Home life

I sit around at home trying to commit to memory the words for my part in the Christmas pantomime, learning my prompts and wondering how much of it will be acting and how much just me. The humour in the part I play requires me to act a little stupid, so nothing difficult there then. (More than this I cannot disclose at this stage for fear of revealing the plot prematurely and spoiling the show for the paying audience.) Having little or no acting experience counted for nothing in getting me into what is, as it happens, my first starring role. There was no audition, no submission of a ‘cv’, instead it was merely a matter of knowing the right people and being around just at the moment the panto rehearsals were about to start. That, and upon being asked neglecting to say the word ‘No’. But I have lungs strong enough to make myself heard from the stage and I have little fear of embarrassment. Acting the part is really no more than not taking myself too seriously, something I don’t find difficult.

Kate is seated in another armchair with her computer perched on her lap. She has recently abandoned her ‘laptop’ computer, which had become so hideously slow that writing on papyrus would have been faster, and upgraded to a significantly faster tablet PC. This makes her smile as she types up a set of minutes taken at a meeting of the local Harbour Group or maybe it is the Village Hall committee or the management committee of the local Abbeyfields care home. By virtue of being rather good at documenting on paper proceedings at these events she has progressed to the role of Champion Secretariat in the village, a secretarial superwoman if you like.

Early one morning a lorry manoeuvres down to the end of our road to deliver some more timber joists and a handful of planks for the decking I am constructing around the concrete hard standing beneath the car port we know as the ‘Bus Shelter’. The rain is lashing down and the southerly gale is blowing the water beneath the canopy so it is rather wet out there. Ducky is away being serviced so I help Steve, the lorry driver, unload my planks and lay them flat on the ground before rushing back indoors to avoid the rain. We live in a wet climate, with local vegetation sometimes being described as ‘temperate rainforest’, and have experienced days of continuous precipitation on numerous occasions since we moved here. So today is not unusual. The landscape here is mountainous. The rivers have only a short distance to flow before reaching the sea, so water does not generally stay long on the land. The rivers swell, turn brown and churning, but water usually stays between the banks as it rushes towards the sea. On this occasion it has been raining heavily all night, the land is already saturated from last week's rain and the rate at which the stuff is now falling suggests that this just might be something a little out of the ordinary.

I have a dental appointment in Tarbert, 25 miles away to the north and in these conditions this is a major expedition. So I dress up in waterproof clothing, check the mobile phone is charged (not that a signal can ever be guaranteed around here), and set off to drive up the single track road that winds along the Kintyre coastline. In and out of pine forests, across countless small streams, past farms and remote cottages, rising high one minute and dropping to sea level the next, anything can happen in the next hour, the time the journey usually takes. There could be fallen trees, the road could be undermined by water runoff, lying water could splash into the engine and kill it dead, a skid on mud and leaves on the road could put me in a ditch, or else I could just make the journey safely, in which case I have to endure the dentist’s drill after all. The road is wetter than I have ever seen it. In many places the water pours off the steep hillsides and overwhelms the channels dug to carry the water away. I drive past ditches so full they carry water half a metre above the road surface. It all has to go somewhere and randomly and unexpectedly around a corner there is a flood which flows across the road washing gravel and small rocks down the hill on the other side. Water ejected into the air from under the tyres is blown across the windscreen by the gale but fortunately the engine is well protected and it doesn’t falter. It is important to keep both wheels on the thin band of tarmac as the ground is soft on both sides; to drop a tyre off the road is to risk sinking in and coming to a sudden halt. Care is required, speed is best kept low even if this means I am late for my appointment. But no, I have set off early and I arrive safely for my treatment, unfortunately.

It is raining in Tarbert, maybe not quite as heavily, but the high tide pushed even higher by the southerly wind brings the water in the harbour almost up to road level. I feel strangely uncomfortable walking next to this as it heaves gently and two swans paddle over, stretching their necks hopefully towards me in case I have something for them. The high water level gives them a view across the road into the shops opposite, something they don’t usually get to see. I wonder what they make of us featherless people strutting about in the rain.

Much later I have survived the return journey down the single track road and I splash past the village hall, a place Kate and I now have a stake in. Our newly gravelled car park is awash with runoff from the hill opposite which is normally culverted away beneath the road. Now the foaming flood is pouring across the road taking the easiest route towards Carradale Bay which, were it not for the still torrential rain, I would be able to see in the distance. I fear for the safety of the hall and can imagine the carpark surface being washed away downstream but can do nothing about it. What will happen will happen; it is too late now to intervene.

Local knowledge later tells me that this is nothing exceptional, it is not the biblical flood it might have seemed but is just one of those ‘rather wet periods’ we get from time to time. Although it continues to rain all the next night, the wind slapping the rain against our windows, by late morning the next day the sun is shining and the wind has gone. Likewise most of the water has flowed away too. I can hear the burn in the woods just below our garden but cannot see it, which means it still bubbles along happily within its banks.

The village hall car park is back  to normal, still with its coating of gravel and the sun warms me as I continue with my decking construction project in the garden. The ground is sodden, as you might expect, but other than this two days and nights of heavy rain has disappeared like magic.

Later in the day we sit in front of our log fire and contemplate how fortunate we are in our choice of house, that it can be so unaffected by weather extremes.

Favourite people and places

If ever I were asked for a list of my favourite places then Newton Bay is one that would be very close to the top. It is part of Northumberland’s North Sea coastline and is a place given natural shelter by a rocky reef, where the sand is soft, the sea is invariably cold and the light has a special quality about it.

Some years ago, with our young children on board and just as the daylight was fading (so rather later in the day than we might have liked) we can recall piloting our sailing boat into Newton Bay, following closely behind a friend in his shallow draft cruiser. Although we bumped our keel on the rocks which give the bay such fine protection from the North Sea swell, no harm was done and we were soon anchored safely. In those days there was rarely a sailing trip we made that was without some incident, some excitement, which raised the blood pressure for a short while. This being the early days of our family sailing we were learning steeply, each trip taught us a new lesson, this one being “Never assume it is safe to follow another boat”. Our keel was made of iron and suffered little from its encounter and the wound we made in the weed-covered rock no doubt also healed over quickly. Maybe we inadvertently dislodged a crab or two, for which I belatedly apologise, but the day was one of many memorable ones on board our tiny boat, ‘Noggin the Nog’.

Today the beach at Newton is just as it was then; there are the dunes which hide a small haven for wildlife, there is the same small collection of houses and there is the pub, closed to us then with our small children in tow and closed again as we revisit the place, it being mid morning. The ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle also still stand on their rock overlooking the sea, little changed in the thirty years since our last visit nor indeed since being abandoned back in the 16th Century, by which time the Scottish border was considered to be stable enough, England no longer feeling under threat from those north of the border. Today the position is reversed, of course.

We visit this familiar place not specifically on a jaunt down memory lane, however. It is simply that having travelled so widely around the coast of Britain we inevitably find ourselves revisiting old haunts, our exploring genes ensuring that we rarely pass by without broadening our experience inventory.

So it is that we find ourselves taking a selfie on the very highest point of St Abbs Head, which also juts out into the North Sea and overlooks the mouth of the Forth of Firth a place past which we sailed on more than a few occasions. We have crossed the border into Scotland now but the wind that we lean into blows mild air from the south giving the impression it has crossed a much warmer sea than the one stretched out before us. We are perched up here on the edge of Winter but the season itself has yet to arrive. There is, however, a battle going on in the sky above us, one that followed us south a week ago and which still rages as we make our way homewards. Back then we would be driving through torrential rain with the sun in our eyes then five minutes later on the dry road would be overshadowed by black rainbow-spewing clouds.

As we head west the rain lashes horizontally across the road, our campervan staggers to the gusts, while I pull at the steering wheel to keep us moving in a straight line. We are en route home now heading for our nearest branch of B&Q where we have a mission to accomplish. It is  a little over one hundred miles by road from where we live to this, our closest DIY superstore, so I have saved up a little list of things I need for my latest project, adding some wooden decking around Ducky’s carport (something we now affectionately call the ‘Bus Shelter’). Our mobile home now becomes a builder’s van as we load up with large pieces of wood, bags of cement and a few other bits that were not on the list. Once loaded, the extra weight on board means the gusty wind can barely affect us but the rain falls in great floods as we negotiate the final turns in the long and winding road back to Carradale.

In a little over a week we have completed a 1700 mile trip around Britain, visiting a sample of our scattered family and friends along the way. In Bristol we bumped into a rare coloured gorilla and met up with our youngest, Ben, just back from an American tour with his band, Frogbelly and Symphony, and still somewhat jet-lagged.

Having recently moved into this city, Ben has set himself the challenge of creating a new music scene there where  none currently exists, so watch out Bristolians! Down in Cornwall we dropped in on my sole surviving aunt, Jessie, who we would love to take back home with us but fear this might not sit well with the rest of her family. Instead, we gave her a gift of some Edinburgh rock and as much of our company as she could stand. In Worthing our eldest, Tony, took us for a walk along the shore to his favourite beach, a place where the flint pebbles look like old dinosaur bones, then in Yeovil, Kate’s brother, Peter, offered us a comfy bed for a few nights while his wife, Liz, fed us in style.

Back home now the season has definitely changed as brown leaves are stripped from the trees by the wind. Our stove is alight, ready for its first full winter trial, and if we run out of logs then we’ll just start on the furniture.

Neither meat nor fish

More than thirty years have passed since Kate and I decided we would eat nothing more that came from the bodies of slaughtered animals. We became, at a stroke therefore, vegetarians.

Since taking this step, one that we felt to be neither difficult nor particularly radical, our eating habits have served us up some surprises along with many disappointments along the way. By doing so we instantly placed ourselves amongst a misunderstood minority in a world of carnivorous humankind and a consequence of choosing to live our lives this way has been to place us apart, to put us in that slightly oddball category where one might find religious fanatics or politicians, something we hadn’t anticipated at all. Perhaps it was the fact that we already felt ourselves to be in this category, before foregoing meat, that made the transition so easy for us. At the time I would spend my weekends windsurfing from the beach at Felixstowe, hardly a sport that conjures up mass support, and we had a young family growing up fast and taking up every waking moment of our day. We had also moved into this area of the country very recently, we were incomers with only new found friends to call on, and as with outsiders everywhere, trust comes only slowly.

When asked, we like to say we eat neither meat nor fish, rather than use the term ‘vegetarian’, not least because this is one of the least understood words in the English language. If I had a penny for every time I have been asked the question “So do you eat fish then?” I would be quite wealthy by now. Or else “What about chicken?”, as if somehow birds are excluded from the animal kingdom because they are descended from dinosaurs and only have two legs. It turns out that there is a whole library of words out there which can be used to describe different diets and a ‘pollo-pescetarian’ would happily eat both fish and poultry although nothing else from the meat counter. Then again, never shy of inventing new words when they seem to be needed, the Americans have come up with ‘flexitarian’ to describe someone who has ‘occasional indulgences’ of meat eating, which I suppose must be a bit like eating the odd chocolate bar whilst trying to lose weight.

We have ceased to puzzle over what part of the word ‘vegetable’ is so difficult to understand and by now have come to terms with our place in the culinary world. Not for us is the pleasure of struggling to choose from a long menu at the restaurant table. The ‘vegetarian option’ (what a ghastly expression!) usually sits on its own bearing a tiny ‘V’ symbol and when it is something other than vegetable lasagne, the lazy chef’s choice, it will be accompanied by a side salad or occasionally, if we are very lucky, some risotto rice. If we do ever fancy a little mashed potato or, heaven forbid, a crisp Yorkshire pudding with gravy (something I often have a craving for), a vegetable filled pie or, strangely, even vegetables such as peas or carrots, then we must eat at home, cooking these things for ourselves, as we know from long experience now that these will not be on offer in most restaurants. None of these items need contain any animal products, and indeed nobody could possibly argue that peas, carrots or potatoes are anything less than vegetables, yet a lack of imagination or understanding on the part of the chef invariably leads to our kind being treated as an afterthought on the menu. Hardly surprisingly therefore, we do not eat out very often.

By contrast there is a world out there where we are made to feel more than welcome, where our eyes boggle at the choices before us, like children in a sweet shop. I refer, of course, to the vegetarian restaurant, that rarity which caters solely for our habit, with no apologies. The fact that their tables will often be full of non vegetarians (carnivores) who will also enjoy the good food being served serves only to emphasise the strangeness of the modern world, for if these people are there by choice then when faced with a menu in a ‘normal’ restaurant, presumably they would like to have the same food items on offer. So why aren’t they.

To find a vegetarian restaurant one must take to the internet. No amount of wandering the streets or asking taxi drivers will do it for they are invariably tucked away down some backstreet or hidden in a basement somewhere. It would be a mistake to wait until you are hungry to try to find one. Even using Google they can be difficult to pin down. In an old part of the city of Hull we once discovered Hitchcock’s, an unusual but perhaps not untypical specimen. The restaurant is housed on the first floor above what used to be a forge, and the front door could be the entrance to a private house, you would walk past without realising it was there. The single sitting for food begins at eight in the evening (pre-booking is essential) and the menu is determined by the ‘theme’ for the day, which might be Spanish, Italian or something else, the food being served buffet style, all you can eat and more spread out on large tables. Our own visit was on Cajun night so many of the dishes were a mystery to us, anything coloured red being far too hot for our palates. But at least we could eat anything on offer, no picking our way around dishes that might have meat in them. As a dining experience it is unique. That it happens to serve purely vegetarian food was a delight to us.

If Britain is a place where we are misunderstood, then further abroad there are places where we are shunned. France comes to mind as one of the most meat-loving countries in Europe. We once so baffled the checkout person in a motorway restaurant (considerably more upmarket than anything found on this side of the Channel) when we chose only the salad from the buffet, without a meat selection, that he had no idea what to charge us for our food. On another occasion the restaurant manager was so clearly offended when we refused any of his deliciously cooked meat dishes that he could barely speak to us. Survival itself must necessarily involve eating meat in one form or another, he believed, so our bodies must be craving for it. How could we deny such a basic urge. Well, strange as it may seem our thirty year diet seems to have done us no great harm. My hair and teeth are showing signs of ageing but no more than my contemporaries and I can still find enough energy to walk up the odd hill when I feel the need to. I don’t cower away from the sunrise and my reflection still smiles back at me from the mirror so I presume I have not passed over into realm of the undead. What I can do, however, is gloat all I want when horsemeat is found in beefburgers or chicken is tainted with salmonella. These things really don’t concern us any more although I might offer up a small prayer for the animals concerned. I am very happy sticking to my veg and two veg and letting the rest of the world fuss over the meat content of the average sausage.

Island over the sea

Can there be a better advertisement for a natural, nature-friendly campsite than this, red deer grazing outside your door, guaranteed, any time of the day or night? However these creatures are not put there just to add interest for the campers. Indeed they may be regarded as something of a nuisance for they are somewhat casual about where they leave their droppings and they can hop over onto the golf course next door as easily as wander into the road. They know the area so well and seem to assume the grass is put their entirely for their benefit. After all this is their home, and has been so for longer than anyone can remember. From the first steps ashore from the ferry at Lochranza on the Isle of Arran we notice how garden fences and gates are built shoulder high rather than at waist level, as if to ensure the inhabitants don’t escape onto the road. Only later do we twig that we’ve seen this height of fence before on Forestry land. It is the height that a deer cannot jump. So on Lochranza deer are being kept out of gardens, full as they are with such a delicious variety of food items, and the fences are not (just) to keep dangerous locals under control.

They certainly have remarkable freedom (the deer, that is) and their behaviour is tolerated far beyond what might be expected. The rut, for instance, when the stags bellow endlessly and joust amongst themselves for the ladies, must be a particularly trying time for those living here yet they seem to have adapted to this, stepping around the odd gaggle of hinds when they have to just as we do on the campsite.

We consider ourselves blessed as the sun comes out in some force after only one day of torrential rain at the start of our five day visit, a day that gave the legs a chance to recover from our eight mile coastal afternoon hike around the Cock of Arran on our first day. The worst part was when we were already tired and at our furthest point from ‘home’ when our path forced its way tortuously through a boulder field, studded with ankle wrecking dangers as well as being well supplied with midges and other biting insects. Given enough wind, midges generally find flying too difficult so the presence of a fresh breeze when out walking is normally welcome.

Less easy to avoid however, especially when passing through waist-high bracken, are the ticks, tiny black creatures who scuttle down beneath the clothing then latch on using a barbed probe, penetrating the skin to, well, suck up their host’s juices. The itching generally does not start until later and then goes on well after the creature’s now swollen body is extracted, a process that involves a specially shaped device and exceptionally good eyesight. Given that these beasts can carry Lyme disease a full body inspection is recommended after walking through any long vegetation, a minor price to pay really for the pleasure of so much fabulous scenery.

From Machrie Moor we look across Kilbrannan Sound to our home on Kintyre, where less than three miles away, our village nestles at the foot of its valley.

Although nobody can ever be certain about the precise date, I can say that some time after the last ice retreated 12,000 years ago and before about 750 BC, some large stones were dragged across Arran and firmly stood on end in such a way that they still remain standing today. As to how this remarkable feat was achieved or why it was done nobody alive today really knows, which seems quite sad considering the effort that must have been involved. Today we might use a large crane to lift something this heavy into place but archaeologists doubt that such things had been invented back then so the whole place is surrounded in mystery. We can speculate that their commanding presence, and there are lots of them here placed in circles or arranged in alignments that today we can only guess at, must have been quite stunning to those passing by when they were first erected… and they have lost little of that today.

Before coming to live in Scotland we had never heard of this magical place. So it seems strange that we should discover something like this so close to our home. In some ways it’s rather like finding Stonehenge is just down the road although the hoards of tourists are missing here. Remoteness does have its advantages.

To complete our slow circumnavigation of the isle of Arran we steer Ducky over the String Road back to Brodick, a long climb over the central mountainous backbone with a fast descent on the other side.

I regret to say that Arran has benefited little financially from our visit; only two nights were spent on formal campsites and most of our food was brought with us from home. There are plenty of places where we can pull off the road, get tucked in behind a few trees and find isolation and a quiet place to sleep, so apart from the cost of the ferry (twenty minutes spent sitting in a gently swaying van or waving farewell from the upper deck) this has been a cheap holiday. Our walking boots return a little muddier and our faces a little ruddier from exposure to the sun but we feel richer and wiser knowing what lies across the sea from our home.

Contrary winds

I normally try to avoid including ‘sea and sky’ pictures here but for once I am making an exception since this was taken just last week from the heaving deck of the yacht Senitoa as she turned north towards Scotland. The scene could be almost anywhere in the world but for the presence of the lighthouse, which is known as ‘Longships’, and stands on a rock a mile west of Lands End, the extreme south-west point of the British mainland.

There has been a lighthouse here since 1791 but the first one to be built placed the light only twenty four metres above the sea and (a sobering thought) as a result its beam was often obscured by the waves that crashed over it. So in 1875 the present tower was built, bringing the light up another eleven metres in height. Until 1988 there might have been a lighthouse keeper or two watching us as we bounced over the lumpy seas but today, like all Britain’s lighthouses, things run automatically with only occasional human intervention when maintenance is required so we slip past largely unnoticed but for the occasional gannet.

A month ago a message I received from Spencer, a yachtie friend, to help him collect his recently purchased boat from Gosport in Hampshire and deliver it to Campbeltown Loch, has led to my peering out of the pilothouse window at this far flung corner of Britain. But it has taken more than a week of sailing to get here, far longer than we might have hoped, largely due to the influence of tropical storm Bertha after its remains crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Until its arrival we were all basking under a scorching heat wave, welcoming each wisp of breeze and every puff of cloud. But no sooner have Spencer, his daughter Claire, and I set off on Senitoa than the wind arrives by the bucketful, always blowing from just where we want to go, as if it is trying to prevent us from leaving.

 Just once or twice we do manage to raise the sails so that Senitoa can behave like the sailing boat she is but in the main we have to rely upon the seventy-five horsepower diesel engine to push us along, which is disappointing to us sailors.

The most southerly point on the British mainland is known as The Lizard, for reasons associated with the fact that it lies in Cornwall, a place which has its own language. As we motor past on our journey, the boat bumping and thumping into every lumpy piece of water, we have a brief visit from a large black mammal, which dives less than a boat length from our bow, just missing a nasty collision. I like to think that a Minke whale is the master of its environment and knows exactly what it is doing, perhaps is just being curious, but it gives us a treat and a scare both at the same time as its smooth black back rolls away just beneath our boat. And where are the photos I hear you ask? You have to be joking! There is barely time to catch breath, let alone get a camera out.

Miles further on and much closer to home we meet yet another batch of strong winds and take shelter in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin’s yachting playground. So keen are the locals to race their yachts that they dry-launch them from the quayside by crane with their sails already set so they can get to the start line for an evening club race. Surely this is yachting at its most intense, and is a million miles away from the leisurely pastime Kate and I used to engage in. Two hours later these same sailors are hanging off the bar in the yacht club exchanging yarns, no doubt, of how they missed that crucial tack on the finish line. We are, of course, on the doorstep of the capital city of Ireland so must expect to encounter a different pace of life, the rushing about, the money spent in pursuit of a few hours of pleasure after a day at the office. Perhaps we should be missing this.

Inevitably, I have barely returned home from the passage on Senitoa when a wind arrives from the south east, one that might have blown us home in half the time. Still, at least there was a big engine pushing us along, something the chap caught staring at Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower never had.

Ducky gets a home

Scarcely have I left home for my sailing exploits amongst the Western Isles when Kate gets stuck into building a home for Ducky, our much loved campervan, at the bottom of our garden. She did have a little help it has to be said, with larger pieces of timber and digging the massive postholes, fitting the wooden cladding and climbing up to fix the roof but she tells me that nothing would have happened, nothing at all built, without her being there to make the tea.

I had seen the plans, of course, but seeing the structure in the flesh on my return home was something of a shock because this thing is big. Very big. The roof clears Ducky’s highest point by a clear margin and we have space under the cover all around which will be handy when the rain is pouring down.

Naturally word gets around the village very quickly that something new has sprung up. Suddenly we notice dog walkers detouring down our way, dogs we have not seen before stagger past, no doubt asking themselves why their owners have come this way, have broken their usual routine. The dogs can’t make sense of it but we know what is going on. We no longer have difficulty explaining where we live to those we meet. All we have to say is “The house with the monstrous carport” and understanding dawns. “Oh yes I've seen that. Now I know where you are”, usually followed by a strange look, the “That great thing” look. Visitors too, holidaymakers, have suddenly begun using the end of our road to turn in, pretending they are lost, something that has never happened before. We are beginning to think that our carport may be the most exciting thing to have happened in the village since the Vikings left and it amuses us that we might have created something of a talking point.

Our latest foray away in Ducky takes us to Barnluasgan over in Knapdale to see the beavers. Just a short drive north of us, a trialled reintroduction of beavers has been going on since 2009, exploring (at some considerable financial cost I might add) what might happen if we replace what was once a native species all over Scotland. We have it on good authority that there are currently at least ten of the beasts living here although despite setting off at dusk and tiptoeing as quietly as possible for a mile or so along a gravel path (not the best surface for stealth) beside the freshly created loch to the site of the beaver dam, we see nothing but a few ducks. We feel certain that the beavers are there, close by, perhaps chuckling to themselves about our clumsiness, but no way are they going to show themselves. Perhaps this is because they have discovered the strangest thing about this much-publicised species introduction which is that they are not the only beaver population currently living in Scotland. Little talked about is the fact that over on Tayside some one hundred and fifty wild beavers have set up home. Nobody seems clear about how they got there (they may have been released deliberately or else they are escaped pets – but who keeps beavers as pets?) and because they are not part of the trial and are not being so carefully studied we hear little about them. Indeed one senses that their very existence must be something of an embarrassment to those involved in the Knapdale trial. We are intrigued to see what will happen once the trial is over and a decision is made on whether they can stay, a decision apparently already overtaken by events.

Our beaver spotting being thwarted, we retire gracefully to spend the night camping ‘wild’ nearby and wake to a surprisingly hot summer’s day that tempts us to explore the area some more. Beavers might be shy but apparently adders are less so. The young lady we come across sunbathing close to her home, an iron drainage cover which crosses the forest track, is a little coy but she is quite well known to those walkers who come this way often (and that’s not many). We feel a certain pride in being able to point her out to one passer-by who has never seen an adder before and had just walked by this particular one. The adder cautiously sniffs the air by flicking her tongue and will disappear very quickly into cover if she senses danger but this morning her need for warmth from the sun clearly outweighs caution and she slides slowly and gracefully away. If only beavers could behave like this.

Time on the water

Arms straining, I pull myself up the sloping foredeck for the nth time and wriggle into position on the windward rail where my meagre seventy eight kilos helps to balance the boat as she accelerates upwind again, crashing and bashing through the waves. The next piece of sea thumps into the bow, jumping up and dousing me with salt water but my body protects the rest of our crew from a soaking, not that their gratitude is particularly overwhelming, I have to say. This wave is one of many I take full on for them, but I'm not complaining. I signed up for a week of racing on Owen’s 10 metre X-yacht, Jochr, and know full well that this is what goes with the territory, it is just part of the experience.

We have a mixed bag of weather thrown at us, fairly typical for any summer in the West Highlands I guess, heavy rain and winds one day and light airs the next, but despite this our fortune in the rankings for our class remains good. For the final passage race, a long southerly beat down the Sound of Mull from Tobermory to Oban, my role is to ensure that the genoa passes smoothly around the front of the mast on each tack without the sheets catching on the front of the mast or the sail getting hooked on the guard rail. Aside from this I am ballast, the weight of me and the other crew making a minor but significant difference to the performance of the boat. Our skipper drives us across the Sound then back again, against twenty five then up to thirty three knots of headwind, as we fight to keep our place in the fleet of yachts that surround us. For hour after hour we battle on, hardly pausing for breath, until after four hours we find ourselves jostling for position on a finish line beside Lismore Light. The current is running fast here calling for fine judgement in close proximity to other boats but the gun fires at last signalling a good finish to the final race of the week, the end of six tough days.

Jochr is on the far left of the picture, sail No. 9726

Our boat and crew have sailed through rain and shine, wind and calm, rough and smooth seas, enduring some excellent and challenging racing from which it takes my body some days to recover. At some point I will admit that I am too old for this sort of thing… but not yet.

As things turn out this year all this strenuous stuff follows soon after a family trip south into Yorkshire for a week long holiday on a narrowboat, motoring slowly along the Leeds to Liverpool canal, where the only real exercise is cranking the key to open the sluices on the many locks we pass through.

 With us here are Mike, Eleanor and of course, wee James, for whom this is a first boating experience.

The term narrowboat means literally that and for good reason; these boats are built to fit the canals (or is it the canals that were built to fit the boats). The locks on our canal are just big enough for two boats, each a maximum of seven feet wide, to fit side by side with only inches to spare. The canals were built for working boats which often towed a ‘butty’, an engine-less load carrier, and it was essential that both boat and butty could fit in the same lock side by side. If the lock is any wider then all that happens is that you waste water. The overall boat length is an issue too as any more than fifty feet long and we’d be bumping up against the lock gates on the Leeds Liverpool. But given these restraints, it is quite surprising how much can be fitted in on board. On Megan’s Drum we have separate bedrooms, toilets and a shower, a fully equipped kitchen and dining room, storage for all our stuff plus the convenience of mains electricity for the microwave oven and the TV.

Our days on board consist of chugging slowly westwards through the Yorkshire Dales at no more than four miles an hour, the canal speed limit, so our pace of life slows to accommodate this. Being in charge of steering I get to watch my crew opening bridges and lock gates ahead of me then once through, I manoeuvre the heavy boat to the bank to pick them up again. It becomes routine, eventually, with each member of the team knowing what to do. Steering the long vessel around a tight bend requires forward planning, anticipation of the way the stern will swing, as the boat pivots about its centre rather than its rudder, but generally we manage to avoid bumping the canal sides too often or entangling ourselves with the trees that frequently overhang the water on one side. One can certainly imagine that life has always gone on at the same slow pace on the canals but (not surprisingly perhaps) young James finds it hard coping with the speed the world drifts by. He is often happier sitting below playing games on his ipad and we worry that he misses the herons standing knee deep in the shallows or the amusingly named and brightly coloured narrowboats that are floating homes to a sizeable population on England’s waterways.

At dusk all traffic stops and we too pull over and moor to the bank. The water becomes still, only disturbed by the movements of the odd duck, the occasional swan and fish rising to take flies from the surface. Now the tree-clad banks and the painted boats are reflected almost perfectly by the water creating a surreal inverted image.

Sunny Solstice

It is a while since I wrote to this blog. Inspiration temporarily evaporated after returning home from our tour of Scotland a few months ago, home to an increasingly busy life, an important part of which now is James and his mother Eleanor, soon to be our daughter-in-law when our son Mike makes his vows next year. James has adopted Kate and me as his new grand parents, an honour we do not take lightly, whilst we in turn fall victim to his charming ways and try to remember all the mysterious things that small boys like to do, things our own sons taught us when they were growing up but which have faded from our memories. Sensibly we still have a substantial box of Lego stored away and this never fails to inspire a small mind into creativity when tipped out onto the floor. We now live in a world where small plastic bricks emerge from beneath chairs, under cushions and behind radiators but none of this bothers us unduly.

Our jaunt around Scotland having ended, a rapid warming took over delivering more sunshine than we rightly deserve. When this happens the landscape gradually changes into something dryer, the pine forest acquiring a rich, resinous smell which reminds us of our time in northern Italy a few years ago, and the sphagnum mosses cease to weep moisture, becoming paler green in colour and eventually wilting and looking rather poorly. Much of

Carradale’s woodland is not natural, having been planted as a crop some sixty years ago, so barely within the memory of many local inhabitants. I know this because the timber is now being harvested so the trunks lie horizontally in heaps awaiting collection and I can count the growth rings, which I do. This extraction process is a massive insult to the landscape, being transformational in the same way as a natural disaster would be. To lovers of trees, as I confess we are, the sight of the forest being torn apart by massive machines is quite shocking to witness and the speed at which the operation can be carried out is frightening.

When the trees have been felled whole new vistas open up, the likes of which have not been seen for decades. Such is the timescale here that views remembered only by people reaching the end of their lives are now revealed. Who knows what memories are stirred into life by this.

But it is unlikely to be the same remembered landscape. What we now have is a devastated field of broken brash timber and stumps which stand out like pale dinner plates. It is a world torn apart by men with powerful machines showing little care for what is left behind. It is a scarred tableau that must now undergo a lengthy healing process that will gradually soften the edges and smooth over the injuries. Mosses will eventually carpet anything close to the ground, bandaging everything up until only a series of uneven shapes will remain visible, dark green mounds, and through this will sprout saplings whose seeds have lain dormant for want of light. Grasses and wildflowers will come first then as the new growth climbs higher the light reaching the ground will once again become dim and competition for what filters through will intensify.

If nothing were replanted then the forest would regrow in its own way; tree colonisers such as willow and silver birch then ash, gorse, bramble and rhododendron would soon form a green carpet. We know this because the land just beyond our own garden fence was once conifer forest, felled within living memory since when it has lain neglected. All it takes is a clamber over the fence and we are in wild place, untamed and unkempt, difficult of access but fascinatingly peaceful once deep inside the tree cover.

Then one day we awake to the brrrup, brrrup of chainsaw engines revving up close by and we realise that change has come to our little world. Fortunately, instead of clearing the land completely, forestry workers are just thinning out the trees, presumably to promote thicker growth of what is left.

Since this is only a narrow strip of land and the soil layer here is thin, a stand of conifer trees would be vulnerable; the chances are that they would be blown over before reaching maturity. And anyway, why re-plant when nature has already done such a splendid job for you.

Through the leaf cover we catch glimpses of men in their protective orange clothing as the trees sway and fall around them. At first we were concerned that our green backdrop might completely disappear but as it turns out when the work is finished the view from our kitchen window has only subtly changed. Through the leaves we can see sunlight now where there was none before and this is bound to stimulate something to spring into life. We can’t wait to see what it will be.

June is now giving us long dry sunny days in a seemingly endless supply. The solstice has arrived, a time of year when sunlight beams through our rear north-facing windows both in the early morning and throughout the evening. We live at a latitude where dusk, a long period of gradual light reduction which we know as ‘The Gloaming’, seems to last forever and where the darkness of night barely exists at all.

Ducky’s meanderings - 3

Perhaps it might have been more sensible had we, prior to setting out on this broadly clockwise trip around Scotland, researched likely campsites to see which were open and whether they suited our needs.

But sometimes leaving campsite selection to chance can be rather fun, adding spice to the whole caravanning experience. It is a gamble that could go wrong of course, leaving us trawling the streets late at night like homeless immigrants, but as things have turned out so far we have struck lucky, always finding pleasant sites or else quiet spots where we can just pull off the road. True, we did pay a £10 premium in Dunnet Bay because we are not part of the exclusive Caravan Club elite, and that did hurt a bit, but we made up for it two nights later by pulling off the single track road beside Loch Brora and sleeping for free (although Kate tells me that the owls were noisy – I was too busy sleeping to notice).

Dunnet Head being the most northerly point of the Scottish mainland, the only way for us now is south as we are saving the Orkneys for another day. So it is that we rumbled into Helmsdale, one of so many tiny east coast fishing ports to have sprung into being when the seas were full to bursting with herring.

Whilst refreshing ourselves in the Timespan cafe we discover a way to explore the town in an interesting way, on a waymarked tour, so off we set on foot. A little over half way round, at the harbour, we meet a man called Jim Mackay, something of a local attraction although not figuring at all in the leaflet we are carrying. There he is standing in the sun at his front door greeting us in Gaelic and before long we are being treated to snippets of his long life story and being shown photos of relatives from his Canadian past. We surmise that some 200 years ago his ancestors, crofters living in the valley of Strath Kildonan behind the coastal town, were being evicted as part of the Highland Clearances. Many crofters from this area travelled to Canada to seek a better life (one ending up as Canada’s prime minister) but many, like Jim’s family, later returned to Helmsdale to live. We have read about and seen evidence of the Clearances in the lonely ruins dotted about the glens everywhere we have travelled in Scotland - it is a shameful part of the history of this country when the urge for profit for a few tore apart a centuries old way of life for the many – and suddenly we are confronted by a living piece of this history who stops us at random for a chat. Full of character and good humour he charms us both and only very reluctantly do we eventually take our leave of this place.

Equally charming and enthusiastic is the holidaying French policeman we meet with his family at Portmahomack on the Dornoch Firth. What brings him to this remote spot we don’t find out but he seems delighted to find two people who both understand and can speak a little of his language, although his own spoken English is exceptionally good. We leave him so he can indulge himself at the nearby Glenmorangie distillery (ah yes, that is why he is there) then drive off to try our camp site searching luck along the Cromarty Firth.

Kate’s father was at one time stationed in the RAF at Evanton and fortune once again shines on us by guiding us to an excellent site here. Then no sooner have we staked our claim to a pitch when we spy a small sign saying ‘Forest Walk’ on the edge of the site, pointing towards the dense skyline of trees. Now as it happens these two words are something we invariably find irresistible, and especially when need to stretch our legs after a long drive, so after a quick spot of lunch, off we go again.

This forest, however, has an amazing surprise waiting for us just a short climb away.

 A geological anomaly seems to have caused the river flowing down from the hills to fall into a narrow chasm whose weakness the river then exploited by making it immensely deep without any significant broadening. Black Rock Gorge is the result, a natural phenomenon hidden away in dense forest just a short distance from us.

A wooden bridge built to enable walkers to cross from one side to the other, gives no impression of the chasm beneath until one is precisely half way across, when finally the narrow cleft below, leading apparently, into the bowels of the earth, opens up. Looking down, the vegetation on both sides is lush and green, right to the bottom where there is a glint of silver from the river as it rushes through far below. Here, hidden away modestly, is a tourist goldmine par excellence, reserved only for the few who venture forth in a disorganised fashion, taking in whatever comes their way. We know that by travelling about so randomly we must miss a lot but somehow this is compensated for by what we do discover, on our own, by following our instincts or our noses, helped only by serendipity.

Ducky’s meanderings - 2

How do you define’ ‘bad weather’?

In the mind of the manager of the Durness campsite, bad weather is when it is too windy for the ferry across the estuary to the Cape Wrath headland to operate, this being largely because the ferry is part of his small business empire, and no doubt a nice little tourism earner too. In many people’s eyes if you have come this far then the last few miles to Cape Wrath itself are almost essential, despite the headland being entirely devoted to the military so that there’ll be no stepping out to explore without someone in uniform shooting at you. So a windy day is bad news for some then.

Our van has been shuddering all night, buffeted from side to side and lashed with rain. However in the morning with the wind still howling, building in strength, when we finally peep our noses outside Ducky’s warm interior after our almost sleepless night we find the rain has stopped, the sky is blue and the sun beams down. So despite the fact that standing upright outside is a struggle and anything light enough to carry will fly off at speed downwind if let loose, to us this is good weather.

But we have had enough of the ‘windiest campsite in Britain’ and have resolved to find somewhere more sheltered for the night ahead as this promises to be equally windy, if not more so. Our eastward journey begins with an awe inspiring cliff-top drive which gives us views down onto golden sandy bays where the sea is a turquoise blue and the wave-tops are blown off into dazzling white mist.

The strength of the wind is quite staggering, but nothing prevents us from stopping to examine the ‘erratic’ perched on a hillock close beside our road. It may seem selfish but in some ways we are grateful that this wild place is not everybody’s cup of tea so we get to enjoy it without having to share the experience. The roads are almost empty of traffic (which is just as well as ‘A’ roads in this part of the world are single track) and the tourist season is barely underway anyway. Of course this can have its drawbacks too, as we discover when trying to find a site for the night ahead. Each village (Sutherland has no towns) we pass proudly advertises the facilities it offers, many boasting caravan and camping facilities to die for, but finding them proves impossible; they are either closed or too well hidden. At Talmine we are tempted away down a tiny lane by a large brown sign and discover an empty field, close by the sea, with a sign on the gate that reads ‘Site Full’. Our intelligence insulted we drive past and soon pull up beside the tiny village harbour to make ourselves comfortable for the night. We have everything we need on board so if our money is not needed through lack of enterprise then the loss is not ours.

From our own private site we gaze out across the Kyle of Tongue and watch the battle between the Atlantic swell rolling in around the headland and the fierce south-westerly wind coming down the Kyle. A mist hangs over the sea, fine spray being picked up from each wave crest, and a distant rainbow hovers above the horizon supporting an arch of clouds like some unearthly bridge. An obliging visitor cavorts in the sea close by so we can sit inside with our eyes glued to binoculars. Bird No.1 in our Pocket Guide is a Great Northern Diver, something of a rarity it seems, but one has chosen this spot to grab a bit of dinner while we cook ours. I always find it hard to understand how such small creatures can survive in what is to us such a hostile environment but he seems to spend more time beneath the waves than above, suggesting that his perception of the world is vastly different from ours. Oblivious to the wind above, his world is perhaps calmer and more predictable than ours.

Ducky’s meanderings - 1

Late one afternoon we pull off the road at a sign indicating forest walks and a public toilet, both of which seem like a good idea and together, even better. We are confident that a night spent here will be undisturbed since Scotland’s laws respect this behaviour, so long as we are doing no harm, so we follow the path which takes us downstream to another bridge then stroll back up again on the other bank as the evening sunlight slopes through the trees. After cooking up a meal in the car park we draw the curtains and sleep, with not a soul to disturb us.

Several days later and we stop at the Clachtoll campsite which nestles into the machair between a couple of rocky headlands. Jim Galway (not the flautist, the campsite manager) makes us feel welcome then invites us to a ceilidh later in the evening.

He plays the whistle with some skill but we think his namesake might just have the edge on him.

Clachtoll, meaning ‘cleft rock’, is an apt description of the formation visible from our campsite with a backdrop of the Coigach mountains we had explored earlier in the day. The rocks here are mudstone, more resistant to erosion than that name suggests, overlaying a bed of Lewisian gneiss, the oldest rocks found anywhere in the British Isles. Mudstone breaks into regular chunks, which made it a good building material for the ancient broch we set off to explore before cooking our evening meal.

The signs of earlier settlements are plain to see on the landscape, raised mounds across the grassy slopes showing clearly where farming once took place on ‘lazy-beds’, and of course there are more recent ruins everywhere, houses abandoned to the Highland clearances.

To get here, earlier in the day we had followed a minor road, the road to end all roads, that hugs the Inverpolly coastline as best it can through some incredible terrain. Shown only as a fine yellow line on our OS map it cuts through amazing scenery and for its entire length the road is barely wide enough to fit a vehicle like ours. In places there were rocks sticking out jaggedly to the right while a stone wall to the left tried to guard us from sliding off into the sea some distance below. Without a doubt Ducky is the largest vehicle one would want to drive along here and the experience was at times a little over-exciting. This thin, tortured, strip of tarmac between the settlement at Badnagyle and the village of Strathan ranks as the most enjoyable piece of road we have ever encountered and driven along. Breath-taking views appear around every turn, once we are skirting the edge of a small loch then next, twisting down a tree-filled river valley (the river being in spate) before turning another corner where tiny inlets cut into the splintered coastline.

It is best not to be in a hurry here for who knows whether another like-minded driver will appear around the next corner or when a meandering sheep will materialise in the middle of the road.

And all the while the sun shone for us while the breeze lifted rain clouds over our heads onto the mountains further inland. At Lochinver we took a break to recuperate in the heritage centre, one of the best we have seen, and particularly informative about the geological past of this area, the land having been shaped and re-shaped by ice of immense depth that once covered everything except the biggest summits. The scars left behind are everywhere to see and erratics, boulders transported on the ice and deposited on its melting, lie dotted about like lonely monoliths.

More meandering roads soon bring us to Durness, a place where the road turns east as the land runs out. There are fewer roads to choose from now so we might have seen the last of our tiny yellow twisting lanes for a while but we plan to spend a few days here so this doesn’t matter. Then the campsite manager delivers unsettling news about a spell of bad weather which would prevent us taking the small passenger ferry across the Kyle to visit Cape Wrath. This really does concern us since in this part of the world a local’s definition of  bad weather is inevitably going to be pretty extreme, by the standards of those of us from more southerly climes. What concerns us even more is that the campsite seems to offer no pitches which might offer any shelter from the south-westerly gale that is coming and the position we eventually choose feels exposed already even before the gale gets going. In the night that follows we are shaken from side to side as the wind roars around us while torrential wind-blown rain hammers away on the roof. Sleep comes in small parcels as the storm builds to its peak around three in the morning but bang on cue as forecast at seven the sun comes out in force, just like the night never happened.

Winter is over

I can say with some certainty at this moment that winter is over here in Scotland. The weather will deliver up its usual flavours of wind and rain, no doubt, but I can be confident that it will remain mild, perhaps unseasonably so, right through until summer takes hold. How do I know this? Well because in our living room we have now have a wood-burning stove providing lots of warmth to the house and an embarrassment of hot water too.

All winter we waited for the moment when the big white van would stop outside our door and Robert the stove fitter would stagger in the door with the heavy steel beast to begin the installation. All through the coldest months, the gales and storms, the floods, the hail, we sat on the sofa and warmed our hands before an imaginary fire, wishing we could have a real one before winter ended, but our prayers going unanswered. Nothing we could think of doing would bring it to us any quicker, no magic words, no strategy nor financial incentive. We had placed our order and just had to wait our turn, wait for this moment to arrive. All this time we knew we could be certain of just one thing; that it would happen eventually. And so it did, just as the weather warmed. But fortunately we live in a place where the first signs of spring are accompanied by chilly afternoons and nights so our new acquisition does add the sudden benefit to our lives that we’d expected. And thus it is that I find myself slipping into the morning routine of clearing the ash, laying the paper and kindling in joyful expectation of the afternoon or evening to come when I can strike a match and watch the flames spread.

Rather than become too single-minded, however, for some weeks now we have been hatching another plan; to load up Ducky with provisions and head off northwards, in the general direction of the North Pole. A brief glance at a map reveals that there is a sizable chunk of Scotland that sits between us and the Arctic Ocean and it is this that we are keen to explore, right up to the very edge of the last piece of  land. So we abandon Carradale one wet morning, after taking fresh food parcels from house to campervan, stuffing warm clothes into cupboards and filling water containers to the brim, then just turn north along the edge of Kintyre and keep going.

The heavy overnight rain still falls as we charge through deep puddles which drench every inch of the van with mud-stained spray and it still falls heavily as we lurk in the car park outside Oban’s Lidl. But no sooner have we finished our shopping, stocking up on Campo Largo baked beans and Crusti Croc paprika flavoured crisps like we hadn’t seen a Lidl for months (which is true), when suddenly the clouds part and the sun shines down. In the blinking of an eye Scotland performs the magic trick we love, winter becomes spring, rain becomes shine, dark becomes light, wet becomes dry. My dark glasses are resting on my nose once more as I gaze out at Mull’s looming peaks across a sparkling sea. Ah yes, this is why we left our lovely new stove behind.

We do not intend to travel quickly as there is much to see along the way, loads of scenery to take in, so when I write the words “250 miles later” it needs to be said that nearly three days have elapsed since leaving home. We move along at a gentle pace.

But as it happens just 250 miles distant by road from Carradale (Ducky choosing to use imperial measurements) there is a mountainous chunk of rock going under the name Stac Pollaigh (which is pronounced ‘stack polly’). It stands 613 metres (according to our metrified map) above sea level and 549 metres above the car park that lies just below. More than thirty years ago when I visited this part of Sutherland I charged up Stac Pollaigh, as I was wont to do in those days when a summit looked as though it needed to be conquered, then danced along the summit’s rocky ridge, before galloping all the way down again and driving off somewhere else. I made a promise, as do so many others who climb this iconic hill, that I would one day return.

Which explains why Kate and I find ourselves in assault mode tackling the steep path which winds its way to the top, not alone, but in the company of both old and young, first timers and old hands like me, many of whom are also returning for the first time in thirty years. The summit’s very proximity to a road as well as its isolated position in the landscape make it into a ‘must do’ climb that traps many who come this way. It is just that sort of place.

It turns out to be a windy climb, the air cooling noticeably for each upward step we take, and we are not disposed to hang about on the summit ridge nor indeed dance along it. The strength of the wind makes this unwise. Instead we find a little shelter and wolf down the cream cakes that have made the ascent in my backpack, before pointing ourselves downhill again. With little warning a rain squall chooses this moment to attack and what seemed like an easy path becomes somewhat trickier as the wind tries to pluck us off the hill. Within minutes we are drenched to the skin and thoroughly chilled but away to the west we can see a line of blue sky so this is where we head, knowing we’ll be dry again in minutes once the rain stops. Scottish weather never disappoints.

Job done!

My original plan for refurbishment of the kitchen was to start at the top, the ceiling, and work downwards via the kitchen units until all that was left to install was a new floor covering. Very soon, however, I realised that this was the wrong way to go about things and some time later it dawned upon me that kitchens have their own sequence of tasks, and that this is one of the special secrets known only to professional installers.

In the six week journey I have just completed during which our new kitchen has risen from the ashes of what once was, many of those special secrets have magically revealed themselves to me despite my non-professional status. Our cupboard doors, for example, each of which required the accurate drilling of two holes for the handle, now all look identical because I had a spare Breton Chartplotter, a clear plastic device whose purpose is known to navigators of small ships, which I was prepared to sacrifice in order to make up a template so that the position of the screw holes was replicated on each door.

When it came to the electrical connections for the central heating boiler, the programmer and the thermostat these required a complicated wiring junction box, the mysteries of which only became clear after extensive research on the Internet. Discovering this special secret took time but I now have the satisfaction of knowing where each cable leads and what its purpose is, knowledge which I suspect is deliberately withheld from most human beings for health and safety reasons.

When it came to tiling the walls I was on more familiar ground as my expertise in this area has been tested before. As it happens I can tile in both French and English having a few years ago spent some weeks tiling a new floor just outside Lyon chez our friends Guy and Noëlle. In our kitchen only English was needed although there were other words spoken from time to time when a tile didn’t quite break according to plan. Looking back, had it occurred to me in advance that shaping large tiles around kitchen units, powerpoints and worktops meant that so few could be fitted without cutting I may have never started at all but this particular special secret only emerged into the light of day once the job was well underway.

I now realise now, of course, that a bottom to top approach to refurbishment works best in kitchens and by the time I had finished putting up the shiny white ceiling panels, running up and down a ladder for hours on end, the whole job was done. Suddenly my urge to get going on the next task has nowhere left to push me and I feel a strange sense of guilt at my own laziness.

Alongside this I must confess to a sense of achievement at having negotiated so many pitfalls to finish the job to a standard I am happy with. I may never fit another kitchen again so if this one stands forever as a testament to my skills then at least I am not ashamed of it. It also has one rather novel feature that you will not find in most kitchens. The forest mural came from an idea we had to cover a rather untidy wall with something spectacularly eye-catching. It is visible only from within but mirrors the world outside our doors so perfectly that we just love it!