Monday 23 December 2013

Storms

We hear on the news that Scotland will soon be battered by storms again. But what action to take, this is the problem. When someone shouts “Warning!” or “Look Out!” then we all know to duck down behind the sofa or jump out of the road, whichever is more appropriate. But here we are close to the shortest day, most of Winter still to come, right in the firing line for the latest depression, and it is difficult to know what exactly we should be doing.

Maybe there is some action I should be taking in preparation; a checklist is needed.
Is the house roof fastened on securely? Well it was OK for last week’s storm and the one just before that so it should stay put for this one, shouldn’t it? It survived last winter’s gales too when dozens of our electricity pylons crumpled and fell over.
Will the garden fence survive? Not a problem as we don’t have wooden fences here. They are far too vulnerable, an open invitation to be blown over. A wire mesh fence is what is needed, something that lets the wind pass right through.
Is the wheelie bin tied down? We have always kept it on a leash, tied by a rope to an eye screwed into the wall just by the back door to prevent it from flying around the garden - this is just the way we do things around here – so nothing needs to change there then.
What about preparing for the inevitable power outage, the sort of thing that happens when a spruce tree uproots and topples over onto the power lines close by? Well let’s see now… Candles? Check; Portable gas heater? Check; Camping gas cooker? Check; Freezer full of food? Check; Kindles on charge? Check (a bit of a giveaway this as it shows just how bang up to date we are with technology. We both use Kindles, his and hers, which mean we can read books in total darkness. Strange behaviour really so we don’t brag about it).

By now our excitement levels are right against the stop. Dire warnings of impending doom are broadcast on all the media. The ‘Met Office Amber Alert’ thingy is ringing in my ears and I am running out of preparation-y things to do. There really is little else for it. We just have go out to see what is really going on.

The noise we hear when we step outside the house is of the trees, leafless though they are, growling and whistling as they thrash about. Leaves, or the remains of them, instead of being blown away are collected rather neatly in a small circular pile where the wind has formed a vortex on its path around the garden shed. The burn at the bottom of our road is full, but no more so than normal, although the water is being blown upstream in the gullies beside the forest track and there are pine needles spinning down to form a pale brown layer on the mounds of sphagnum moss. Amidst all the noise from the trees there is something else in the background, like interference on a radio set, a hissing, roaring sound carried to us on the wind from Carradale Bay.

The tide is high at the beach, almost at maximum, but this is the sight that we came here for, to watch the white surf pounding in from the south. My glasses fog over with salt spray and white spume floats over my boots, continuing up the beach to the dunes beyond as we stand and admire the power of the sea where it meets the river, a boiling mass of confused water leaping in all directions. All along the tide line where we walk there are bundles of tangled seaweed into which are mixed the delicate shells of heart urchins, hundreds of them, ripped away from their comfortable homes by the storm. Large baulks of timber, some clearly natural, some fashioned by man, are thrown up randomly, the sand and sea having stripped the bark and smoothed the surface like a fine emery. As we walk along the beach the wind is now more on our backs so we barely notice the wave which launches itself at us coming up the beach at speed. If it could it would try to take us back with it, to mix us up with the foam and weed but we make a frantic dash up the beach, which would appear amusing if there were anyone else here to see it. But who else is crazy enough to venture out on a day like this. Very few, it has to be said.

Back home and inside the house things should be much quieter but the plastic sheet which covers the flat roof above our dormer windows has become loose and flaps about madly in the wind. Afraid of losing it completely – it is there to keep the rain from leaking through - last week found me climbing precariously up an extending ladder to try to tame the thing. But how can you control such a wild thing without nailing wooden battens across it, in the process making more holes in the roof for the water to leak through. Perhaps some heavy weights up there might hold it; but then I remember the power of the wind, the weight of it, the way it was throwing the sea about, picking up even wet sand off the beach, the way it bends trees to breaking point and beyond. Nothing I can think of (that I can physically lift up to the roof) would be heavy enough to resist being tossed about, thrown off the roof to the ground. For the moment the plastic sheet stays in place, until the next gale, or the one after.

Ordinarily we might be upset by this but another event has rather overshadowed things.


Christmas arrives just a few days early when this delivery is dropped into our front garden. It doesn’t stay there long as our plumber, Tom, comes early the next day armed with spanners, blowtorch and determination. The heavyweight parcel contains our new central heating boiler, a modern, super-efficient machine which will give us plenty of warmth for years to come, a fine present from Santa and his elves.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

Exercising at home

Our slow journey towards house refurbishment takes another stumbling step forwards. The new (and wrong) central heating boiler is no longer taking up space in our house. It has gone back whence it came, to be exchanged for a more suitable model.

Meanwhile the old, and now partially dismantled, boiler sits exposed, undressed as it were, with its bare pipes and wires open to view. Not that it is a particularly ugly thing, but if we had the choice (which we don’t) then this is not something we would choose to have on display in our food preparation area. It is both noisy and rather smelly, not its own fault of course, but its naked presence tends to dominate the room, acting as a bar to intelligent conversation.

When originally installed the thing was contained within a massively constructed airtight cabinet which, although larger than strictly necessary, did at least blend in well with the rest of the decor. Dismembering this unit for access (a singularly destructive process) has led us to an important realisation… we no longer need the rest of the varnished timber cladding that enriches the kitchen walls from floor to ceiling. This decision is partly, but only partly, driven by the fact that the damage already wrought upon this room is difficult to reverse… oops! But then again it does feel appropriate for us to be putting our own mark on our house.

So it is that I arm myself with a range of iron implements - crow bars, several hammers, chisels, screwdrivers and drills - and set to work laying waste to our kitchen. Splinters fly in all directions and dust begins to shower down as the kitchen is transformed, from something quite presentable to a barren wasteland, a mess of patched walls with holes peeping out like plasterboard eyes and the pile of wood on the floor growing around me. Somehow along the way I manage to ensure that the light and power switches still function as the kitchen expands back to the dimensions the builders gave it.

Once the dust has settled we are satisfied with the result as it means that we can get down to planning the kitchen design from scratch without any excuses. No longer are we constrained by the pre-existing decor. Our imaginations can run riot. At least they can as soon as the new boiler is installed; still waiting, I’m afraid.

So having little better to do than wait around for tradesmen to call, I take to the water to try to find a different sort of exercise and another use for my tools. Just beyond the protecting wall of Carradale harbour are four mooring buoys laid down for use by visiting yachtsmen. Proper maintenance for winter, when they will not be used, consists of disconnecting the big, brightly-coloured mooring buoys and lowering the chain to the bottom where it will be subject to less wear. (A rope attached to a much smaller buoy is left in place.) 

The job involves undoing a large shackle which, having spent the whole year in the sea, is somewhat corroded. It is a task which involves two people using large spanners and a lot of muscle.

I find myself balanced on the deck of a small boat with friends John and Ian. John, very nobly I thought, makes no complaints when we heave the barnacle-encrusted chain from the water into his inflatable boat and pull off the long fronds of slippery kelp. Nor does he seem to mind when Ian and I start at the shackle with a crow bar and hammer, despite the risk of puncturing the dinghy. Sadly though our efforts are in vain. We reach the conclusion that the shackle pin needs more leverage than we can safely apply from this boat. And the immortal line, “You're going to need a bigger boat" comes to mind.

Exercise comes in other ways now. There are small boys, well one in particular called James, to be carried around shoulder high on bonfire night and then there is a dog to be walked, a large black and white one called Baillie, who tugs at his lead such that my arm feels like it might come right off. Baillie, who incidentally has his own Facebook page, is a dog we have ‘borrowed’ for a short while and as well as needing lots of exercise, he is an ardent bird-lover.

When he spots a crow or a gull standing on the ground his whole personality changes as he gives chase. His brain becomes focussed on nothing else as he charges off into the distance at full speed – which is far faster than I can run. Whatever sense was inside him has vanished in an explosion of red mist and no amount of calling will bring him back. The mist only begins to clear after the bird proves that it can fly, something Baillie has yet to master. Welcome to the real world, Baillie.

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Connecting things up

A few days ago and we are lounging around the house in our early morning rags, so to speak, when the sound of a large vehicle making a cautious approach down our road reaches our ears and brings us rushing to the window. (Well, we do lead rather dull lives.) A Jewsons lorry is a tight fit in our street so are pleased to see that the driver has missed most of the obstacles, including our car, in reversing to a position outside our front door, but then it dawns on us that this might be a delivery for us so we rapidly don something presentable (something to give protection from the fresh wind outside) and emerge to greet him.

We are delighted to discover him in the process of unloading a pallet on which is balanced our new replacement central heating boiler, something we have been expecting for weeks, and had almost given up on. He has barely finished swinging the heavy load over our fence, by delicate manipulation of the mechanical arm attached to his lorry, when we notice that there is more commotion at the top of the road.


This time it is a large 4x4 towing a trailer full of logs that neatly backs into a parking slot close to our fence so that a ton or so of wood can be thrown over for stacking in the woodstore I have lovingly created for it.

Suddenly, in the space of one hour, our dull lives have been transformed into frenzied activity and creativeness (stacking wood is a satisfyingly creative pastime).

Later in the day it is raining with some gusto when our plumber, Tom, calls round to ensure the boiler is moved into the dry - an operation for which we rope in a neighbour so that lifting the awkward 185 kilo load does not injure anyone’s back – and now all we need is for Tom to return to fit it. And there lies the problem. He turns up early the next day, all prepared for surgical removal of the old and replacement with the new, but soon realises, to his horror, that the wrong model has been delivered to us. If he were to install this particular one he would have to alter radically every pipe in the house, sending water flowing in directions and into places it has never before been, just to make it work. He could either do this, or swap what we now have for a different model, one with more connections that can be plugged in more simply.

So it is that we move one step forward in our project to improve our new home, then take two back. We now have enough wood to last all winter but no stove to burn it on (another delivery we are waiting for) and we have a splendid white central heating boiler which sits just inside the front door, a talking point for visitors but of little practical use.

Whilst all this is going on we artfully arrange plastic sheets and buckets beneath the flat roof of one of our dormer windows as we attempt to catch most of the water that drips through to the floor. We have arranged for a builder to come and repair this but in our part of the world nothing happens quickly. And even if he was able to start the job now, the weather would prevent him from doing so. Days without rain are scarce at this time of year.

Fortunately things are not as grim as all this sounds. We might have plenty of rain falling on us but combined with this we have freshly scrubbed air and brilliant sunshine. Put rain and sun together and you have rainbows to die for.

We grab our waterproof coats, lace on our boots, throw an apple and some Tunnocks biscuits into a rucksack then march briskly off towards the forest track before the next shower catches up with us. Dark brooding clouds loom over the hill like giant monsters and we can see the rain as it approaches, gradually subtracting pieces of landscape from view, until large blobs are splashing into the puddles around us. Cagoule hoods go up but we don’t stop walking. The pattern of sudden, soon-to-pass showers has been with us for days now so we know what to expect and ten minutes later we are once again in a sunny sparkling world, the trees dripping silver and dazzling rivulets pouring out of the forest nearby.

We head east past Kirnashie Hill towards the Kilbrannan shore where the Eilean Grianain salmon farm lies so that I can show Kate a little used path that descends through the ancient cliff line from which the sea retreated many thousands of years ago due to post glacial land rebound.


We are in what has been described as a temperate rainforest. Damp and rotting fallen trees are covered with an overgrowth of ferns, fungi and mosses while striated boulders peep through like dark grey teeth. It is rough ground to walk on and we pick up moisture from everything we touch, our clothing gradually becoming wetter, until finally the land drops away steeply. The prehistoric cliff is hard to recognise but as we descend we find ourselves in a strange world. Here ancient sea stacks still point skywards and the twisted strata bend into impossible shapes. The sea is close at hand but it feels more like we are lost in a jungle; yet so close to home.
We continue at present day sea level now, but still amongst the trees, some of which are wearing boots of soft moss - for which we have no explanation - until we can find a way out onto the shoreline. The tide is quite high and this leaves only a narrow rocky strip for us to walk on, slippery slabs and boulders to balance on or stumble over.

With the breeze behind us now we slowly make our way homewards to complete our circuit. A black cloud slips across Kilbrannan Sound towards Arran, the rain missing us but blotting out everything from view and drenching the fish farm behind us. Shiny rounded pebbles along the shore here come in such amazing variety of colour that we cannot resist picking them up to examine them in detail, turning them over in our hands. Some are translucent white quartz whilst others are deep obsidian black. Pink and orange, green, yellow and red are here, each one having travelled trapped in ice many thousands of years before but we know from experience that their shiny glamour is an illusion. Once dry they become paler and plainer things. So our pockets stay empty.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Home coloured

Coming home to the west coast of Scotland after nearly a month away is like putting back on green-tinted shades. The colour shift involved when travelling from north to south or south to north is not something that is noticed immediately but on a sunny day in the south of England, on contemplating an attractive view, it left me with the feeling that there was something ‘not quite right’ out there. It took a while for realisation fully to sink in. In different places landscapes have different colour palettes, this despite the presence of familiar components like trees, grass and so on. It is the combination of all these elements, the brown earth, the trees and their trunks, the vegetation on the edges of fields, the roofs of houses, that our eyes translate into a memory so that we have a sense of place, of familiarity in our surroundings.

Colour is an essential part of that memory.

Which brings me back to western Scotland where we have a colour palette which has considerably more green in it than many other places in Britain, sometimes bright green like we find in our moss. Since living here our eyes have become tuned in to the landscape to the point where nothing else looks quite right. When we leave Scotland it is as if someone has filtered out much of the green-ness leaving only browns and yellows.

But having said all this, we have arrived now at that time of year when all our deciduous green trees are changing colour, first to yellow or red then to brown or black.

We notice that in the south the process starts with the sycamores, followed by the ash trees which very quickly are left with only their red berries showing. It seems that nature has a set order for leaf-fall in autumn. Back in Scotland though the order is not so clear. Chestnut and beech trees seem to hang on longer to their leaves, perhaps to keep the nuts hidden from view as long as possible. Oak trees seem to operate on their own timetable. The milder spell of weather must confuse them (if a tree can ever be confused) but we are promised a raw chill any day now so autumn will come crashing along and we will soon be drowning in leaves of all shapes and sizes.

Now for this month’s mystery picture.

Not a plant nor an animal, this is a lichen, both an algae and a fungus, a symbiotic relationship between two living things which enables it to grow on rock, taking its nourishment from anything that falls on it. This one, Cladonia coccifera, is about three millimetres high, captured by poking my camera right up its apothecia (the red bit).

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Swale to Swaledale

Ducky feels more and more like home to us during this extended period of travelling about. Before we left Carradale we had a long list of places to visit, people to drop in on, but the next stopping place on our grand tour only occurs to us after we realise we would be passing so close. This is a surprise visit, it turns out, because we have no phone number to warn ahead that we are coming, but Geoffrey and Mary prove welcoming and accommodating just the same.


We knew they would, of course, because they are from our own village of Carradale and only recently took up residence here in Suffolk. Their beautiful new home is in many ways more suitable than their house in Carradale but they miss the place like crazy and are keen to hear all our news. The fact is that were it not for Geoffrey’s efforts a few years ago we might not have been visiting them at all for it was he who once converted the original minibus into the motorhome we arrive in - he is ‘the man who built Ducky’. As well as fitting out motorcaravans, Geoffrey is also a talented artist and many examples of his work now adorn his new home, romantically inspired pieces out of which peer some familiar faces. We share a sunny afternoon with them but regrettably we have to leave as we still have the task of locating our next caravan site ahead of us.

Despite there being hundreds, if not thousands of camping sites in Britain, if there is a single up to date publication which includes every one, we have yet to find it. Using the Internet as our primary reference we have found that many listed sites no longer exist (or at  least we cannot find them). Fortunately, however, out in the real world there are plenty which are clearly signposted with brown road signs and there are still more surprise ones whose existence only becomes apparent on arrival by chance at the entrance. Then there are the barren lands where nobody camps. These ‘camping deserts’, as it were, only become evident when we have nothing planned and are driving along relying on chance to find a site for the night, becoming more and more desperate as the day lengthens. Like buses, of course, they will soon all arrive at once and we have a cluster of them to choose from.

It is a combination of chance and planning, however, that brings us to a campsite in Yorkshire’s Swaledale where the red-haired manager directs us to a position backing onto the River Swale itself. Perhaps he senses we have travelled so recently from that other Swale back in Kent and wants us to compare and contrast, to see which we prefer. The two pieces of water could not be more different, however. This one runs in a single direction, fast over stones, clear water which is alive with sticklebacks and other tiny fish, water which is slowly eroding itself deeper and deeper into the land. The Swale we are more familiar with back in Kent sits on its bed of mud which each year becomes thicker, the water shallower, the creeks gradually silting until they become land and only the faintest outline remains of what was once sea. We conclude that it is only the name that these two waters share.

What might be the last visit on this journey around England takes us to see friends Adrian and Jill who live in Barnard Castle on the edge of the north Pennine hills. We take tea with them whilst catching up on our separate stories since we left them outside Kew Gardens some four years ago. The intervening years have seen us sail around Britain once or twice whilst they and their three young children emigrated to New Zealand for a spell. We take pleasure in showing off Ducky to them giving them ideas for their next adventure, we hope.

Leaving ‘Barnie’ we have high hopes that our GPS lady, K2, can guide us across the country to the tiny village of Colby in Westmoreland where our guidebook tells us is a large, superbly appointed camping ground with every possible facility on offer.

The air is spectacularly clear and as we drop down from the moor the whole of the Lake District is spread out before us, Colby nestling in a quiet valley somewhere below. Eventually the voice on our dashboard politely informs us we have arrived at our destination, the centre of a quiet village of less than thirty houses and an unlikely setting for a large campsite. But then, through a gate, we spot a sign welcoming us to a tiny field no larger than our own back garden so we squeeze through and make ourselves comfortable.

This is certainly not what we expected, the amenities are sparse, to say the least, but we have a self-contained camping style and need only the basics to keep us happy. The real charm this place has, which is not to be found in the guidebook, are the guinea fowl, rotund, grey birds with disproportionately small heads, who strut around beside us as we watch the sun go down. That, and the fact that we share the place and the night with no other campers.

Despite Britain being an island we realise that we have travelled many miles since our last sight of the sea back at Oare Creek near Faversham in Kent. Because we missed seeing the River Thames estuary by driving beneath it, the next time we catch sight of the sea is on crossing the Erskine Bridge over the River Clyde in Scotland, with home only a few hours away. Throughout this long journey north the sun shines bravely on us, one single weather pattern progressing across the country at about the same speed as our own movement so that the rain behind it never quite catches us up. Fortune smiles on us, although one result of this is that our fly-spattered windscreen badly needs a wash by the time we arrive home.

Monday 30 September 2013

Rambling around Kent

It occurs to us that we are once again travelling around Britain in an anti-clockwise direction. Having done this around the coast by boat, turning left at every corner, we wonder whether the fact that we are now describing the same motion on land might mean that we are, like the water in the plughole, programmed against rotating clockwise, forever constrained by gravity and the motion of the earth. Whatever the reason, we travel onward in an easterly direction until we nearly run out of land, which neatly brings us into Kent.

Ducky fits tidily into the drive of Rich and Gerry’s house at Dungate where we are accommodated during this part of our travels. Our friends, in training for future trekking holidays, take us with them on one of their jaunts around the Kentish countryside, in company with a few others, and we revel in the sudden warm spell that conveniently arrives for us. This part of the country is familiar to us but after so long away the vegetation appears dried out compared to what we might find in Scotland. We walk all day without once getting water inside our boots, an experience unheard of on any Scottish hillside, but despite this we enjoy ourselves and find the company engaging and enjoyable.

This group regularly go walking together, usually on a Monday for some strange reason, taking pains to ensure the chosen route has interest and sufficient length to satisfy without exhausting anyone. Our day out as incomers to the group happened to be planned by Rich himself, so we just knew it would be entertaining somewhere along the way, and we were not to be disappointed. Although mostly walking on vaguely marked paths across farm land, on arriving at the edge of one largish village (or maybe it would be a small town) we are directed straight through a fully operational industrial estate where large lorries are being loaded, fork-lift trucks careering about everywhere. The signposted footpath, clearly of much greater vintage than the industrial park, is marked on the ground here with yellow paint and beset with safety barriers and warnings so that meandering walkers do not impede the important business operations or vehicle movements. We follow, although not without some trepidation, until safely back on more familiar ground again. Surely only in the garden of little England could so much effort be dedicated to preserving the historic route of a footpath across a piece of land regardless of what is subsequently built there.

Several days later we are on another ramble, this time along the north Kent shore of The Swale, that stretch of water separating the inhabitants of the Isle of Sheppey from the rest of us. With all this exercise we feel that total fitness ought to strike us at any moment… but somehow it eludes us still and we are left with the same aching limbs and wonky knees.

The Swale fails to achieve the status of a river largely because it has an exit to the sea at each end, but this does not prevent it having currents, strong ones too, that ebb and flow simultaneously towards or away from a watershed at the centre. During each tide the precise spot at which both tides meet migrates along the Swale due to an imbalance in the flows from each end so that calculating direction of the current and the depth of water at any single point along the way is a complex, almost mystical, business. It is, however, wisdom that is deeply ingrained in many of the sailors who use these waters and at least some of that knowledge still remains within Kate and me from the days when we used  to sail here regularly. Memories from our earliest sailing days, with young children on board our small boat, come back to us as we dawdle along the Kent shore, past the crumbling remains of the explosives factory and beside the low-tide mud of the Swale itself.

After our walk we all climb into Ducky for a brew of tea whilst I enthuse about her virtues as a mobile home. The latest addition to our caravanning armoury, I point out to those still awake, is the canopy which fits over our side door. This was very much a trial and error thing but we are pleased to be able to report, to all those along our journey who have helped with ladders, advice and electric drills, that it now works precisely as intended, as this picture shows. A big thanks to everyone on the canopy committee.

This is the point in our journey around Britain where we turn left towards home. We still have a few friends to visit (and some to make, we hope), some relations to drop in on, but heading north has a different feel now as we can taste the mountains of Scotland over the horizon.

Saturday 21 September 2013

A little deception

Not for the first time on our trip around Britain we find ourselves visiting a house built hundreds of years ago from materials which would be scorned by modern builders. Cob, a mixture of earth and straw, was once a common building material in the South West of England and in the home of our son Ben and his partner Naomi we find this material packed inside its immensely thick stone walls. We seem to be in the middle of nowhere once again and cannot quite understand how it is that so many of our friends and family live so deeply into single track road country. Drivers on these roads can face the most unlikely situations. Today we are held up by sheep escaped from a field, yesterday we paused to avoid an otter and tomorrow we may be stuck behind a hedgehog, none of which hazards are strongly featured in the Highway Code.

From the moment of our arrival at Ben’s home some secret plans are being hatched relating to giving Kate something she has privately yearned for for years but never been crazy enough to buy – a harp. Several days later we find ourselves with Ben and Naomi driving around Devon and into Cornwall once more. The real purpose behind this day has been kept secret from Kate but by late morning we find ourselves trundling down yet more single track roads to reach the home of Naomi’s former harp tutor.

This time we are at the end of a road that crosses several fields, leading to a place so remote it is unknown to any GPS navigation system. The house has a massively beamed banqueting hall, complete with minstrel’s gallery, built on one end and we are invited inside to a room full of musical instruments, mostly harps of various sizes and shapes. Very soon the true purpose for our visit here is revealed to Kate, who is temporarily over-whelmed, but eventually she recovers enough to choose one, money changes hands, and she walks away with one under her arm (so to speak). After this little deception Kate’s secret desires are fulfilled and our large vehicle, with its harp-sized space inside, is now replete.

Since Naomi is already a talented harpist our next stop is at my aunt Jessie’s home, our second visit in only a week, for a short recital. Jessie sits open-mouthed listening to the beautiful sounds coming from the instrument. Kate can now barely wait for the opportunity to be on her own with her harp, to wrap her arms around this creation in maple, to delicately pluck its strings and maybe find a tune of her own lurking within.

On our last night in Devon the whole of the county lies spread out in the late afternoon sun, the pink afterglow heralding a cool night which holds no fears for us tucked up snug inside Ducky. In the morning we finally leave the West Country heading to the south-east corner of England where more adventures await us.

Wednesday 18 September 2013

East from Cornwall

Our primary reason for driving seven hundred miles through all weathers to reach Cornwall is to visit Jessie, my sole remaining aunt, who at 92 years of age is my family’s supreme matriarch.


 The remote cottage she inhabits is far older than she is but it has been extensively adapted and is able to provide for her every need, right down to the semi-tame pheasant who conveniently comes to her back door and takes away any stale bread she has lying about.

The driveway of Jessie’s home, however, was not really built with campervans in mind and at first sight it appears that the gateposts are simply too close together to allow us to pull in clear of the narrow lane. With careful manoeuvring we soon realise that we can fit Ducky’s stylishly designed hind quarters through the gate with an inch to spare either side although a scraping noise tells me that in doing so our roof is making contact with an evil hedge built from coarse Cornish vegetation. With Jessie’s permission I begin to cut back the offending wildlife with pruners and shears in order to permit passage for our high-sided vehicle but I soon find myself under attack from some of the sharpest and most virulent flora on this planet. It is the hawthorn that does me most damage, fighting back with every spike, until my hands and arms are bleeding and scarred and I have thorns sticking out of me here, there and everywhere. But I win in the end, if success is determined by the damage I inflict on the hedge, and we are able to pull our van off the road far enough to allow us to spend a night there.

The lane outside her house is barely wide enough for our van to squeeze along although strangely Jessie refers to it as the ‘main road’, which makes us wonder what the minor roads are like nearby. Everywhere the trees are flush with chirping birds which Jessie has taken it upon herself to feed from her garden. At one time or other the majority of Cornwall’s garden bird population appears just outside her kitchen window and the antics of these creatures provide endless entertainment whilst washing up or cooking, such that her only complaint in life is that there is never enough time in the day to sit and watch them. Her advanced age and a good memory for detail allows her to look back to a time when the world did not operate in quite the same way as it does today, a viewpoint that is inevitably different from most of those around her. She is interested in everything and seems to welcome the opportunity to sit and talk, keeping us up till midnight when the tawny owl sings out from her birdsong clock. Sadly we take to the roads later the next day, leaving her to her birds. If she can remember my instructions on how to operate her computer she may be able to read about herself here; the Internet is one of the few things that arrived a little too late in her life for her to cope with easily.

Several days later we find ourselves on a visit to Dorset’s West Bay with Peter, one of Kate’s widely scattered siblings, and his wife Liz. This is a favourite haunt for them and we all need the fresh air after eating a substantial Bangladeshi meal with them the previous evening. In the interim Ducky has been fitted with a comfortable new front passenger seat, ordered some months ago and stored beneath the stairs in Peter and Liz’s home in Yeovil. We dump the old, rather modified, front passenger dual seat which cramped the spine of anyone sitting on it for any length of time and Kate now luxuriates in a stately posture next to me while I negotiate yet more narrow lanes down to the coast. Dorset lanes are not simply narrow, they are deep too, chasms formed by tall banks which are a serious challenge to drive along. I try to keep as far over to the left as I can without our nearside wing mirror ploughing a furrow through the hedgerow but don’t always succeed.

We like West Bay so much that we decide to stay for a night in the enormous caravan park which dominates most of the town. We check in then are directed to pitch #100 which is high up on the hillside, affording a view towards the pale East Cliff and Portland Bill beyond. Some 185 million years ago the sand was being deposited here in multi-thousand year cycles over immense periods of time, forming the layered structure that is visible today. The jury still seems to be out on what caused the whole process to repeat so often, forming the successive layers, or how they came to be separated by harder bands of calcified rock, but the view from the sea is striking, especially when the sun casts shadows on the cliff. This being the Jurassic coast it is impossible to escape the geology here; it just jumps up and bites you.

The camp site is impressive. For only a small fee we take in the view, dine in our own home, we skip the evening Country and Western show as we felt our costumes might not be up to it but sleep in total peace then get up and have an early morning swim in a warm indoor pool before heading off the next day.

Britain is about to be hit by the first equinoctial gale of the season so a quick visit to Lyme Regis to brave the wind blasting across the Cobb seems appropriate before we retire to Yeovil where Peter and Liz have the kettle on the moment we come in the door.

Wednesday 11 September 2013

South into England

We are probably unusual, amongst road users, in that today is the first time we have driven about using a GPS navigation system in our own vehicle. For many years we sailed with such a system on board our boat but to date our driving needs never seemed to justify getting one. Scotland doesn’t really have enough roads to make it worthwhile and we so rarely made journeys by road elsewhere. There is one major difference between land based and nautical GPS navigation devices: there is no voice giving directions on a nautical ‘chart-plotter’. After all, what would it say? “Turn left after the next wave crest”, perhaps, or “Take the third exit from the whirlpool”? So given this, our first experience of driving under the direction of a GPS has been quite a novel and entertaining one.

We decided to choose the voice of ‘Kate’, despite not knowing this particular lady, but to see how we got on with her. This left ‘Thomas’ hidden somewhere in the software so we have to hope he is not offended. I am pleased to say that despite them sharing the same name, the crisp voice of the GPS’s ‘Kate’ bears no resemblance to the soft tones of my wife, which means I am perfectly at liberty to swear and shout at the machine without any risk of malice or confusion. The swearing is, without doubt, an essential part of the operation of the system and we have both been very impressed with how stoic ‘Kate’ has been in the face of my tirades. One might have expected her to trip up on her words, at the very least, but no, she smoothly glides between advising me to prepare for a junction half a mile ahead to cautioning me about how I am exceeding the speed limit. On the first occasion she comes out with this one she completely upsets my junction-approaching-preparedness as I launch a stream of invective in her direction explaining how despite my excessive speed I have vehicles flying past me on both sides travelling at twice my speed. Surprisingly she really doesn’t seem to care. She keeps quiet about my speed for a while, making me think she has taken on board my well presented comments regarding the behaviour of my fellow drivers, then just as I approach a de-restricted sign where I can legitimately speed up she once again slips in another little warning in the same perfectly clear tones. What am I to think! ‘Kate’, who we now call K2 to avoid any confusion, clearly has the self control of a saint as well as the sense of direction of a homing pigeon. She is almost too good to be true. I will admit, however, that to date the whole GPS road navigation experience has been a pleasant one since it is relaxing to think that someone else is taking care of our navigation needs. It means that we can forget completely about where we are at present or where we need to go, confident that we will always get to where we are supposed to be. But on arrival if you ask us to tell you which route we took to get there you would get only blank looks.

K2 leads us unerringly from our front door to our chosen camping ground near Penrith on the edge of the English Lake District, despite the torrential rain and the limited visibility. At ‘Riverside’ we sneak in between the dripping trees and listen to the rain hammering a tattoo on our roof whilst feeling quite snug and cosy inside Ducky. Each campsite we stay has its quirks, this is to be expected, but the Shower-Shed is not something we have come across before. It stands uninvitingly side by side with the Toilet-Shed, both of which look just like… well sheds. But first impressions aside, step inside and you are in another world entirely. I could be mistaken but it seems that these shed interiors are actually larger then the sheds themselves, both perfectly appointed and clean with everything one would want from a toilet or a shower. What simply cannot be avoided is the sense of stepping inside a shed, which of course you are, when you go in, and the expectation that you will find a lawn mower or a roll of garden twine inside.

In the morning we drive off before any other campers are about, towards Coventry and our next stopover. Closer to a large city we come across campsite security for the first time, something we find a little unsettling, but at least they accept the Scottish currency we offer in payment – which is just as well since this is all we have with us. Our chosen site is almost empty, unless you count the rabbits in the horse’s field, the squirrels (grey), the magpies, the two green woodpeckers searching for ants and the owls hooting at night. Arriving in the afternoon sunshine we are able to deploy our folding camp chairs for the first time and I am pleased to say that they seem to work pretty well, which finally justifies us lugging them around with us. When we camped on Skye it was either too midgy or too windy or too wet to sit out but here a wall of oak trees shelters us from the wind and the sun peeks through the clouds to keep us warm.

Coventry has something we have sorely missed ever since buying Ducky, a Camping Accessory Shop, the sort of place that has every little nick-nack we could ever possibly dream of needing and tons of stuff we never will. Scotland is not over-blessed with shops like this, places where you can just wander around picking things up and poking about, so stepping inside we feel rather like children in a sweetie shop. We simply have to accessorise, it is impossible for us to leave empty-handed, but we try to act with as much restraint as we can. One little gadget we do come away with gives us the ability to deploy our internal table outside the van, to form a set with the chairs, a combination we just have to try out at our next campsite a day’s drive away on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon.
We are almost beginning to feel like proper campers now.

Hitting the motorways early we catch the rain, enough to make the driving rather scary as we strain to keep the road in sight through a world of spray. Once again K2 does her job with no complaints but she does fail to point out that the last quarter mile of road is barely wide enough for our van to pass along. Fortunately by this time the sun is out so we forgive her.

Like the last one, this campsite is again very quiet, unless you count the dragonfly who comes to hang about in the sun with us for a while. And then there are the geese, the ducks, the chickens, the Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, a pair of Dartmoor ponies and the brown bear, although he turns out to be a plastic statue so he doesn’t make a lot of noise.

Wednesday 4 September 2013

Moving next door

Meet James, a small red-headed figure dressed in green who flashes past our eyes, yelling wildly in delight at being pushed on his favourite tree-swing. In his hand is most of a Jammie Dodger biscuit, clasped firmly and saved for nibbles on his way to the park just behind our house. Once there he tries every piece of play equipment once, then once again for good measure, but his preference is for the zip-wire, a favourite with most of the park’s visitors.

James comes into our lives via our son Mike who’s young lady, Eleanor, is James’ mother.

They come to visit us, to raid our biscuit jar and empty our lego box onto the living room floor, then one day Eleanor brings us something really exotic, a caked representation of Cirrus Cat complete with mooring buoy, rope, fenders and an anchor all done in icing, all beautifully homemade by her from photos provided by Mike. It poses proudly on our dining table and if we could keep it this way forever we would but the purpose of a cake is, of course, to eat, so eventually we have to commit sacrilege and attack our lovely boat with a sharp knife. Each cut is painfully made until Eleanor’s handiwork, our travelling home for many years, is gone. Cake decoration is such a transitory art form.

Stealthily like Ninjas, we silently creep our belongings out of the back door of our house, down a few steps then in through the back door of what used to be my mother’s house, a total distance of less then ten metres. Nobody watching the two houses from the front is aware that anything is going on but as the evenings shorten and we start turning on lights then we can be certain that word has got around. We have moved house. But it is the strangest removal we have ever accomplished. We leave behind a comfortable property in which our son Mike can enjoy more privacy whilst we have gained a new project to keep us busy during the coming winter. Inevitably there are changes we want to make and the first of these is to fit a solid fuel stove in our new living room so we have the means to keep warm should the electricity fail us. The storms of winter are bound to bring down trees, they always do, and when this happens sooner or later a power cable is hit and the lights in Carradale go out. So a first priority is to make adjustments so that life can go on without electricity. For this we need a way of keeping warm and somewhere to cook so the multi-fuel stove is an essential for us.

Outside in the garden, however, things are not so rosy for this house comes with more grass.

And grass needs to be cut.

Investment in a self-powered mower takes away some of the toil but eventually we come up with an even better solution. By applying a thick layer of concrete we create a hard-standing area for Ducky to live on whilst simultaneously reducing our grass cutting burden, two problems solved at one stroke! I am surprised nobody else has thought of this. [Kate: They have. They’re called roads.]

And speaking of our motorcaravan… any day now we’ll be setting off on a grand tour of England, taking to those busy roads guided only by a few satellites floating miles above us. We are loading up with shampoo, spare socks and screenwash for the time has come to put Ducky to the test on motorways, to plough through traffic jams and to avoid parking restrictions, none of these being things we experience locally. On our tour we hope to be dropping in on friends and relations scattered as far afield as Coventry and Cornwall, Yeovil and York. So be prepared, all of you!

Wednesday 21 August 2013

Skye

We drive Ducky one hundred and thirteen miles in a northerly direction before turning off the road down a steep track heading towards the River Coe then park on a flood bank just a stone’s throw from the water. The air is warm, and were it slightly warmer we might have been tempted to swim here for there is a deep inviting pool of dark water in the otherwise shallow river but just as we come to rest the rain arrives, so we postpone such foolish notions for the moment. The Red Squirrel campsite has served us before as a convenient resting place and once again it provides us with a quiet night and plenty of sleep. The driving has been easy, as it so often is in the Highlands, on almost traffic-free roads with just the bends and the views to contend with and we sleep well, with ale inside us bought at the Clachaig Inn. In the morning with a light drizzle for company we drive on, shopping for food in Fort William, then turning west for the Isle of Skye heading for a Glen called Brittle where there is a beach of grey sand and the most dramatic mountains in Scotland.

Although we have both visited Skye before, together and separately, Kate has never been to this place. For me, however, I am returning here after an absence of more than forty years for this was once a much favoured climbing spot of mine. Strangely though, at first I recognise nothing.


I have no recollection of the road beyond the Sligachan public house, set on its own wild piece of moorland, to which I would inevitably have travelled from the campsite in Glen Brittle, nor can I recall the camping ground itself. The memories I do retain are of the mountains that drew me here all those years ago but the only hint that they are looming over us today are the steep grass-covered slopes which disappear up into the cloud. The Black Cuillins seldom reveal themselves entirely.

We walk the grey sandy beach to escape the campsite midge population which, in the absence of anything of a breeze, swarm around our campervan. Since these tiny creatures can make life singularly unpleasant the trick is to know their limitations and plan a strategy around this so as to avoid them. They thrive in damp vegetation which they leave only when the air is almost calm and the sunlight not too bright. These two simple facts tell us that sitting outside on a calm evening may not be a wise thing to do so we avoid this by shutting ourselves inside our campervan. A million or so of them have followed us in because, of course, here the air is still and they are not in bright sunlight. What is more they have a captive feeding ground, our skin, to feast themselves on till they drop. Part two of the midge avoidance strategy involves a glass or two of wine (for us, not the midges) so soon we care little for their appetites. Perhaps the fact that this onslaught does not deter us is evidence of how the last twelve months has left us reeling and desperately in need of this holiday away from home. Our son Mike is now well enough to take a holiday himself so we have headed in the opposite direction to satisfy our own urges, to find somewhere remote and beautiful where we can lay low for a bit.

We are parked just a stone’s throw from the beach and awake to a rare hot and sunny day.


Some time ago Kate was scanning the Internet and found a description of a gentle walk starting at the campsite and exploring the headland on the western arm of Loch Brittle, a place which many thousands of years ago was home to a substantial community who lived and farmed there. Only faint traces of these people remain today, a broken boundary wall, some stone foundations, areas cleared of stones and once cultivated, but we feel the echoes of their presence as we sit eating our lunch before returning along the shore path. Tiny flowers wink at us in every direction from amongst the lush, well-watered vegetation, uniformly green until you look closer and see the colour within, and all such a contrast with the distant looming dark shapes of the Cuillin range.

Glen Brittle camping ground is quite full, at first mostly with Germans and French holiday-makers. Their weekend departures coincide with a day of torrential rain and a gale of wind giving us plenty to watch as we huddle inside Ducky’s cosy interior. We feel sorry for those having to pack away wet canvas but the next day it is clear from the broken tent debris which fills the rubbish bins that many have simply not bothered. We are under no pressure to go anywhere and have more walking to do here if the weather improves.

Morning comes and steeling ourselves for a day of effort we shrug on backpacks and begin an assault on the Cuillins.


Occasional rain squalls blow us up along the path and it becomes cooler as we rise higher. Above us, appearing tantalisingly through breaks in the cloud, there is a wall of black rock capped with the jagged-edged ridge that I remember attempting to walk in its entirety many years ago. The Cuillin ridge is a rarely-completed classic which needs a day of good visibility or else route-finding becomes impossible. Taking a wrong turn in this complex range of hills presents dangers too great to contemplate and I was thwarted by low cloud in my attempt back then. Kate and I have something far more modest in mind, a visit to Corrie Lagan, one of the most impressive places in Britain, some would say the world. The glacier which last flowed here some 12,000 years ago left scratches in the rock which can be seen today as clearly as the day they were made. Huge rock faces are rounded off like someone has taken a vast plane to them, worked and shaped them till they are smooth.

 They lie about like beached whales in this windswept world far above the sea, barely eroded at all by the elements. It is as if the ice has only just melted away and time has stood still in this spot, hidden from view by the ring of dark summits rising with impossible steepness around us. So long have I been away that I have forgotten almost everything, but not the magic this place holds. I linger here to top up my reserves of wonder and awe.

Arriving back at the campsite we are amazed to see a convoy of around twenty-five Italian campervans arrive all at once, big ones that make our Ducky look tiny by comparison. Glen Brittle seems an unlikely destination for the average tourist. There is a small camp site, a remote place to get to, at the end of an eight mile single track road, and the thought of all these large vehicles queuing up in the passing spaces makes us cringe. Although one might expect the air to be full of Italian voices we notice these arrivals make little effort to leave their vehicles and at eight thirty the next morning there is a rumble of diesel engines as they all depart, en masse, back along the single track.

We time our own departure from Glen Brittle so as to avoid the convoy and move on westwards


towards Dunvegan. Kate poses beside an ancient Broch, a two thousand-year old hill fort, at Bracadale, before we drive out to Neist Point navigating yet another single track road. For a place where there is nothing really to see except the lighthouse this place is surprisingly popular with tourists. It is the most westerly point on Skye, there is a lighthouse, and…. well not much else apart from some spectacular cliffs – the MacLeod Tables fall into the sea here – but there are plenty of equally impressive sea cliffs on Skye.

What we do find is another example of something we have seen closer to home on Arran, something I can only describe as a ‘Cairn Forest’.

There is no sign or indication to say why this installation exists, it just does and has grown here fuelled by crowd enthusiasm. It serves no practical purpose yet hours of labour must have gone into its construction. Walking ‘through the forest’ is an unearthly, moving experience, not dissimilar to being in a graveyard, although there are no bodies buried here. Quite why I should feel such emotions I find hard to explain, but perhaps each cairn was built to remember some person, or some event and the thoughts of the builders linger on after they have left. Here is a popular tourist destination, a lighthouse on a point of land, which has a surprise bonus feature, something no holiday brochure can mention because its existence relies on human urges that cannot be controlled.

I have heard others speak of ‘Cairn Forests’ elsewhere and wonder if there will ever be a list of their locations or perhaps specialists who visit them, documenting them in some way. Is there an ‘ology for cairn building?

So let us recap. In just a week we have seen eagles hunting, gliding on the breeze yet stationary above the ground with their feathered legs dangling beneath them. One evening we watched the birth of clouds in a valley, the sides of which were green with damp vegetation, clouds that drifted slowly upwards on light airs. Footpaths have led us to settlements peopled by ancients vivid in our imagination or back to a time before man came to these isles, a time when the ice was still retreating. One road has led us to a corner of this land where piles of stones convey mysterious meanings and another to the best campsite showers in Scotland at Glen Nevis Camping Ground. We also discovered the sleeping place of ‘Snore the Scarecrow’ outside Glen Brittle Youth Hostel. Truly an amazing seven days.


Saturday 27 July 2013

Dublin and back

Like much of the British Isles, Carradale is experiencing a spell of unusually hot and calm weather, much to the chagrin of anyone choosing to go away on a holiday abroad at this time.

In the midst of this heat wave I receive a telephone call from a friend asking if I am free to assist in delivering a sailing boat from Dublin to Campbeltown, Ireland to Scotland. Having so recently parted with Cirrus, thus kissing goodbye to any chance of going sailing on my own boat, I jump at the opportunity this offers without a second thought. And learning that my services are required to help navigate and lend a hand on deck, raising and trimming the exotically made sails of a high performance racer, an X-Yacht, makes this all the more interesting.

For those not in the know, which means anyone in the world of yacht racing who has been asleep for the past thirty odd years, the Danish company X-Yachts has never manufactured anything else but boats specifically designed for the keenest of racers, high performance machines built with a view to speed around a sailing course.


One could deduce from this that crew comforts would be sparse on such a vessel, excess weight sacrificed for sailing performance, human needs taking second place, but fortunately for me the more modern boats have interior fittings and furnishings which match their sailing performance and make them a pretty good choice for someone who wants the best of both worlds – speed and comfort.

So it is that after half a day of travel by road and sea I find myself in a marina in Malahide (just outside Dublin) stepping on board to find my berth on Trix, a rather beautiful ex-racer. Owen, his wife Joanna, son Ryan and I soon find ourselves preparing for the voyage, tracking down the many sails and the various other bits of equipment which at one time or another some keen owner had seen fit to store on shore in the quest for improving performance, stocking up with food and other essentials and finding somewhere to stow everything on board in such a way that we can still stretch out our bodies in sleep. In all it takes the four of us two full days of preparation but finally we sort out how enough of the electronic equipment works to make it safe to leave and have run up and checked over the engine. By then the tides will only let us leave at the unholy hour of four the morning, this being the time when there is enough water for our two metre draught to slide out of the river to the sea.

There is a cool and rather clammy feel to the air at this hour but despite this we sniff expectantly for a gentle breeze so that we can hoist some of the exotic sailcloth we have on board and see what this boat can do, not too much wind, of course, but a little of the ‘light and variable’ that was in the forecast.


Experience tells me however, and this passage now serves to confirm this, that when the weatherman uses this phrase he is really trying to say ‘take the dog for a walk and forget sailing today’! For three days we glide northwards along the Irish coast accompanied by the put-put sound of our engine, the sails adding nothing to our boat speed. Each day early morning chills are soon replaced by scorching sun, for which we are grateful, but the only wind passing over the boat is that made by our own passage through the still air. Not until we are much closer to home, at Glenarm in Northern Ireland, does the air begin to move at all.

The point of stopping here is that our trip coincides with the Cushendall Sailing Club’s annual combined race day and we are soon joined there by other boats from Campbeltown for a sailing race between the two clubs. On Trix, however, realisation soon dawns that were are going to be raising sail and competing in the race on an untried and untested boat. We will be tacking the boat for the very first time only after the race has started, on arriving at the first turning mark of the course. And there is some wind. Will we be up to it and what chance can we possibly have against the other fully trained and highly competitive crews?

Our motivation is intense as we harden in the sheets at the start line and Trix takes off like a scalded cat, barely in control at first, but then gradually as the race progresses the crew find their places and we get into the swing of things. It soon becomes clear that this is indeed a very fast boat, one that can out-sail most others of a similar size given proper handling. After a poor start, one boat after another slips behind us; we slide softly by trying to keep the smug expressions from our faces. Amazingly by the time the finish line is in sight we have crept up to second position although right on our stern now we can hear the bubbling forefoot of our closest rival, their black reaching sail straining forward. With such a small crew, we had made the decision to forgo the use of a spinnaker and we are now being overtaken rapidly with only fifty or so metres to go. Somehow we hang on, giving no quarter, to take second place honours across the line and give us all the buzz of excitement that racers everywhere will know. On handicap we are knocked down to 7th place overall but at least we can be proud that we had made a strong contribution to Campbeltown Sailing Club winning the race series, the first time for some years.

I would like to say that the final leg of sailing trip was as calm and uneventful as the first but on the day after the race we have to cross the dreaded North Channel, that twelve mile wide strip of sea between Northern Ireland and Scotland which funnels and accelerates the tides flowing into and out of the Irish Sea. We set off off early, motoring with no wind at all, but once clear of the land the breeze fills in and the sea starts to jump about in an alarming way as it so often does here. Changing to a smaller headsail under these conditions is a real challenge but between us we manage go get it done and plodding on, we arrive safely back in Campbeltown in bright sunshine by the middle of the day. Many thanks to Owen and his family for putting up with me and for giving me the sailing fix I needed.