Stick Island

       On our latest trip to Mull, we did what tourists to Mull have been doing for over 300 years - we paid locals with a boat to take us out to the island of Staffa.

      I'd heard of Staffa, of course. I was raised by a man fascinated by geology, for one thing. I knew that Mendelssohn had been so gob-smacked by it that he wrote 'Fingal's Cave' and the Hebrides Overture. I was keen to go and see it.

      But you know what they say about film and photographs never doing justice to a place? That's true of Staffa, cubed. When the boat came alongside the island, under the cliffs - well, I damn near wrote an overture.

      None of these photos, let me make it clear, even begin to do justice to this amazing, numinous place.
      It has no safe anchorage. We went ashore, but were only able to because the weather was extremely good and the sea calm. The skipper told us that if the sea is at all choppy, it's impossible to land.
     The name of the island is Norse. The 'a' at the end is common in Norse and Saxon place-names. The 'y' at the end of Ely is the same word. Barra, Ulva, Canna - the 'a' at the end of them all means 'island.'
     The 'Staff' part can be translated in various ways, but it's come down to us as the word 'staff' or 'stave' - so the boat's skipper wasn't wrong when he translated it as 'Stick Island.' Others translate it as 'pillar' and say the Vikings were reminded of the wooden pillars that supported their houses.
      Imagine being a viking, though, and passing this place, this strange concoction of stone rising straight out of the sea, unlike any other place on earth. Why did the gods create it?

There are three layers to Staffa. There's the smooth, beige-brown rock at the bottom. That's volcanic lava, or tuff. It's volcanic ash, consolidated into rock.
     The second layer, those spectacular sticks, is black basalt - a great, thick layer of black basalt - which has cooled slowly. This slow cooling caused it to contract and take on this crystalline structure of hexagonal columns.
     Above the columns is a sort of wild top-knot of solid rock. That's not turf or grass you're looking at, but basalt.

Coming in to the jetty

Presumably, this basalt cooled much faster and didn't crystallise. Instead there's this wild tangle of half-formed columns and dabs and dobs and rocks that looks as if it's been frothed up with a whisk. It bulges in places like the top of a muffin, but it's solid basalt.
      If you're reminded of the Giant's Causeway, that's not surprising. Staffa was produced by the same eruption that produced the Causeway and there are similar, but smaller, pillared cliffs all over Mull, often producing an oddly striped, humbug effect on mountainsides.

According to legend, an Irish giant built the Causeway, so he could cross the Irish Sea and beat up a Scottish giant on the other side. It turned out, thought, that the Scots giant was much bigger and fiercer than expected, and so the Irish giant tore up his own causeway in a panic, to prevent the Scots giant reaching him. Staffa is all that's left of the Scottish end.
     I can believe it. Lots of people have made that mistake when tangling with Scots. Best leave them alone and never, ever poke them sticks.

Staffa has a tiny wooden jetty against one cliff, where the boat tied up. I don't like to think about who built this jetty or how they managed it. (Where did they stand? Where did they put down their tools?)
      From the jetty a metal staircase goes straight up the cliff, almost vertically. Occasionally, it uses the flat tops of basalt columns in place of steps. I had to almost run up these steps because I was first out of the boat and had to keep ahead of everyone else. I reached the top more dead than alive - to be greeted by a massed choir of skylarks, which revived me.

A primrose on Staffa

I think that's Rhum on the horizon.

Celendine and violets - I leave you to imagine the sky-larks singing above.

I was promised puffins, but the puffins saw us coming and $%"* off into the sea. They must get fed up of tourists. There were some skuas bullying peewits.The skylarks avoided all that by staying in the upper atmosphere and carpet-bombing with song.

The island is now owned by the National Trust but people did once live on it. I can hardly believe this, but there were the remains of fields to be seen and when Sir Joseph Banks visited in 1772, he stayed at the only house on the island, and caught lice. The single family who farmed on Staffa lived on oats, potatoes and the milk and meat of their few grazing animals. By 1800, 'terrified of the winter storms,' they'd given up and I don't blame them.

Staffa's cliffs

We had an hour on the island, which is about a kilometre or half-mile long and half that wide. What must it have been like to live, perched up on top of that rock, with no company other than your immediate family? - We were lucky, we could enjoy it for an hour and then leave. We scrambled back down that dizzy staircase into the boat. As the boat turned back for Mull and Iona, we passed Am Buachaille, The Herdsman.

      If you squint at this shot, below, you may be able to see some puffins scattered about. I am told they are there. I can't see them.

I listened to Mendelssohn's 'Fingal's Cave' when I got back to civilisation. I don't think he did the place justice any more than my photos do.
     It was an exhilarating trip but saddening too, because I kept wishing my Dad had been there. He would have known about all the geology and all the birds and plants too. He would have been fit to be tied. We would have had to set traps to get him back on the boat. So, this blog's for Dad.

"There's A High Over Scandinavia..."

That's me and Davy, leaning on the quayside at Oban as the sun sets over the bay and the mountains of Mull. It is, honest. Oh well, okay then, it isn't. It's a random young couple who happened to get between me and my camera.
     Davy, with his usual weather eye, announced that there was a high over Scandinavia and the weather was going to be unusually good in the Western Isles. So we hurriedly packed, dashed up the motorways early on Sunday morning and spent the evening in Oban.

         The next morning we took one of the good old Callie-Macs out to Craignure on Mull.

         The crossing only takes 45 minutes. As we neared Craignure, we passed Castle Duart.

          On previous visits to Mull we've investigated Grass Point, where the drovers used to bring their cattle, to ship them over to Kerrara and the mainland; and we've driven down the Ross of Mull to catch the ferry over to Iona. But, on this trip, Davy was interested in seeing the beaches on the Ross of Mull. He'd picked up, from somewhere, that they were reckoned to be 'the finest beaches in the UK.'
       I'll say this much: they're not at all bad.
      An equally fine beach is on the North of the island, at Calgary. It was all pure white sand, empty blue sky and a sea of a pale blue impossible to describe. Icy cold, though. The sea, that is. The beach was hot.

       This isn't Calgary - it's one of the Ross of Mull beaches, because my camera's battery had run out by the time we got to Calgary and I somehow managed to forget all electronics. I suspect it was a kind of accidentally-on-purpose sort of forgetfulness.
      Calgary in Canada, by the way, is named after Calgary on Mull. A chief of mounties, apparently, used to spend his holidays at Calgary on Mull, and when a name was needed for a new fort in Canada, he suggested 'Calgary.' The little village on Mull's name is really Gaelic: Cala ghearraidh, or beach of the meadow pasture.

 The amazing pink rock you find on Iona and Mull.
     We stayed at the Argyll Arms in the village of Bunessan. It could not have been better. The road ran right past the pub's door but was hardly busy. On the other end of the narrow road was a bay, with a view out to Staffa. The staff were friendly, the room comfortable and the food good.
      Almost all the roads on Mull are single-lane, with passing-places. Driving them is a strain. You have to be constantly watching for vehicles miles ahead and calculating whether or not to pull into the passing-place nearest to you. There are always plenty of drivers who seem incapable of grasping the idea of passing-places and drive right up to your car's nose and impatiently wave at you, to tell you to reverse. They do this, even when there is a passing-place directly behind them which they have driven right past. They think you should reverse around a blind bend with rocks to one side and a drop into a loch on the other rather than they reverse a couple of metres in a straight line.
      Amazingly, when a police-car is on the road, all the drivers suddenly seem to understand passing-places.
     But not the eagle-watchers who park their cars in passing-places and set up telescopes on tripods, to keep watch on some distant peak.
     Davy and I saw eagles. We had walked up one of the island's roads less travelled, and Davy pointed and said, "What's that?" I looked and, gentle readers, honestly thought I saw a glider heading towards us. (My eyesight is not the best.) "Eagles," Davy said. I suppose if we'd had binoculars, we could have told whether they were golden eagles or sea-eagles, but eagles they certainly were. Too ruddy big to be anything else.
      But the driving. To reach Oban, Davy drove 300 miles, with only a couple of short breaks. He said that was easier, and less strain, than driving the 50 miles from Bunnessan to Calgary.

          A man with sense enough to bring co-drivers.

  
        I loved our time getting sun-burned in the Hebrides but, for me, the highlight was a boat-trip to  island of Staffa.
        I shall save that for another blog.

 

How The Collie Dogs Rounded Up A Story

'Some years ago the late Miss Stewart Mackenzie of Brahan, Ross-shire, informed a friend that in the course of journeys by coach in the late autumn from Brahan to the South during her childhood about the year 1840 she used frequently to see collie dogs making their way north unaccompanied. On inquiring of her parents why these dogs were alone, [she] was informed that these were dogs belonging to drovers who had taken cattle to England and that when the droving was finished the drovers returned by boat to Scotland. To save the trouble and expense of their transport, the dogs were turned loose to find their own way north. It was explained that the dogs followed the route taken on the southward journey being fed at Inns or farms where the drove had 'stanced' and that in the following year when the drovers were again on the way south, they paid for the food given to the dogs...'

          I've more than once found inspiration in footnotes. The one above is taken from 'The Drove Roads of Scotland; by A. R. B. Haldane. I read it years ago - at least ten years ago. Those dogs were always trotting about at the edges of my mind.
          Then they met up with the workhouse apprentices I'd read about thirty years ago. For centuries the apprentice system had put a boy to work for a craftsman. In return for his free labour, he recieved food, board and clothing, and a training in a trade.
          With the industrial revolution, this system was corrupted to

provide cheap labour for mills and factories. Pauper children were 'apprenticed' to the mills, where they were set to work for long, long hours in return for the cheapest food and clothing. They learned no skills, except the operation of machinery. At night they were locked up. They were, in everything but name, slaves. Their 'apprentice papers' bound them to the mill-owner until they came of age.
          What, I thought, if a child escaped from this slavery and, in running away, met up with a couple of collie dogs returning home to Scotland? The collies round him up, and as they provide protection and companionship, and he has nowhere else to go, he decides to walk with them wherever they take him. The dogs are heading west, to their home-croft on Mull, but the boy doesn't know that.
          I found out my copy of Haldane's Drove Roads and consulted it. The drove route from the Isle of Mull to London was the one that seized my imagination. There were longer roads - cattle were, in historic fact, brought from the Outer Hebrides and driven down to London, but I decided not to tax modern readers' credulity.
          My partner Davy, being a Scot of Highland descent, took a more than usual interest in this plotting. "It's too long," he said. "You've got to get them all that way. Why not keep it simple and have the dogs on their way back from the market at Falkirk?"
          I don't always take his advice - it's his constant complaint - but on this occasion, I listened. 'Keep it simple, stupid,' is a good rule of thumb.
          But if the boy was walking from somewhere near Falkirk to Mull, the dates wouldn't work too well for him being an escapee from factory enslavement.
          When I said this, Davy told me what he knew about Scotland's 'bond-women' who wore an odd 17th century costume, and were 'bonded' to work on farms right into the early 20th century. Sometimes boys were bonded too, and it was a pretty harsh system. Davy told me of a boy he'd read of who'd been over-worked, under-fed, and made to sleep in a damp shed with thistles growing through his pillow. He'd escaped his bond by enlisting in the army when WWI broke out - and while everyone around him thought barracks life was harsh and the rations short, the bond-boy had never known such luxury in his life.
          So there's my boy, walking west with the dogs, following the drove road out of English speaking Lowland Scotland, into Gaelic-speaking Highland Scotland. I don't know a word of Gaelic. I don't know much about Scots history - nor, unfortunately, do I know a man who does. Davy says, 'They don't teach English history in Scots schools, and when they taught Scots history, I wasn't listening.' Why does my imagination never give me anything easy to do?
          But at least, thanks to Haldane, I know the route he and the dogs would have taken - and last week, Davy and I were up in Scotland, checking it out. And getting bitten by midgies (Davy) and by cleggs (me.)
          We went to the old ferry crossing on Loch Awe, where the drovers took their cattle across.

 

          This is taken from Taychreggan. The building is a modern hotel, but it's situated where the old droving inn stood. The drovers took their cattle across here, and then climbed the hills beyond, heading for Loch Fyne.

          The modern hotels here are pretty swish and exclusive. They take some finding for one thing. It's not casual passing trade they're relying on. The thronged drovers' inns were about as unlike them as it's possible to be. Dr. Johnson gave them terrible reviews on his equivalent of TripAdvisor. They were, according to him, damp, dirty, flea-ridden and with filthy food. But as the drovers lived on oatmeal mixed with water, milk and blood, their taste was robust.

          From Taychreggan, as Davy was feeling strong, we took the road less travelled, via Glen Nant and Glen Lonan, to the town of Oban. So we came in over the hills, as the drovers would have done.

          The journey was beautiful, but only for drivers of strong nerve. The sheep don't help, as they lie in the road, toasting their little trotters on the hot tarmac, and giving not a spit for tourists in cars. The mountains - ('Hills,' Davy says, 'they're hills.') - the mountains rose above us and leaned over, peering down like giants. It gave me a vivid feeling of how my wee boy would feel, lost in that landscape, and how glad he would be of the dogs' company. The Highlands were more populated then, with many crofting communities. Even so, it would have been no walk through a park.

          Here's Oban.

          The green island in the foreground is Kerrara, which safeguards Oban's harbour.Rising up behind it are the mountains of Mull. It's quite hard to imagine Oban as it would have been at the turn of the 18th-19th century. The whisky distillery - one of the oldest - would have been there, and the castle, obviously. 

          Over on Mull, we visited Grass Point, which is where the cattle and drovers left the island. The cattle were taken by boat over to Kerrara, walked the length of this small island, and then swum across the narrow strait to Oban. We tried to pin-point where this was, and decided that it must have been near where the castle stands. 

          Here's the old ferry house at Grasspoint on Mull - today it's another remote place to stay on holiday. If you like holidays where the only night-life is provided by midgies.

            We ended here, on Iona, so Davy could walk in the footsteps of the great Scottish colourist, Cadell.

 

 

I am entirely with Blott. If he comes round to mine, he can have Republican sanctuary with a warm dry cushion and cream.

         

Of Lambs, Scones and Blind Summits

Iona

          I spent last week in a place of sugar-white beaches and palm-trees, turquoise sea, all-surrounding bird-song, blue skies unmarked by any wisp of cloud, and air-shaking, tarmac-melting heat: the Highlands, Scotland’s west coast.

          We drove to Oban and caught the ferry to Mull. I love ferries, especially little everyday working ferries.  There was a Scottish Water van and a plumber in the queue, and I wondered whether, when they were given their work-sheets that morning, they thought: Oh great! I’m going to Mull! They probably did in this weather, Davy said.  But in January, not.

Iona's cathedral

          On Mull we drove the length of the island to catch the passenger-ferry to Iona.  It was so hot on the island, we were glad to go into the shade of the beautiful cathedral.  While walking through the fields we heard corncrakes – I recognised the call from my Dad’s description: ‘Like a stick being dragged across railings, or a football rattle being shook slowly.’  He used to hear them, as a boy, in the fields around his house, but those fields have long vanished.

          We stopped for a drink at the Argyll Hotel, which served the best scone and coffee of the whole trip.  We sat in a sunny garden, beside a richly scented rose-bush, looking at a white beach, blue sea, and the mountains of Mull beyond.

          I dropped a few crumbs, but they were cleared by an unusual waiter (right).

          We stayed the night at a B&B on Mull, where the landlord didn’t give us a key because, ‘we never lock anything up.’

          We crossed back to the mainland from Tobermory (or ‘Tobe’ as the locals seem to call it), and spent most of the next two days on the most beautiful beaches that could be imagined.

          Everywhere was what Davy called ‘great lumps of scenery’.  I’m not sure exactly what constitutes a great lump of scenery, but you won’t go far wrong if you include at least one loch, a dozen mountains, a quantity of boulders and burns and any amount of blue sky.  As a bonus, throw in a beach and a couple of deer.

A great lump of scenery

          There was so much beauty that, at the end of a day, I was exhausted, and longed to sit in a dark room, stuffing my face with pot-noodle and watching ‘X-Factor’ as a corrective. But after a night’s sleep, I was eager for more scenery lumps.

          But the roads! The signs say ‘single-track’ and they do not kid. They are so narrow there isn’t room for a car to pass a cyclist.

Passing-places are provided, on alternate sides.  If the nearest passing place is on your side, you pull into it, and wait for the other car to pass.  If it’s on the alternate side, you stop opposite it, and the other car uses it to pass you.

          At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work, and with locals, it works very well.  However, journeys are enlivened by foreign tourists, who don’t understand the system, or feel more comfortable driving on the left, and instinctively dive for it in an emergency.  A motorcyclist, for instance, shot across in front of us, into the passing-place Davy was just about to enter.

Another lump of scenery

          A huge camper van sat in a passing-place, watching us approach, and as soon as we were nearly level with him, pulled out, entirely blocking the road.

          Another couple made angry shooing motions at us, telling us to reverse, when the nearest passing-place was on their side, immediately behind them.  Our nearest was a considerable distance back along a winding, hilly, narrow road with a steep drop on our side.  Davy wasn’t budging, shoo as they liked, and it was they who reversed – having caused a minor queue. Not easy on roads so remote and quiet.

          The roads were so narrow, with so many blind hilltops, hairpin bends and deep dips that the road often vanished like a magic trick.  You reached the top of a rise, to see the last of it whisking round a lump of scenery, leaving nothing before you but moor. 

          Potholes had crumbled the road’s edges away, and there were drops and ditches at the sides… We had to develop a system where Davy, driving, kept his eyes on the road immediately in front of the car, while I watched as far ahead as possible (a glimpse of road sometimes reappeared in the distance) so I could forewarn him of approaching vehicles.

          After many miles of this, we passed a shiny new road sign: ‘Beware: Blind Summit.’  Workmen had been despatched from some distant depot to erect that sign.  Beyond it were miles and yet more miles of difficult, blind, narrow hairpin bends and blind summits, where sheep, cattle, motorcyclists and camper vans lurked unseen.  Why that particular blind summit deserved its own sign, we never discovered.
          But it was a great trip, and even on the morning of the day we returned, we brewed up on great slabs of rock by a waterfall, and enjoyed a coffee-break that no cafe or hotel could equal.

         I took many photos, but there were some sights I missed and wish I hadn’t…

         The enormous – HUGE – red, shaggy Highland cow standing at the roadside in a lowering glen (hey, embrace the cliché), its horizontal horns so wide that a single horn nearly spanned the narrow road.

         Two small lambs asleep on a moorside verge, their legs intertwined and wrapped around the pole of a ‘passing place’ sign.

To distract Madwippet from a mention of a cat.

         The ginger cat splayed on the pavement of Tobermory’s high street, abandoning itself utterly to the hottest sun it had probably ever known in its short life.

         But the lost photo I regret most is of the sweeps of bluebells spilling down to the loch sides.  So I tried to put the scene into words instead:

Brawling bluebells,

                       Vibrant, cobalt,

Run to the lochside,

                            Steel-blue, cobbled;

The mountain’s wall,

                Tawny, bony:

And the sky

                Lark-pierced,

                                                   Cerulean,

                                                                            Still

                                                                             Lonely.

And the palm-trees?  They do grow in the west of Scotland, where it's warmed by the Gulf stream.