Another helping of Mull

We have been reading the blog of our friends Kyle and Maryanne who have been travelling across Scotland on their catamaran Footprint. Moving east through the Caledonian canal they experience the same weather as us whilst taking in the breathtaking Caledonian Canal scenery that we enjoyed last year. Their account has much detail of their day to day lives living aboard the boat whilst travelling about, reflecting our own existence.

They talk of the 'luxury' of a hire car taken for a day so they could visit some places that might otherwise be difficult to get to, a telling comment in this car-mad age when most people would not regard the car as any sort of a luxury. We recently did the same thing on Mull, hired a car for a day so that we could see as much of the island as we wanted with the advantage of being able to stop as we pleased when something caught the eye. (It is worth adding that car hire, like many other aspects of life here, is handled in a casual way. 'You say you've had no accidents or convictions so that's fine by me...').

Our day proved to be sunny and cool but clear and £35 well spent. It was one of those rare days when the air positively gleams and you feel you can reach out and touch objects twenty miles or more away. In total we drove about 100 miles which, to anyone who knows Mull, is something of an achievement.

 Apart from one short section along the shore between Craignure and Salen, Mull's roads, despite being used by the island's regular bus services, are wide enough only for one vehicle. Frequent passing places and basic politeness make it all work, that and a general lack of haste. Few of our car's five forward gears saw use.

Every so often there is a sign encouraging one to visit 'standing stones', inarticulate lumps of rock placed upright on the land many years ago, with no explanation left for those of us who follow. No amount of imagination can visualise what the land was like at the time they were erected and sadly the true shape of the land is now lost to view. Certainly a clearing in the middle of a stand of pine trees, attractive though it is in feeding light down onto the stones today, would not have existed at the time.

In a heritage exhibition centre near Dervaig there are painstakingly excellent models showing what the stone and iron age dwellings might have looked like with information on how it is thought people lived. There is little here to explain the standing stones but models of the 'black' houses, so called not because of the wood smoke which perpetually filled the chimneyless interior but because of the similarity in pronunciation between the Gaelic words for 'black' and 'thatched', give a clear impression of hardships people lived under. Such apparent poverty left no room for sympathy from the landowners, both English and Scottish, who in the 18th and 19th centuries evicted so many people from these lands so that intensive sheep farming could be introduced. Who can imagine what Mull would be like today had these events not occurred.

One highlight of the day was a visit to Carsaig on the Ross of Mull, the southern peninsula that points westward towards Iona. Here we left the car and took a walk under the same thousand foot cliffs that we sailed past last summer. The geology of this whole area is amazing. You get basalt columns mixed with volcanic and sedimentary rocks, some of which are crammed with ancient sea shells, sharp edges of ancient mussels and limpets still sticking out.

Above us were wild goats living in the tiny strip of land between the sea and the cliff, most of which slopes at forty-five degrees, and then higher still the golden eagles soar. There are supposed to be more than 100 of these creatures living on Mull so they are not an uncommon sight. They just float about effortlessly looking more like small aeroplanes than birds. Crows and seagulls will fly up and mob them, but cautiously and with no great effect. They are top predators here and they know it.

Back in Oban after a very cold but delightful sail back along the Sound of Mull we reassess our lethargy and lack of willingness to do more exploring around these islands. This is not a comfortable time of year to be sailing here. When the sun does shine the air can be clear and bright but a cold wind is a heavy wind, or so it feels, and bold exploring is often only rewarded by a night of worry over whether the anchor will hold.

With this is mind, and it being Kate's birthday as well, my proposal to take the Calmac ferry out to Barra in the Outer Hebrides seems to have gone down rather well. Someone else can take charge of the navigation on the five-hour crossing whilst we relax cozily inside. More on this trip will follow.

Twelve months into retirement

From her winter home in Oban we moved Cirrus Cat first to Loch Aline, or Loch Alainn as it is known locally then on to Tobermory on Mull, making use of the new genoa to sail into a brisk south-westerly then into a wild northerly wind, the sail pulling us along at over 7 knots when the sea was flat enough. We still have a lot to learn on how to handle a sail this powerful. Kate expressed some disappointment at the absence of dolphins or seals on our journey but I guess it is just too early in the year for them to show themselves. This time last year we were just setting out on the adventure we call 'retirement', not really knowing what was in store for us. Kate's diaries place Cirrus in the South East of England, at Gillingham Marina in the Medway, and us visiting our friends near Sittingbourne before last minute shopping and casting off to go north.

Reflecting on all we have done in the last twelve months we realise that we have still to complete our original ambition of circumnavigating the UK.

Events late last year cut short this plan and left us 'stuck' here in the Western Isles instead of smugly secure in some West Country creek and although this is something we have always seen as a positive - it has given us much longer here than we expected - we feel in some ways we still have a mission to accomplish. It is early to be sailing this far north, very few boats venture out this early for very good reasons - it can be cold and the weather unpredictable. We will wait for the weather to come right before venturing forth but before long we'll be looking for northerly winds to blow us southwards again.

At the first opportunity we have taken ourselves off into the hills for a spot of walking, just to take in the ambiance that is uniquely Scottish. Lichen drapes from the branches of trees giving them a grey-bearded look and higher up we caught a distant glimpse of two roe deer just at the same moment they spotted us. Not being able to smell us they seemed unconcerned and casually ignored our presence.

We were walking beside Loch Aline looking for, and soon finding, Tennyson's Waterfall where a small mountain stream drops some 20 metres into a natural amphitheatre ringed by a line of brown cliffs. Some of the stones here are soft and green in colour, and the cliff being undercut it is possible to walk behind the screen of water and look out at the view across the Sound to the Isle of Mull in the distance. Of course, Kate just had to risk the cold shower to get here. Her feet would already have been wet because the one thing almost guaranteed about walking in Scotland is wet feet. The ground often has a sort of bounce to it, the moss and the tussocks of grass lying over peat bog or hiding marshy areas into which the feet sink ankle deep.

On a completely different topic, just a few weeks ago we were held up in the UK by the effects of industrial action affecting air travel - in our case it was the French air traffic controllers. Am I the only person to see the irony in the present massive disruption to air travel caused by the Icelandic volcano, just weeks after the end of latest of the strikes here in the UK? Surely the great god of the skies must be thinking 'You call that disruption.... I'll show you disruption!'.

Homecoming Scotland

We are back in Scotland. And before going any further I must repeat the words we have heard now from two separate sources about last winter here in Oban. I quote word for word and they both said, 'It's been a great winter'. This might sound a strange way to describe a long period of intense cold, plenty of fierce gales and more rain than runs off the back of your average duck in a year. But then this is the Western Isles, a place where many people live through choice and without any illusions about what the weather can do. The ferryman taking us across Oban Bay to the Isle of Kerrera put it best when he said 'It's just weather, after all'.

So what was last winter's qualification for being 'great'? Apparently it was the frequent sunny days, short though they were, and relative absence of cloud. It has been very cold here and when the mercury hangs around minus eight for too long then the sea starts to freeze over - we have heard tales of boats crunching though a skin of ice on their way to the island - but this sort of thing does not make for a bad winter up here. Our friends Tony and Joyce, who lived all winter in the marina on board their lovely wooden yacht, told us they wandered ashore for the New Year barbeque festivities but once the New Year was in and the echoes of ships' sirens had faded away they scuttled back below decks again. It was minus ten degrees after all and the chill from the light breeze that had spring up made it just too cold to hang around. But still it was 'great'.

Our first slice of the glory of the place came as we journeyed north from Glasgow on the bus. This three hour trip must qualify as the best way to spend £5 known to civilised man, especially when the sun is casting its longest shadows across the hills and valleys. Setting off at 6pm we travelled the whole journey in what the Scots call the gloaming, that extended period of twilight found in these higher latitudes, across a landscape that although predominantly brown, was full of many shades and textures of the hue. There was last year's bracken (tan coloured) lying amongst tussocks of grass (straw coloured) all barely recovered from the crush of snow. There were brown trees just beginning to think about making leaves and there were acres of heather which hasn't even started at all.

 
The water in the lochs was a deep brown too although it was the splashes of silver and gold reflected from the low sun that most caught the eye. The amazing roadside scenery from Loch Lomond to Mull gave us the most spectacular 'Welcome Home' we could have wished for. And this was just the start.

We have been fortunate indeed to bring high pressure with us to Scotland, sunny skies and light winds which have raised the temperature far above its seasonal norm. As I write the Western Isles are the warmest part of the UK, hotter even than what we left behind on the Italian Riviera! And the sun has brought the gorse bursting into flower, filling the air with its exotic coconut fragrance. Yes, coconut.

Over in the marina, Cirrus Cat has been well looked after in our absence. Our belongings are all safe and dry and the new genoa, ordered last September and sewn impeccably together during the coldest months of the year, fits the boat snugly, an excellent example of the sailmaker's skill.

We can hardly believe our fortune as we gaze about us.

Hedgerows and landscapes

On our journey north away from the spring of northern Italy we pause briefly to experience the same season just emerging in southern England. The buds here are swelling in the hedgerows, making this contrivance one of the most remarkable of man's creations. Some examples are nearly as ancient as human habitation; take a 30 metre length of hedge and its age in years can be roughly determined by multiplying the number of species by 110. Hawthorn and holly, beech and hazel, chestnut and alder plus so many more we cannot identify are all constrained together in a narrow corridor only an arm span wide which can stretch for many miles across the countryside. These are highways of life and they are as common here as they are absent from the land we have just left.

We stay for a few of days with friends, deep in Kentish farmland in their timber-framed cottage. From the back window we gaze out past the magnolia tree into a cherry orchard, home to magpies, woodpeckers, several tawny owls, the odd pheasant and many rabbits. A flock of rare-breed sheep, black with white faces (as if part of a photographic negative) are allowed to roam here in order to keep the grass trimmed and this gives a tidy aspect to the place, tidiness being a word that I have always felt applied to the countryside in this corner of Britain. In front gardens there is scarcely a hedge that is not trimmed, a lawn that is not cut or a shrub that is not pruned to within an inch of its life and this sense of order is somehow carried out into the farmland as well.

The land here appears almost flat (until you start walking when you soon realise it isn't) and the skyline is at eye level, decorated with trees, currently bare of leaves with their twisted branches exposed and cold. The English country cottage, black timbers intersecting white plaster, is what we think of when we use the phrase 'old house', just as in Italy it is a tall dwelling built of large, irregular stones, often plastered in yellow and connected in a cluster with others on a steep mountainside. The age of the dwelling in each country may well be similar but the view through the window can never be the same. In Italy the horizon is visible only by tilting the head back uncomfortably and raising the eyes heavenwards. The contrast between Kent and Ligurian Italy could not be more vivid.

Our friends' house, once three adjoining farm-workers cottages, is a now complex mix of dark beams and interesting corners, all tastefully decorated and with the conveniences of modern living blended neatly in. The positions of the walls between each of the former dwellings are still visible but these do not intrude or appear out of place. Wooden beams are 'original' which means that many have had a previous life somewhere else before being incorporated in the structure, perhaps in another house or maybe a ship. Look closely and you will find curious notches and grooves everywhere or a round hole with the remains of a wooden peg sticking out. Let the imagination wander and you'll see a mast standing here, a rope holding back a cannon or a hammock swinging.

These few days are a pause for for breath, a time for re-acclimatisation and relaxation in comfortable surroundings before we return to the Scotland we love so much.

Time travellers

Clocks forward, clocks back, lose an hour then gain it again somewhere over the English Channel. Up at the crack of dawn with suitcases piled into my brother's car which then overheats, grinding to a halt on the autoroute somewhere above Monaco. Frantic telephone calls to Guy whose enormous 4x4 sweeps us up from the roadside to get us to the airport on time.

Arrive dazed in a cold, damp Britain then drive to Yeovil to re-unite with our three sons but it's another early start the next day to return our airport hire car. Colder than ever now (we have gone rapidly from a balmy spring in Italy to the wet and windy five degrees of a prolonged English winter) we struggle to cope with the time changes, the driving on the left and the very Englishness of an Indian restaurant meal.

Once again the complexities of our travel arrangements baffle our friends but we are used to this by now. What we hadn't expected was to feel like alien invaders in the familiar landscape of south east Britain where the language is one we understand but don't expect to hear and the customs often seem strangely pointless. We are back in the land of green lawns and nodding daffodils where narrow hedges border narrower lanes and bare trees scrape the sky. It all takes our breath away; we gape like tourists.

We board a train without 'composting' the ticket (when we first came upon this term in France we thought it might be a green initiative to re-cycle the paper from which the ticket is made) and we cross roads crowded with cars that look over-inflated, too large for the inhabitants who drive them and far larger than those most Italians drive. We re-encounter the grey suit still favoured by commuting office workers yet search in vain for the extravagant fur coats so favoured by Italian women. Soft Mediterranean brogue shoes have been replaced by the deck shoe and the trainer and once again we can buy a sweatshirt without some meaningless English phrase like 'Yatching Fitness' emblazoned on it. And where is the breakfast cereal, 'Teddy's Hit', when you need it?

Finally as we re-acquaint ourselves with the windy dampness of the air we must also get used to the absence of church bells, here ringing only to summon the faithful to Sunday prayers and silent in the early hours of the morning for fear of disturbing the Englishman's sleep.

We have returned to a country that is both familiar and strange, comforting because of what we recognise as commonplace yet full of strange sights and odd behaviours that we now know are uniquely British.