Weather windows

As they tend to, the latest storm has moved on elsewhere for the moment and as I write, the air has calmed down just a little back in Scotland.

We know this because even whilst away the Internet gives us access to the Campbeltown webcam which has survived the big storm to give us this lovely shot of the Christmas lights coming on behind the harbour. Unlike a few days ago when the surface of Campbeltown Loch was being picked up and thrown about by the wind, rain spotting the camera lens, now twinkling lights are being reflected off the water and the boats are looking snug and safe.

Meanwhile, in Worthing we gaze at the sunset from the window of our Tony’s flat, not a million miles from Kintyre but a rather different skyline to the one we are used to, the one which often has eagles glaring at us from the skies above who I often imagine to be drooling at the sight of prey they see far beneath them.

Worthing has a large population of very large gulls which soar overhead then swoop down on chip-wrapper leavings before settling on the rooftops at night. There is also a large elderly population here, not that dissimilar from Carradale really, but here they must be generally less mobile as so many of them are rampaging around the streets in their electric wheelchairs, bouncing up and down the kerbs and risking life and limb crossing busy streets. There are so many of these contrivances that a booming sale and repair market has spring up, bringing new life to the business community. I can’t make out whether it is just my imagination but it seems that a rider’s grim face always appears along with the whining sound of a mobility scooter. Perhaps one should not underestimate the degree of coordination required to pilot one of these chariots, steered as they are via the smallest of joysticks and for an elderly person not brought up on the wonders of Playstation or the Xbox, guiding this machine around pedestrianized streets must represent a significant challenge. So the serious face may be nothing more than concentration, with a touch of blind panic thrown in. I do wonder, however, whether the faces might also be reflecting our disapproval, as if we, the able-bodied, make the rider feel they are doing something antisocial, as if we are saying “You are a menace to us all on that thing!” or “Surely you’re fit enough to be walking!” Perhaps it is just that society hasn’t quite made the adjustment to accept this relatively new form of transport as a part of our lives. Perhaps the first person to ride on a horse also had a grim set to their features that were misinterpreted by those around them.

From Tony’s place we move on to Ticehurst to visit my mother, herself of a venerable age but as yet not having succumbed to the mobility scooter. She has always been a good walker, striding along towing others in her wake, and few people in her own age group have ever been able to keep up with her. Approaching ninety now she complains at her failing faculties but she still wants to get out and about in the countryside whenever she can. It frustrates her that she cannot do this as often as she likes and wintry weather in particular cramps her style. She has made the right choice in living in the most benign corner of the country, weather-wise, a place where rainfall generally comes in fitful sprinkles or sometimes not at all and wind barely ruffles the hair.

Or so we thought…

Yet another of those bizarre Met Office overlaid maps with their threatening amoeba-like blobs of colour tells the story of wind and rain for the next few days. It seems we just cannot escape, no matter where we go. We now need to time our journey home so as to slide between the yellow growths as they shuffle across the country, not an easy thing to achieve. Somewhere in the past, before the advent of amoeba-covered charts, we would have set off blindly and got home safely without the stress that comes from worrying about where the predicted rainstorm is going to strike or when the forecast wind will carry us away. Are we really better off today with the help of all this information?

In the end our journey home proved far more acceptable than the forecast led us to expect. Some rain showers did find us and there was some wind but somehow we managed to avoid anything really nasty. Back here in Scotland the landscape has changed in our absence but our house has survived whatever has been thrown at it whilst we were away. Only the windows bear testament to the storm, spattered as they are with a salty residue, a little bit of Atlantic Ocean transported across Kintyre, no doubt.

We have barely recovered from our journey but can’t wait to get out and about so we can see what effect the onset of winter has had. There are white tops on all the summits now and with ice on the path up Deer Hill, some care is needed.

Whilst tradition dictates that we bring a tree inside the house at this time of year, it wasn’t difficult to find a suitable one outside for this picture… and the halo on top came free. So we wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2012.

And regards from Ailsa too.

Storm warnings

Once again we are putting ourselves through the torment of a seemingly endless car journey the length of Britain, our legs going stiff from sitting in the car for so long, our eyes straining to see through the spray picked up from the motorway surface and atomised in front of us, our arms aching from hanging onto the steering wheel shuffling it from side to side.

Can there be anyone left in this country who derives any pleasure from driving long distances on our roads… apart from Jeremy Clarkson, that is?

The day before we set off the ‘Rest-and-be-Thankful’ pass on the A83 between Inverary and Tarbet was blocked by a landslip, as it frequently is in winter, this time the steep slope beside the road being made unstable by the vast quantities of rain we have been experiencing of late. Minutes before we arrived there the road was again pelted by hail but despite this we did get through safely and by the time we were on the motorway heading south on the outskirts of Glasgow we thought we were through the worst. Then one of the black-edged clouds hovering up in the sky, stuffed to bursting with snow, caught us by surprise, determined as it was to empty its load on the M74 before we could get away. The sky darkens, an icy wind whips up and our wheels are soon making dark tracks through a white blanket covering the road surface. We can tell though that this is more sleet than proper snow as the flakes are splattering wetly on our windscreen (proper snowflakes are lighter so they don’t actually touch the windscreen, they are buffeted away on the wedge of compressed air which rides just ahead, skimming over the roof of the car) but still the lower portion of each car and lorry disappears into spray and our wipers sweep great blobs of sticky white stuff aside. We push on into the maelstrom for fifteen minutes or so until we see light in the sky ahead and we know we have survived the worst the cloud can do. The air warms a little now and we emerge into a dryer world, one just beyond the reach of the cloudburst.

But we still have many miles to travel, we are just starting out, and there are plenty of other clouds up there with our names etched on them so we plod on hour after hour, stopping now and again for coffee, switching places in the car, then back on the road again.

We stop for one night in Coventry then journey onwards to Worthing in Sussex the next day. It is here that our mission takes place, helping to install Tony, our eldest, into a new apartment. Our little yellow car is being used to transport more than just us. Somehow we have managed to squeeze a table and four chairs in through the rear door together with inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags for us to use until we are able to fit out the apartment properly. On arrival there is much to be done to ensure Tony can live there worry-free. We get to meet his neighbours, learn to navigate ourselves to the nearest shops, install his personal effects then take a break to visit son Mike in Yeovil, part of a round tour of our scattered family.

Out of interest, when we are away we like to check on what the weather is doing back home on Kintyre, just to see what we are missing out on. When the south coast of England does receive severe weather the locals make a big fuss over it, going on about how unusual it is, how many years since this temperature or that rainfall. For those of us living on the west coast of Scotland, severe weather is more the norm and what we class as exceptional is more extreme than most people have the stomach for. Kate and I reserve the term ‘exciting’ for these events and when we check with the Met Office we see immediately that just such an exciting event is winding itself up over our area of Scotland. Their colour-coded severe weather warnings overlaid on the map of Britain tell us that the central belt of Scotland, which stretches from Campbeltown to Edinburgh, is being blasted by a storm of truly magnificent proportions. Since moving to Carradale we have already experienced several of these storms and we have great confidence in our ‘wee hoosy’ in its ability to stand up to storms of this severity. Being so far away when this one hits means that things are completely outside our control anyway but nevertheless it still leaves us with a feeling of disquiet. There will almost certainly be a path of destruction carved across Scotland in fallen trees and damaged roofs and this time all we can do is take comfort in the thought that if we were at home then there would be little we’d be able to do either, apart from lose sleep listening to the wind howling past outside.

Rhonadale ramble

It takes no more than a dry day with maybe the promise of some sunshine to get us pulling on the walking shoes, making up some sandwiches and planning some sort of a walk.

We must remember though that it is winter now and the shorter days mean we need to take things more seriously – spare clothing, a torch, hats and gloves travel with us now.

Rhonadale had in fact been winking at us for some time; we were just waiting for the right weather. Sufficiently close to seem easy, sufficiently far away to be a challenge, this roundabout tour of the Carradale glen would take us on a hillside traverse broadly following the border between the forest and the lush farmland that has brought people to this place for so many centuries. But first, a small lesson in terminology. We live in Carradale, one of a number of ‘dales’ in this area of Scotland, a place where one might expect the word ‘glen’ to be more normally used. We have the Norsemen who once lived here to thank for this since the King of Norway once ruled the Scottish Western Isles and left more than his DNA to the generations that followed. Locals today tend to ignore the tautology and refer to the broad green valley through which the twisting tongue of Carradale Water flows as ‘Carradale Glen’, as if the Norsemen had never set foot here at all, but we who walk here for the first time try to visualise the place as it might have once been, wild and largely untamed.

The Forestry roads allow us to complete a circuit of the valley without excessive height gain or loss but at the cost of some considerable mileage as these roads follow every contour of the land. Much of the timber here shows the results of recent gales which have battered the area, fallen timber lying untouched and showing clearly the direction the wind followed. Above the treetops though, the cleared land is providing a habitat for the Peregrine Falcon, several of which we could see soaring above us, scanning the land for small birds which are their main prey. We are fascinated to watch their tail feathers which in soaring flight are held tight together then they are suddenly fanned out to act as a brake when they need to slow down or change direction. This is the speed-freak of the animal kingdom whose 200 mph dives give their prey little chance.

By contrast another raptor, the buzzard, has a hunting strategy which is quite sedate, even lazy. I photographed this one squatting on a bare tree at the back of our house, just sitting there waiting for lunch to amble beneath him.

After some miles our forest road comes to an end without warning leaving us no option but to trek across recently felled woodland, a difficult and dangerous undertaking, to reach the farm below us from where we can cross Carradale Water over one of its few bridges. ‘Off-piste’ walking is not easy anywhere around where we live and progress slows as we stumble through the mesh of fallen branches and stumps, slipping and sliding, until finally we are alongside the barbed-wire fence which protects the forest from incursion by sheep. Clambering over (there is no other option) we are now on rough moorland and can descend rather more easily to Brackley Farm in the valley bottom. It slowly dawns on us though that we have only now arrived at our furthest point from home and our legs are already complaining, quiet murmurings of discontent which become louder with each step.

The sun at last emerges from cloud cover but lies low above the hills, casting long shadows though still warming our faces as we march homeward. We realise, as we contemplate the distance we still have to go, that with this walk we might have bitten off a little more than we realised, more than we were prepared for. Our legs shout more and more loudly with each step. Aches and pains brought on initially by the netball and badminton we have recently each begun playing in the Village Hall reappear now and resolve themselves into thigh-stabbing twinges as we progress homewards.

Perhaps it was too much to expect that we would simply be able to pick up the sport where we left off so many years ago and not suffer the consequences.

But all the aches are forgotten when Kate spots these gorgeous specimens on the roadside verge, a tiny white cap, barely half an inch (two centimetres) tall, peeping through a bed of moss.

Then another fungus, blue and spiky edged, almost hidden amongst the leaf debris and grass and growing out of something decaying beneath.

Somehow we find the energy to open our front door and run a hot bath to drop our legs into to ease the aches and pains. Not for the first time we reflect on the pleasure we get from pushing our bodies around the mountains of our land. Many years ago when I used to come north to Scotland with friends to romp over the mountains around Glencoe we used to have a saying, ‘Pain is pleasure’, a strange way of expressing the joy we all felt after a good day on the hills.

Remember, remember...

On the 13th April 1570 a couple living in York, England, gave birth to a son who in later life was to attempt to alter forever the course of history of his country, a man who in failing to do just that ultimately achieved immortality, for his name if not for himself. Sadly, perhaps, he was to die a few months before his thirty-sixth birthday without ever knowing that sometime in the future his name would come so readily to the lips of every English man and woman and that his deeds would be celebrated each year with a festival of fire, fireworks and fun. I refer, of course, to Guy Fawkes, or Guido as he liked to be known, a man who became famous for failing, in 1605, to set off a charge of gunpowder beneath the Palace of Westminster in London.

Guy Fawkes may have been unknown until the moment of his downfall but what is clear from recent events is that he is making a comeback today in the shape of masks being worn in cities all over the world by protesters in need of anonymity. His stylized face has become an international symbol for rebellion and were it not for the manner in which his body was disposed of (quartered and distributed to the four corners of the kingdom) one might be fearful of him turning in his grave at the thought of the royalties he is missing out on.

Having both been brought up with ‘Guy Fawkes Night’ as a part of our lives, Kate and I arrive at the first November of our life in Scotland with little understanding of the significance of this event to the people who now live around us and to others like them who live in the more northern parts of the kingdom. One has to delve into history a little to understand and appreciate that it was only two years before the gunpowder plot, in 1603, that King James VI of Scotland acceded to the English throne thus also becoming King James I of England, immediately announcing his intention to unite the two realms and give birth to the concept of Great Britain as we know it today. Guy Fawkes, as well as being a fanatical Catholic, had no love for the Scots and it was his and his fellow conspirators’ intention to assassinate the king (together with most of his government) and place the king’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, on the throne instead. Fawkes’ capture, trial and execution are now amongst the most well documented of historical events and almost from the moment of his death Londoners were being encouraged by Act of Parliament to celebrate the king’s close escape by lighting bonfires, a custom that continues to this day even if the cause being celebrated is lost in time.

The union of England and Scotland might have been in the mind of King James but at the time it was far from popular elsewhere in either country so despite his intentions it was not until 1st May 1707, in the reign of Queen Anne, that full union between the two countries finally came into being. All this is water under the bridge now, of course, but with an understanding of the historical perspective it is far easier to understand why the story surrounding Guy Fawkes is less likely to be celebrated here in Scotland. At the time of the plot the two countries may have been separate ‘states’ but most who lived in Scotland would have regarded the goings on of an absent and far from popular monarch down south in London as largely irrelevant.

All this having been said the village of Carradale is not slow to seize an opportunity to light a celebratory bonfire or to set off a few fireworks. We don’t need the excuse of a close escape from assassination for this, merely a group of schoolchildren with home-made lanterns keen to venture out in the dark in the safe company of the rest of the village.

The stars had been blazing away in the clear sky for some hours by the time the participants were all gathered at the primary school, lanterns were lit and held aloft, then the skirl of the pipes announced the start of the procession across the village to the playing field where things were starting to get underway. An enormous pile of wooden pallets, kindly donated by Jewsons, was soon alight and we were queuing for hot soup just as the pipes started again, this time to coincide with a spectacular firework display, funded courtesy of the Kintyre Windfarm Trust. There may have been some English people present who looked expectantly for the effigy atop the bonfire but somehow this was not necessary for the occasion and the absence of Guy Fawkes took away nothing at all from the event. Maybe we were just celebrating the beginning of the winter season – who cares anyway.

Despite the cold of the night we felt bathed in warmth from the company of villagers like us who have chosen to make this place their home. When we finally steered ourselves the short distance back home, half a moon was staring at us from above, lighting our way like a searchlight though hiding the galaxy of stars behind it. The air was still and it was quiet once more, the wildlife going back to sleep again, glad it was all over for another year.

Windows too

Our lives in Carradale have been brightened by changes to our house, alterations we never expected to have done so quickly. This is largely due to us being used to a world where engaging tradesmen is a slow process, where even getting someone to come round and estimate can be tiresome and from there onwards you are forever waiting for the call that tells you they are about to start. In our part of Scotland we are discovering that things happen rather differently.

Without fail, all our tradesmen have been enthusiastic workers who turn up on time then just get on with the job, barely even stopping for a cup of tea. Sometimes the only indication that they have arrived has been the thump of their ladder on the roof while we are still struggling to wake up. It seems the only impediment to their work is the weather but this has to be pretty grim by most people’s standards before they stop working and take shelter.

Windows now fitted into our sloping roof at the back of the house transform the landing at the top of our stairs and the new window in our ‘Tiny Room’, our spare bedroom or workroom, creates a bright room where before there was darkness as well as giving us a fresh view out from the back of the house. Alex, Willie and Jim all worked impressively hard in atrocious conditions, a cold wind blasting in from the west bringing with it showers liberally sprinkled with hailstones - and this was the better of the two days! It has to be admitted that before everything could be made watertight there was some slight ingress of water but this is not a big issue – we sailors are used to this. The new room is Kate’s room, a place where she is safe in the knowledge that she can spread out her ‘personal things’ there without fear of interference from any of my ‘man-related’ things. My collection of these, drill, angle-grinder, bits of pipe, etc., are currently migrating towards the garden shed.

Just for the moment though we have to park our re-organisational skills as we are prompted by our diary to embark on a long journey south in our own car, its first venture outside Scotland and indeed its very first contact with a motorway.

Although Kate and I share the driving, a distance like this is something of a challenge for our small car. However we decide that using it will enable us to make visits to our scattered family without having to put too much thought into the planning so ‘Daffy’ is duly loaded up and off we go.

After an overnight stop in Leicester we are soon deep in the Hampshire countryside looking for a yurt [a portable, bent wood-framed dwelling structure] in which we spend three nights celebrating the birthday and retirement of our friend Gerry. Our yurt was called ‘Beechy’ and was one of six similar ones nestling in the Meon Valley that twenty-four of us honoured friends occupied for the weekend. This was a new experience for all of us but we were pleasantly surprised by the cosy interior and once the wood-burning stove was alight it was amazingly warm. The whole weekend was superbly organised by Gerry’s husband Rich in his own inimitable style, convivially relaxing, a great time spent in the company of many new friends, a few old ones and a dog called Sam.

Everyone, except Sam, contributed to the catering arrangements which meant that we fed and watered ourselves well, perhaps a little too well, and the weather was kind to us too, a blast of warm continental air arriving just as we did and not a drop of rain falling on us.

The same could not be said of our return journey to Scotland, however, during which at times we found ourselves navigating almost blind along heavily trafficked roads hidden under dense clouds of spray. The previous day whilst stuck for hours in almost stationary traffic on the M25 it struck me that motorways share many of the characteristics of a prison; from the moment you turn onto the approach slip road you are completely trapped, unable to leave until the next exit comes along, until you have done your time. Any free will you think you might have is completely subrogated for the duration of your sentence. The only tolerated behaviour is driving in one direction at a similar speed to everyone else, stopping is not allowed, no matter what happens, and if like me and thousands of others you have been given a long sentence then you just have to serve your time, sitting behind the steering wheel shuffling forwards an inch at a time wishing you were somewhere else. Under these conditions it is small wonder that our baser urges emerge for none of us have committed any crime to put us in this place. Yet bizarrely we voluntarily incarcerate ourselves time and again without a second thought. The motorway experience has become an accepted feature of modern life, to be suffered in silence without complaint.

Our release from this prison finally comes as we cross the Erskine Bridge just west of Glasgow and turn along the shores of Loch Lomond. Suddenly we are surrounded by hills all tinted shades of brown and gold, until the rain starts again and the landscape disappears into the haze and is lost to us. 1,460 miles of driving since we left home and there is little that beats switching off the ignition outside our own front door.

A day out with Ailsa

We first met Ailsa soon after moving to our house in Carradale - she is a frequent passer-by in the company of her owner, Betty - and immediately we fell in love with this affectionate animal. Unless, of course, you are one of those who believe in not ascribing human emotions to pets and other animals, in which case you would have to say that Ailsa is irrevocably drawn towards humans and would stay forever with someone who treats her right, which in her book means being fed and having her thick coat tussled and ruffled regularly. Get the behaviour just right and sooner or later you are treated to the full tummy exposure where she lies supine, head back and eyes half closed, in a position we humans would only describe as expressing sheer contentment.

So, borrowing Ailsa for a few hours one afternoon I set off down to the burn then across the playing field towards the path up Deer Hill. I am looking forward to the chance to stretch my legs up to the summit of our local hillock from where Kilbrannan Sound can be viewed from end to end and Arran’s dark mountains spread out across the horizon. Walking in Ailsa’s company provides just the excuse I need. This is a route she follows almost every day so her lead is soon off and we traipse across the village football field to a gate which opens onto the forestry track, then onto a narrower path rising to the left steeply through mixed conifer and deciduous woodland. This part is a section of the Kintyre Way, marked with carved green posts and well maintained, the tough grass underfoot being regularly cut back and drainage channels kept cleared to reduce erosion. But despite this being familiar ground for her, Ailsa is strangely reluctant to follow me and seems totally unmoved by my calling her name. She stands looking at me as I walk on, as if to say, ‘Well I don’t think much of the way this walk is going just now. You really have no idea how to go for a walk, do you?’ Rather than follow my lead she galloped off in an instant when she spotted a family using the swings in the playground so that I had to chase her and apologise for my lack of control of the animal. What am I doing wrong? Perhaps there is more to this dog-walking lark than I thought. Here we are marching along enjoying the scenery, the fresh air, feeling the wind on our faces, the rough ground underfoot, the sun on our backs, surely this is enough to please anyone. What more could a dog possibly want?

My voice is getting hoarse from calling her name, to no effect, and I may be imagining this but it rather seems that her facial expression, or the canine equivalent, is registering something close to boredom, possibly verging on disgust. Then I recall Betty saying something about stones and it slowly dawns on me that Ailsa is a Golden Retriever whose natural inclination must be towards, well, retrieving. I cast about and bend down to pick up a rounded stone, of which there are plenty to be found, and immediately there is a transformation in Ailsa’s behaviour. The moment the stone is in my hand she bounds up to me, tail wagging and mouth open (could this be a smile?) then she rushes on ahead before glancing back at me to check that I have finally twigged what this is all about. I toss the stone ahead of her, exactly the right thing to do, for straight away she bounds up to it, skids to a halt and picks it up in her mouth, briefly juggling with it to get her teeth safely around it, then marches on again up the path, no longer following me reluctantly but now taking the lead with her head held high and her hind quarters gyrating magnificently behind her. Ah, so this is what we do then. It has taken a while for me to catch on but now at last I have grasped what walking this particular dog is all about.

Eventually she slows a little so I can catch up then quite casually she places the stone on the ground and looks away, as if temporarily distracted, so that I can reach down and pick it up again. Once again this is the trigger. She springs to life and barely waiting for the throw, she is off at speed up the path, chasing the stone even when it bounces off into the heather to one side. She uses her front paws to dig away at the undergrowth until she can grasp it in her teeth then bounds away, this time choosing the deep drainage ditch beside the path where water from yesterday’s rain still gurgles and bubbles. Perhaps the water cools her down, for this must be exhausting work, or maybe she has developed a thirst after all the exercise. I can see that this creates something of a problem for her as with the stone in her mouth she cannot use her tongue to lap up moisture and she is not quite ready, at this point, to surrender the stone. Perhaps she even realises that I might not be inclined to go ditch-diving after her for the sake of one stone.

I look away briefly then notice she is drinking vigorously from the stream and I assume, therefore, that another stone will be needed if correct dog-walking behaviour is to continue. I cast about for something suitable but then I notice her climbing up out of the ditch with a stone in her mouth. On inspection I realise that this is the same stone as before and she must have placed it somewhere safe so she could take a drink then reclaimed it afterwards so that the ‘walk’ can continue in the proper way. She at least knows exactly how to behave, even if I don’t.

I know it is wrong to use the word ‘game’ but I don’t think we really have anything more appropriate in our vocabulary. I cannot help but feel, though, that this is not a game for Ailsa, it is the real thing. It is what life is all about – retrieving and carrying stones thrown by humans. By trial and error I establish that stones are her ‘thing’ and throwing sticks evokes slightly different behaviour. The chase is the same but instead of picking up the stick Ailsa lies down and begins to chew on the end, clearly a complete contrast and gauging from her tail’s activity I would say an inferior pastime too. For dogs like Ailsa, only stones will do.

Suffice to say that with all the splashing about her coat is soon soaked and since she makes no distinction between clear, fast-running and still, muddy water she is soon caked in black stuff right up to her armpits, so to speak.

Her energy, though, is boundless just as long as the supply of stones keeps coming and I struggle to keep up with her as she charges on ahead. She knows exactly where to turn at the final rise to the summit where we rest awhile, both our tongues lolling, and catch our breath. We are almost equally mud-splattered now as we gaze out at a view which is partly concealed behind the light mist that swirls around us. ‘Deer Hill’ may be how it is known locally but we both know that the Gaelic name, Cnoc nan Gabhar, really means Goat Hill, although the hoof-prints around us in the peat are of deer just the same.

Then, casting about I realise that we are stone-less – she has dropped the latest one somewhere along the way – and heather and peat have covered any surface lying stones here. I rise to begin the descent and once again she gives me that look, the ‘Well?’ one that she does so eloquently, as if the obvious doesn’t need to be said. So I grovel about to unearth a small stone and we are off downhill together once more.

Ailsa dashes off into the heather and when she disappears from sight I begin to realise that I might easily walk on ahead and leave her behind out here in this wilderness. I need to think like her to discover where she has gone so I listen to the noises around me. There is the wind softly rustling the heather and then there is something else too, running water, a burn bubbling beneath, cutting its way down to the bedrock, a ditch fit for a water-loving dog perhaps. And there she is, paws fully immersed, loving every minute of it and tempting me to join her. Muscles straining she heaves her bulk up beside me and lollops away downhill, back below the treeline towards home.

The finale takes place in the small burn just beyond the bottom of our road which the rains have swollen with brown peat-stained water almost deep enough to swim in. Ailsa knows exactly what to do here. She runs ahead and is standing knee-deep in the water before I catch up, gazing up at me with that same expression, the one that says ‘Come on then’. On the bank she has carefully placed the latest rounded pebble ready and she is waiting so that I can perform my part, tossing it into the deepest part of the burn for her. Does she know that in human terms this is where she cleans off the mud from her thick coat, where she takes a bath so she is fit to be brought back indoors again? Who knows, but she emerges from the burn a shade or two lighter in colour albeit dripping wet. Whilst knowing exactly what happens next, the doggy shake, I cannot allow her to wander off so I bend to attach her lead as quickly as possible. The inevitable happens, of course, and the shake comes just as I am standing close, thus transferring most of the water from her legs to mine but this is a small price to pay as I have enjoyed her company enormously for the last hour or so.

We say farewell back at Betty’s house after a good towel down, for Ailsa. The look she gives me now is a different one; I sense that perhaps I have passed the test and she is giving me some sort of approval rating. Maybe she’ll even take me for a walk again some time soon.

The Day of the Shed

The long-awaited day has arrived, earlier than expected as it happened. The two cheerful young men from Beaver Timber Co. had it all done in couple of hours. Thanks lads.

Fungus time

Spring and summer have both come and gone and the season I have really been looking forward to has finally made it to Carradale. Along with some wild weather, Autumn brings us a profusion of colours which transform the hillsides, dripping reds and browns from every tree bough and changing the character of the Highlands. Then in a quieter way new growth emerges from the ground in the form of mushrooms and toadstools in all shapes and sizes. Fungus thrives in the damp places along our forest paths, feeding on fallen logs, invading the peat moss and even sprouting amongst the grass in our back garden.

There is a full spectrum of colours but these growths are fleeting objects which can dissolve to nothing in the course of one day once they have released their spores into the world. Whenever the weather allows we rush outside to try to capture their brief lives in photographs, to preserve forever what nature chooses not to. This page shows off just a tiny part of the Carradale fungus compendium, delicate things that I must leave others to give names to.

Against our wishes we are driven indoors when the gale arrives and torrential rain thunders down, an exciting but all too frequent event over the last few weeks. I reluctantly turn to my second choice pastime - exploring the mysteries of the house we live in, going through a process, familiar to many, of uncovering the work of previous house owners, learning about the changes they have made, what has been covered up by successive layers of decor and what lies still hidden beneath floors and behind the fitted cupboards. It seems inevitable that years of history will manifest itself in the fabric of a building in such a way as to subvert any refurbishment project or at least to undermine the timetable yet somehow this is something that is never given due prominence on TV property improvement programmes. It is not a question of uncovering poor workmanship, more an issue of the time it takes to discover how the elements of a house have been put together so that they can be unpicked without causing too much damage.

One of our domestic objectives is to provide electrical power to a garden shed which will be delivered and erected next week, my workshop space in the garden. So, having nothing better to do, I begin crawling around our roof spaces where I uncover a rather stout but unconnected length of electrical cable which meanders about the place and which disappears from sight beneath our bedroom floor heading in a purposeful way towards the front of the house. It no longer carries any electrical current – it must be a relic of a time when our domestic water was heated by electrical immersion – but I can perhaps make use of the cable if I can locate the other end which is hidden somewhere in the structure of our property.

Inevitably in this type of exploratory operation, the time comes when one just has to get destructive; there is nothing else for it, no other way to get to the inaccessible space I need to peer into. Perhaps I could rip up the bedroom floor to see what lies beneath but with laminate laid over our solid tongue and grooved floorboards this is not a happy option. In any case there is an alternative, to approach this space from below by making holes in a ceiling on the ground floor. It is at about this point that I discover what used to be a corridor or passage leading from the front of the house into what used to be a small back kitchen. This route was sealed off many years ago so that the kitchen could be redesigned and enlarged and the only evidence now is in the walls of our small broom cupboard beside the stairs in the centre of the house, It is hard to imagine, in a small house such as ours, a different layout of rooms from what we see today, but clearly this was once the case, I cannot argue with the evidence of my eyes.

I am covered from head to toe in plaster dust by the time I have successfully located the missing end to my cable but am satisfied that we can make use of it and do not have to thread another cable through the house.

As the sun pops out, once more we grab our waterproofs and don our walking shoes for another blast of exercise and fresh air, of which there is still plenty flying about. Does it matter that the rain showers come and go regularly as we ascend to the top of Deer Hill? Do we care that lying water quickly penetrates our shoes and soaks through to our toes? Do we meet any other walkers out braving the weather? No, no and well yes, surprisingly, we do meet one young couple, Londoners, who are staying in a cottage previously inhabited by their grandparents but since retained by the family as a holiday home. Shifting mentally between the landscapes of Southwark and Carradale takes some doing, we know, and they did have an air of puzzlement about them as if Kintyre was still sinking through into the deeper parts of the brain. It does take a little time.

Ducking out

In Carradale the one big event by which we residents can mark the passage of the seasons is over for another year, thus heralding the end of the holiday season and the slide towards winter. I write, of course, of the annual Duck Race, an event which brings the whole village together in one place to celebrate nothing less than the voyages of hundreds of small yellow plastic toys down a short stretch of Carradale Water.

Pointless though this activity may seem, the event brings with it the kind of excitement normally reserved for a big football match or possibly an episode of Strictly Come Dancing (I speculate) as we all stand on the river bank cheering on the one we have chosen and named for the occasion. The organisers must have heaved a sigh of relief as this year we were blessed with superb weather, lots of sunshine and conditions underfoot along the river that needed only stout shoes and not, as so easily could have been the case, wellington boots. For twenty two years now (so I am told) this event has been a feature of village life, a way to raise church funds but also a social gathering par excellence. That it should take this bizarre pastime to bring us us all into one place at the same time is strangely British, I fear, but no less welcome for that.

Kate was unable to enjoy the day with me on this occasion as she was away in England visiting family. So there I was striving to complete the tiling around our new multi-fuel stove so that I could use it to take the chill off the evening, at which point it suddenly struck me that I was alone in our house here for the first time since we moved in. Maybe it was this that made me become reflective, to begin thinking that despite now being well into our third post-retirement year, something keeps peeping its head over my mental horizon, a slightly worrying thought that niggles away at me just when I ought to be relaxed and carefree. I am aware that the source of this comes from my working life for the years leading up to retirement which was, like that of many, a pressured, self-driven existence. This was not something I was particularly aware of at the time but it had become very much part of my mental landscape just the same. My working days never simply took care of themselves, they always had to start with a plan, sometimes concocted many days ahead, and then this measured afterwards against what had been achieved. If a day did not end with the satisfaction of progress being made towards its goal then it felt like a day wasted, one that ended with a real sense of disappointment. Worse than this was the fact that the goal still hung there with less time now to achieve it, pressure creating more pressure.

This was the treadmill which I walked, daily, and for so long that the behaviour had disappeared into my character; it became a part of my very being. It is as a result of this that today I do not find a state of relaxation very easy to achieve and despite no longer needing to, I find myself setting goals which I later measure against what I have done on the day. So why is it that I am still this way, more than two years after having to be? Why is it that, as our friend Paul would say, I still have ‘ants in my pants’?

Part of the answer to this may lie in what Kate and I have done with our lives since retiring, most of which is recorded in the pages of this blog. We have sailed extensively and travelled nomadically around the shores of the British Isles. We have lived abroad for a time, refurbished and re-decorated a house, then just this year moved north to God’s own country to do more of the same again. We have set ourselves targets and then driven ourselves towards achieving them, not against our wishes, I hasten to add, but nevertheless behaviour like this does not comply at all with the retiree stereotype; it looks more like we are still working! In our post-retirement lives there has always been something to do next, something to plan for, a journey to make or a task to perform.

We enjoy being this way, not fitting the mould is the way we think about life, it is what we are comfortable with. But what next? For the first time since retiring we have settled in one place, Carradale, a place we love and have no intention of leaving. We are beginning to live differently from the way we have lived over the last two years, a more settled existence. For the moment there is still plenty to do here, the jobs are queuing up for some months ahead – there is decorating to do, we have a new shed on the way and we are soon getting some roof windows fitted which will transform our tiny back bedroom into a workroom Kate can take over. But what is niggling away at me is whether I am equipped mentally for what is peering at me now, an end to our target-driven lifestyle when all the jobs are finished and all we have to look forward to is ‘normal’ life.

As I see it now, one of two things could happen. Either our whole personalities will change, the ‘ants in the pants’ will run away from us creating something new, something more in keeping with the populist view of our status, or else we will throw ourselves into new things, driving ourselves on into new adventures ever more bizarre and unlikely. Hmmm, I wonder which it will be.

Beinn an Tuirc

Deep inside the forest a long clearing between the trees continues ahead of us following roughly the same line as the rough forestry track that brought us here.

 Although the sun shines brightly and there is a fresh breeze blowing, here in the forest it is still and shaded so last night’s rain drips from the vegetation. We continue upwards, struggling through a thick blanket of sphagnum or peat moss, like walking on a layer of wet sponge. Growing through this is a coarse reed-like grass which reaches up to knee height, each blade being topped with a cluster of water droplets, so that as we pass by, our feet sinking into the spongy surface, the water transfers easily from the grass to our clothing making our legs wet and heavy, the cold seeping right through to the skin. Having climbed this far we can only press on upwards, slipping and sliding in the damp, stepping over hidden gullies where the water runs even more freely and stumbling over broken branches and small pink mushrooms. Somewhere up ahead we can see the wind-farm towers on the summit ridge beyond the forest, although these remain illusively distant, teasing us on.

We started out later than planned, following the Kintyre Way almost from our doorstep out of the village and along the shore path to Torrisdale.

A line of cormorants stands at the water’s edge catching up on some late season sunbathing so we try not to disturb them as we negotiate the rocks behind them.

We are at sea level but our plan for the day is to ascend Beinn an Tuirc, the highest summit on the Kintyre peninsula standing 454 metres (1,490 feet) above us.

It is close enough for us to begin the walk from our front door but the route is far from clear, no signposts point the way, so we must follow the forestry roads then do the best we can from there on up. The sun beats down as we ascend and the scenery opens up behind us, more and more of Arran’s mountains coming into view. Then we plunge into the dense forest where the air is motionless and all noise is sucked away by the trees. Between them there is deep shade, an impenetrable tangle of branches and moss-covered roots. Go only a few metres in and the trees swallow you up so you become disoriented with the uniformity around you, unsure which way to turn even to retrace your steps. We stay in a rough clearing between the trees, plodding ever upwards in the hope that sooner or later we will reach the upper edge of the tree line. Our legs are soaked below thigh level; we have reached the point where our feet cannot become any more wet so it matters little how deep are the streams we cross.

Each foot is pulled from the spongy moss with a sucking noise, the effort sucking our energy away and we have only our grim determination and the thought of lunch on the summit to keep us going.

At last we scramble out onto the open hillside where the going becomes a little easier. It is still very soft under foot – the amount of water lying trapped in what passes for soil here just beggars belief – but we pause to orientate ourselves and identify just where we have emerged from the forest in relation to our summit. We set off again, steeply upwards to where we can see sheep browsing the upper flanks of the mountain, finally gaining the summit trig point where the panorama is stunning (the wooden sign marked ‘Viewpoint’ is rather superfluous).

To the north-west beyond the wind-farm towers the Paps of Jura nudge the skyline and north of these are larger summits, maybe Ben Mor on the Isle of Mull or possibly even Ben Nevis further away still. South there is the faint outline of Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland and over across Kilbrannan Sound to the south-east we can make out the shape of the Mull of Galloway. East of us the Isle of Arran is spread out from end to end just like a map with fluffy clouds hovering over it and north of this there is Bute and Cowal. What a view!

The fresh wind is tempered by the sun’s heat but despite the stunning view this is not a place to hang about. It is mid afternoon and we have to choose a descent from the summit. There is no easy walking terrain hereabouts, no footpaths or waymarks to follow and to return the way we came is not appealing. So the choice is between a long walk over rough country along a ridge above Torrisdale but from which there is no clear descent path, or else we can follow the wind-farm service road, a longer roundabout route that leads onto a forest track lower down the valley above Saddell Water.

This is the route we choose, but it is a long march, and we know that we may be faced with a steep and dangerous descent yet and then finally a long walk once we do get back to our coast road.

The shadows are lengthening now and our legs are beginning to shout back at us as we pound along the forest track towards the sea. “No more”, they say, but as we round a corner we surprise a small herd of deer from their browsing and this encourages us on. Large birds of prey, buzzards we think, hover over the deep wooded valley to our right but our route stays high above this following the contours of the hillside. Then suddenly there is a sign we recognise, a waymarker for the Kintyre Way placed beside a track leading off to our left.

This is a surprise since we know we are not on the present KW route but we follow the signs just the same and soon find ourselves descending a freshly made path through an area of felled timber then across a burn and back into the forest itself. By following a series of flags attached to trees this finally leads us out of the darkness onto the very forest road we had used earlier in the day. We have discovered, by chance, a Kintyre Way diversion in the process of being built which has worked for us as a short cut back into Torrisdale. Great relief brings new energy to our legs for the last few miles back home. Our aching limbs are testament to perfect day - visibility as good as it gets and sunshine to boot. Before long this land will change into autumn then winter colours – this one tree is ahead of the pack – and we are now looking forward to the whole lot following suit.

Storms and fire raisers

Peering down through the conifers from the footpath above our village it strikes me just how isolated a community we are, something not unusual in Scotland where towns and villages can be located many hours travelling time away from a big city. So many live this way that the whole economy is geared to accommodate this. The fact that services in the many remote communities cost more per individual to provide than in a city is accepted as part of what living here is all about. To avoid population drift away from the countryside the Scottish government actively encourages re-population of the Highlands and Islands – to do otherwise might result in many of these communities stagnating and dying altogether – so we live here confident that we are not going to be forgotten.

We do not, it is true, live on an island but the length of the Kintyre peninsula does put us in a similar category to those who do. We are newcomers to this life but we are slowly learning the tricks needed to get around some of the difficulties that our remoteness creates. Running out of basic foodstuffs like bread and milk, for example, has to be anticipated. We keep a few cartons of milk in the freezer and our bread-making machine keeps churning out the loaves when we need them. So long as we remember to stock up with the right sort of flour when we do a supermarket trip and to buy extra milk, all is well. We keep stocks of what we need in the house and then make lists of things we need to buy to make the our shopping trips more productive. That, and also learning where to buy what we need from the limited choice available locally, is important, but if it is real choice we want then we must be prepared to travel to Glasgow. Good research on the Internet will tell us where the shops we need are located.

As I write this the wind is hooting down the chimney above our newly-opened up living room fireplace which waits for Robert-the-stove-fitter to come and install a compact multi-fuel stove. With the high winds and rain we are experiencing this is not the time to be climbing up on a rooftop so we must be patient. This is the second severe storm we have experienced since we moved to Carradale. Back in May, when the tree buds were just bursting and small leaves were beginning to form a blast of air came in from the west, gusts well over eighty miles an hour and salt-laden too, all of which caused widespread damage, not so much by knocking trees over (which it did) but by ‘burning’ the young leaf growth before it could get going. The effects of this, brown wrinkled leaves still clinging to the trees, have been with us all summer like a premature autumn.

This latest storm arrives after days of rain, heavy rain, which elsewhere might cause flooding and distress but here it merely disappears into the ground and runs away. In May we lost our electric power for several hours and again this time the lights flicker but they stay bravely on through the worst of the storm. It is unwise to venture out of doors when there is tree debris flying about and driving along wooded lanes carries a risk, however slight, of meeting an uprooted tree on its passage to earth, so we gaze from our windows as the trees bend before the blast and swathes of rain lash down. Unlike in May, the trees now carry a heavy leaf burden. In another month the trees will release their leaves but for now they still cling on to each one, against all the odds and irrespective of the harm this may cause the tree. Twigs snap and fly away downwind, whole branches are broken off but this eases the burden on the trunk which clings on to the shallow soil using every root and rootlet. Most violent are the gusts which drop on our house as it nestles low beneath Deer Hill. The glass in our windows creaks to these onslaughts, every blade of grass in the garden is flattened smooth and water briefly flows uphill in the gullies. It is exciting to watch from inside and the house is used to it - it doesn’t complain.

After a few days the storm passes away somewhere else, a remnant of hurricane Katia so we are told, and we get the telephone call we are waiting for.

Our stove fitter arrives armed with pipes and brushes to sweep the chimney then insert a steel flue liner and connect this to our stove. My part in this is ready - the stone slabs for the hearth I have been engaged on fitting over the past few days are smooth and level – but we watch in horror as his brushing dislodges an enormous pile of soot which descends and heaps up on our new hearth. On quick reflection though we feel far safer knowing that this lot is not still hanging up there out of sight.

Our excitement mounts as the day when we can light up comes ever nearer.

Even though we still have to tile and finish the fire surround we cannot wait any longer. We decide we need just the right important local person for first firing of the stove and who better than our neighbour Betty, who like us is a fan of a good coal fire to keep her home warm. We point her at the stove and seconds later the flames are licking up the chimney (it works!) and soon the warmth is filling the room and seeping through the house, just what we need for the winter ahead.

Life around Carradale

Just a few miles to the south of our village lie what few stones remain of Saddell Abbey, a monastic settlement established in the twelfth century by monks coming from what is now Northern Ireland.

Permission to build the abbey was needed, just as it would be today, and the story goes that this was granted by none other than Somerled, a powerful figure in the history of Scotland who after a significant battle in 1158 declared himself as the first ‘King of the Isles’. As such he ruled an independent kingdom which was subservient neither to Scotland nor indeed to the King of Norway whose influence was still strong in the Western Isles at this time. Although Somerled’s kingdom was short-lived his blood line still continues because as many as half a million people alive today can, according to the evidence of their DNA, claim him as an ancestor.

Although this is disputed by some, Somerled’s remains are said to be buried somewhere on the site of Saddell Abbey, something that gives these crumbling ruins something of an aura, despite their condition. The monastery did not survive to the present day, its fate is lost to history, and over the last two hundred or so years the site has been used as a graveyard, the gravestones peering out from every corner, even from within the bounds of the building remains themselves. Much of the stone from the original abbey has now gone, to be used in other buildings such as Saddell Castle where local tales tell of the bad fortune that this brings to those who stay there. Fortunately for the owners this does not appear to prevent holidaymakers coming to stay here, indeed they appear to make much of the tale to add to the cachet of the place.

Kate and I arrived here on our bikes after negotiating the five miles of road from our village, this being the horizontal distance we had to travel. The length of the journey, however, gives no impression of our movement in the vertical dimension. Both the beginning and the end of the journey are at sea level, as indeed are several other spots along the way and the problem is that each of these places are separated by high ground over which the road winds its merry way totally indifferent to the plight of those who try to ride a bicycle on its surface. To negotiate steep hills on a bicycle we change into our lowest gears but the fact is that the same amount of effort is required to ride uphill regardless of the number of gears a bike has. Then if the gears are too few in number and the hill too steep then there will come a point when the rider’s weight simply cannot push hard enough on the pedal to rotate the wheels and move the bike up the incline. This is a scientific fact few are aware of simply because they don’t cycle along the lanes around Carradale where most of the hills fall into this category.

Our real motive for visiting Saddell was to visit not the abbey but the beach which, aside from its outstanding natural beauty, was the setting for something even Somerled might have found entertaining.

This short strip of sand and pebble, dominated by the well maintained and classical features of the castle, was once the backdrop for a video made to accompany the UK’s best selling single of all time, ‘Mull of Kintyre’. In the song accompaniment is provided by the Campbeltown Pipe Band who were seen in the video marching along the Saddell shoreline beside the sea and being joined by Paul McCartney singing and playing his guitar. In subsequent verses of the song they are joined by local schoolchildren, many of whom may now be adults still living in the area – the song was released in 1977. In many ways the beach location would have been an obvious choice since it possesses so many of the vital ingredients needed – it is easy of access by road but secluded enough to remain undisturbed during the filming; it has the tall castle as a backdrop, a proper one with battlements all in good repair; there is spectacular scenery in every direction. It lacks, however, the most essential ingredient which is that the beach is not actually located at the Mull of Kintyre.

Having been to the Mull, of course, we know why this would not have been suitable for the video. It has no beach, it is a remote, inaccessible and windswept place often surrounded by fogs and it has no Disneyland-like castle to use as part of the backdrop. So perhaps history can forgive the deception. After all Saddell is on the Kintyre peninsula, so many would say it is is close enough to be authentic, and very few will ever know the truth anyway.