preloder

The Western Highlands of Scotland

 

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As you may have guessed from the name, my bloodline is (by 50% as it happens) Scottish and, as a child and young teenager, many a holiday was spent travelling Scotland and particularly the Highlands.

Therefore, I fell in love with it at a very young age and it moves me in a way that nowhere else does (albeit Australia is damn close); I have a deep and really quite unexplainable sense of belonging when I am there. In short, I feel I am ‘home’.

Sometimes and for no apparent reason, I will be going about my normal life and have an overwhelming urge to be there; to literally get in my car, hit the road and to just keep going until I pass through Glencoe (simply magnificent and, for me, lump-in-the-throat inducing) and then I know I’ve passed through the gateway to my other world.

I try and return every year now and if for some reason I can’t, I feel pretty flummoxed – how will I cope without that fix to my soul?

Of all the wonderful places I’ve been (and God knows there are so many) I have a few that, to me, are just that extra bit special and, into the bargain, give me some of my very best photos (which I’m sure is partly, maybe mostly, just because of my sheer love for those places…I have to try everything I can to reflect that and to show just how stunning they are).

Three are within but a few miles of each other close to Mallaig - Camusdarach Beach, the Sands of Morar and Rhu near(ish) Arisaig.

The others are Ardmair Bay, just north of Ullapool, and Sanna Bay on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula (the only place I’ve ever seen wild sea-otters).

A bit of a story about Ardmair Bay might, I hope, give a feel as to why I regard this not-so-obvious choice as so special.

When I was young, on one of our summertime tours of West and North Scotland, my parents chose that as a good place to park the caravan and stay awhile and thank God they did. With good weather (and, of course, in my childhood the weather was always good!), the bay was (and is) like a millpond and the water is crystal clear. It has a ‘beach’ of large flattened stones the likes of which I’ve never seen anywhere else.

My dad had a rubber dinghy and took me and my older brother Ian out in it, into the middle of the bay, to fish for mackerel. It was probably the first time we’d ever done that, we probably had brand new fishing rods. My Dad taught us how to fish using the ‘spinners’ and, with that many mackerel in the Bay you could hardly fail, even on your first go; we hauled in fish after fish (or maybe that’s another rose-tinted childhood memory).

However, Ian being Ian was ‘playing up’ and, somehow, managed to drop his fishing rod over the side – we all watched it slide down through the crystal waters until it disappeared from view. My Dad went nuts…and still talks about it to this day when he’s damn near 90!

Memories of it had increasingly played on my mind as I got older and so when, after 45-odd years, I pulled up there again in September 2015 with one of my daughters, I found that, unlike as can so often happen, my mental imprint of the place was almost 100% right. A bigger caravan site and a shop / café but, otherwise, exactly the same.

The weather was astonishingly good (yep, this is north-west Scotland and it can be truly terrible with the onset of the infamous Scotch ‘mist’) and, just as it had been that day so long ago in the dinghy, the water in the Bay was an absolute millpond. Apart from the odd passing car it was virtually silent.

My dog Willow took herself out for a swim and, as I stood there on those weird flat stones with my own ‘child’ and watched her, I thought of my brother’s fishing rod still laying there in the bottom of the Bay. I was transported back like I’d gone through some portal in time.

I was utterly overwhelmed and had to fight back the tears.

It was, and is, one of those perfect moments in life that will stay with me forever; I can place myself back there in an instant and it is literally like I am standing there.

Of the other places I mention, Camusdarach and the Sands of Morar (literally round a headland from each other) are, to me, completely magical and mesmerising. At low tide I could wander them with my camera and dogs for hour upon hour. They give a view of the small isles (Eigg, Rhum etc) that, with the right light and weather, I find truly stunning…and I hope you do too.

My emotional attachment comes in no small part from my recollection of the first time I took my dogs there (actually just the one dog in 2014 and then both in 2016) and of how much they too truly love those places, like they also feel it as a kind of ‘home’. If you have dogs you’ll understand I suspect.

Suffice to say that whenever I hear my chosen ‘funeral’ songs (‘Distant Sky’ by Nick Cave and ‘10,000 miles’ by Mary Chapin-Carpenter just in case you were wondering), I have this weirdly cinematic image of the ghost of me and my ghost dogs walking out there on those silver sands of Morar towards the setting sun at low tide.

So I guess that says it all!

 

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