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.