We know for a fact that has been there for nearly eighteen years because whoever put it up wrote ‘Erected 23 October 1993’ on one of the roof timbers.

We also know that the shed’s owner had a boat named ‘Wanderer’ which was once moored in Carradale Water but which sadly met its end some years ago. The boat’s name plate is still attached to one of the walls inside our shed. The rest of the boat’s story came from Johnny Durnan, the power behind the Carradale Goat website, who we met on the beach on one of our walks. Johnny is a coastguard, a fireman and a man who seems to know most things that go on around Carradale.

Like the boat, our shed too will soon pass into history. It is so far past redemption, with rotten floor boards, a roof that leaks and walls that allow daylight to streak through between the planks, that it can only loosely be described as standing. It barely survived the move, but then it doesn’t need to for long. On the site where it used to stand we will erect a brand new one, something known as a Beaver shed after the company in Oban that makes them. These are the Kings and Queens in the world of Sheds, strongly built to last for years.

We soon found that moving sheds is exhausting work. Worse still we found our shed was hiding a large concrete block that needs to be broken up and removed before the new one can be built. Time to dig out the sledge hammer and yet more muscle power.

By close of play we were well overdue for a bit of rest and relaxation so the next day we don our walking boots and march off into the hills. The Scottish bluebells are out in force as we stroll along forest tracks leading away from the back of our house. The sun shines, there is just enough breeze to cool us and the air is crystal clear. It does not get much better than this here.

Our route, a circular one using only forest roads and tracks leading off them, leads us up the Carradale glen then eastwards along the Kintyre Way towards the sea and past the abandoned village of Grianain which now lies almost hidden from view by the conifer plantation that surrounds it.

It is always sad to see what were once substantial properties lying in ruins but in this case we found it almost impossible to imagine what life could possibly have been like for the folk living here. This is because once the land became managed for forestry every part was used that could be, trees being planted right up to the front door. Whatever view the inhabitants once had from their windows has so completely disappeared that now we have no idea what it might have been. The land slopes away towards Kilbrannan Sound but whether or not the people of Grianain had a view of the sea is impossible to say as today the trees form an impenetrable barrier.

Following the faint path between these cottages we descend to the sea where a narrow strip of raised rocky shoreline keeps the forest at bay. Here the tiny islet of Eilean Grianain floats just offshore in a small bay and the blue sea reflects the sky. The rocks are made of thin twisted layers which lie at all angles, on end, flat or anything in between, sometimes like sheets of corrugated iron crushed together. Slowly and carefully we negotiate the shoreline, in and out of the line of birch trees which survive despite the occasional dowsing of salt and around the many brackish pools which are teeming with life, tadpoles by the thousand despite living almost on the sea.

This is a rare place, a primeval landscape, wild and unmanaged. Undamaged. Untouched. Yet it is so close to home. Carradale point finally hove into view just as our legs are failing us. Along the way we have collected limpet shells which have eroded away into white rings which we thread on a piece of salvaged rope. By the time we arrive back home there is a long string of these so I splice the rope into a loop to hang up in the house as a decoration, to celebrate the day.