The Earth belongs unto the Lord,
And all that it contains
Except the Kyles and the Western Isles
For they are all Macbrayne's
Caledonian Macbrayne ferries have been part of my life since I was 3 months old and first traveled on one to the island of Islay off the west coast of Scotland. I have been there for a few weeks of almost every summer since and far too many of those have blown away with the ever quicker passing years.In early days, we took the overnight sleeper train from Euston station in London to Glasgow Central - that involved bunk beds with red blankets, Nanny drinking medicinal brandy for travel sickness and tea for all of us with digestive biscuits brought by the conductor before a 7am arrival.
After that a smart walk down the platform, porters and luggage in tow, and then, glory of glories, the Glasgow Central Hotel and breakfast in a dining room which seemed the summit of luxury as did any breakfast that started with with tomato juice, an improbable treat but much to my taste - there was orange or grapefruit too. Then there was a solid breakfast menu of serious proportions; cereal or porridge; kippers; eggs; bacon; sausages, seldom to be recommended in Scotland in those days but who cared aged 5 or 6; fried bread; mushrooms; tomatoes; probably black pudding but we didn't favour that which probably meant Nanny didn't either; tea; toast; butter; honey, jam and marmalade; all in the perfect mini pots that we only otherwise found on the 4.30 tea time train from Paddington en route home Wiltshire after a day in London.
I hadn't really thought about it but I suppose train travel in my childhood was still intended to be a vaguely luxurious experience and station hotels at major terminals most certainly aspired to grandeur in lashings of red plush and marble plated ladies loos. In later years the green carpeted lifts were used in a vain attempt to persuade my pekingese that they were grass where she could have a pee. I was extremely worried about the state of her bladder since she refused to acknowledge Glasgow pavements as in any way lavatorially inviting - I don't think she was the first or the last, the lift attendant had a very knowing look in his eye as we traveled endlessly from top to bottom and up again and carpet shampoos or changes were probably a regular event.
After breakfast there was a far from grand trip on a very old, bone rattling train, with individual compartments and no passages, to Gouroch in the port of Glasgow on the Clyde. Bracing air through the draughty windows gave us our first, breathtakingly exciting smell of the sea for that summer and we couldn't have cared less about the almost invariable rain drizzling down the window panes and misting the view. At Gouroch we caught the first of the two ferries for Islay. This one took us to East Loch Tarbert for transfer by road to our second vessel at West Loch Tarbert that would usually get us to Islay by tea time give or take the weather and the tides. The first ferry hardly stands in my mind at all beyond some of the passing scenery and especially the island of Bute in the Firth of Clyde where we used to stop sometimes to stay a few days with friends and where, I seem to remember, Nanny used regularly to take her corns to the the chiropodist in Rothesay who had a particularly good reputation.
There was a yearly debate over bus versus taxi travel from one Tarbert to the other during the overlong gap between the arrival of one boat and departure of the next which sometimes meant a brief sojourn in a Tarbert Hotel with little to recommend it or make it memorable beyond the pervasive seaside boarding house and school cloakroom smell of boiled cabbage and badly aired furnishings. Finally, with general relief, we embarked on the Lochiel, a ferry old enough to have been traveled on by my Father in his childhood and where a waiter called Hughie who everyone knew held sway in the dining room for a great number of years. That dining room was something too, none of the self-service cafes of contemporary CalMac ferries, certainly not including the decorative effects of the most recently commissioned ship apostrophised as those of a Polish brothel. This instead was a realm of calm service with long white tablecloths, properly laid tables, long white aprons over dark suits and food that appealed like mad to us but probably not to any more sophisticated palette and not to Nanny who expected a rough passage and sea sickness. Inevitable scotch broth was usually followed by minced collops I think or possibly just scotch mince, maybe fish in some form and then pudding which I can't remember at all but must, one imagines, have included custard of which I am not overly fond.
We sat mostly on deck, my brother, Nanny and me, in air that was very fresh indeed and only came inside if it was really pouring - we were never sick although plenty were when a stormy sea took hold. Arrival in Islay was enlivened by the method of taking the cars on and off the ferry in huge nets, like hauls of fish from the hold, attached to cranes. In Nanny's day and carless ourselves we were met by Mr MacNeil in our resident landrover, his pride and polished joy, and finally home to the familiar whitewashed house with all its known delights to be rediscovered and enjoyed and my only fear, the faces that appeared at night in the shadows of blocked in bedroom fireplaces and kept me quaking in bed or riskily running down the passage to find Nanny and safety.
The Lochiel sank once in those years due to a drunken captain, a standard hazard in those parts I would think. All passengers and crew survived and the ship was salvaged too but we worried a lot about the sheep who had been drowned on their way to mainland markets, and a handful of cattle too. Caledonian Macbrayne really does still hold the keys to exploration of the Western Isles with complicated hopscotch tickets to get you from one to another on quite a drawn out tour. There are flights of course to some of the islands, certainly to Islay but they are not the way to travel with dogs, bikes, too many people, for they are, relative to distance, extremely expensive, or with a weight of supplies such as crates of wine, also otherwise particularly expensive on the islands where whisky otherwise rules.
These days we usually drive from the South to the Islay ferry, now just a single crossing from the port of Kennacraig, just beyond West Loch Tarbert. That drive was once a major undertaking probably involving a night with friends on the way but now accomplished in a fairly easy 8 hours if motorways are clear. This month we returned to the mainland from Islay for a short trip by car and more ferries that took us for a night on the island of Skye and then a meander up the extraordinarily beautiful coast of Wester Ross and back down through Invernesshire to return to Islay. My photographs from the trip show rather more of the dark drama of this part of the world than the brightly shining days of the tourist brochures when photographers must sometimes wait for weeks to get that alluring sunny image. Still we saw wild beauty to compare with anywhere in the world even with attendant showers and low cloud and all this an hour or two's drive from cosily tamed Invernesshire farmland and, given the size of the British Isles altogether, to the cities of the east coast of Scotland, to Inverness itself and to Glasgow, Edinburgh and all points south.
We came to Skye on the ferry from Mallaig to stay with friends outside Portree, the village 'capital' of Skye, overlooking the sheltered harbour where summer sailors come in to moor for evenings or nights in dry land lodgings. Driving up the coast we had already visited Arduaine Gardens, managed by the Scottish National Trust and, like so many Scottish, gardens, an extraordinary mix of the most esoteric rhododendrons and other spring flowering shrubs and bulbs, with the tropical looking palms and ferns that enjoy the relatively damp mild winters of this part of the world where the coastal air is warmed by the gulf stream.Of the various other gardens we visited on our travels, privately owned Attadale in Wester Ross probably won the charm stakes, not least because of the delightful small turreted house at its heart, a miniature fairy tale castle, its various woodland and garden walks with sculpture punctuations and its delectable walled kitchen garden with an an imbedded fernery under a naturally dripping cliff face. Inverewe, a little further North is NTS owned again and has a spectacular site that curves round the shore of Loch Ewe where seals galore can be seen on the rocks and occasionally shyer sea otters.The garden mix here includes enormous trees, sequoias, redwoods and indigenous species and the most stunning quercus cerris argenteovariegata, an amazingly beautiful spreading oak with variegated leaves; plus a vast range of rhododendrons, acers and unknown flowering shrubs; water plants including great canopies of gunnera and a wide range of herbaceous plants from all over the world including the remarkable schefflera macrophylla from Vietnam.
In Scotland of course there are castles and we managed a range of those from mostly ruined Dunstaffnage on Loch Etive and completely ruined Urquhart Castle at Drumnadrochit on Loch Ness to Dunvegan on Skye, still inhabited by the Chiefs of the MacLeod clan and their magical Fairy Flag; Blair Castle, home of the Dukes of Atholl, a white washed fairy tale castle full of stags heads, swords and other more desirable treasures, a lone piper pacing outside the front door; and then the ruins and remains of lesser and greater forts and tower houses on islands and promontories all the way up the coast including restored and inhabited Castle Stalker near Port Appin where an unusually good roadside cafe offers it up as a lunch time view.
We left Sky on the great curve of the Skye road bridge over Loch Alsh and on up through the hills and rocky lochs of Wester Ross, spending a night at Shieldaig where the Shieldaig Bar and Coastal Kitchen provide dinner of an astonishing standard in what appears to be an incredibly isolated village on the shore of Loch Shieldaig. It makes use of the freshest local fish and has a proper wood fired pizza oven as well to add variety. Fantastic service and altogether a great experience to add to a comfortable enough bed and breakfast stay just outside the village overlooking the loch and only unfortunately beset with the Scottish plague of midges on an evening with not a breath of wind and enough warm occasional drizzle just to encourage the biting further.
So onwards, North, East and South around the beautiful inlets, and inland lochs of Rosshire to flowered and manicured Beauly in Invernesshire where the wonderful old tweed shop is run by staff who may well have been there for a hundred years themselves. After that the Loch Ness tourist trap where Urquhart Castle is well served by a visitor centre that tunnels under the main road and out through a huge shop, information area and cafe to a terrace overlooking the Loch and the Castle and west again to Invergarry. Blair Castle was our last port of call, via the powerful commando memorial overlooking the hills where they originally trained at Lochaber,before the final drive back to the ferry again at Kennacraig. It would be easy enough to be seduced into visiting potteries, art galleries, more open gardens, houses and castles, were you inclined to such things, all he way through the Highlands where artists of greater and lesser ability congregate and multiply remarkably. We fell for a rather surprising chocolate museum and manufactory, supplying high quality chocolate of every variety to passing trade and presumably chocolate afficionados who are prepared to travel for their pleasure, but only bought one bar as a rather ungenerous present.
Truth be told, the late Spring is really the time for Scottish tours when spring is at its best in the gardens and there is no reason why the weather should be worse than in the summer in this most unreliable of climates. because it is there and so close, I have seldom traveled far on the Scottish mainland beyond the straightest line to stay in someone else's house. The tourist trade has been busy this year and we met representatives of most European countries during a very short space of time. The ruins of Urquhart Castle reverberated with as much of a muddle of languages as the tower of Babel. As usual we forget those pleasures that are nearest to home and anyway try to escape to warmer, drier parts of the world but there is no doubt that we miss out if we forget altogether to go and look at what is on our own doorstep.
