The Sky At Durness

After the delights of Sheigra and Sandwood I followed the broad, bare sweep of a glacial valley for several miles to the Kyle of Durness. The mountains of Foinavon and Arkle towered majestically in the east. I wanted to catch the last ferry of the day across the shallow waters of the Kyle to the Cape Wrath peninsula - but it had been cancelled. So I carried on a further few miles and pitched on the cliff-top campsite at Durness. This site overlooks a perfect family beach - of rock stacks, rockpools, silver sand and pristine cleanliness.

I spent much of the evening gazing up at the sky. Black and thunderous clouds raced from south-east to north-west - but, miraculously, the downpour never happened. A purple mantle hung over shifting layers of black, grey, white, pink and blue. A dying sun, low on the western horizon, bathed all in gold. It shone like a laser beam of piercing light, and every object - every leaf, rock, stone, street light, tent pole and campervan - stood out in ultra-defined clarity for a few moments. Then it was gone. I crawled backwards into my inner tent, manoeuvred jerkily into my sleeping bag, and zipped it up...

I Recently Turned 55. Practically A Third Of My Life Is Over.

Although I wasn't exactly overjoyed to receive The Little Book Of Wrinklies' Wit And Wisdom as one of my 55th birthday presents last Friday (considering myself, if not pubertal, then only just entering early middle age), some of its collected wisecracks, I found, were very funny...

I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm pleased to be anywhere. GEORGE BURNS

Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, age doesn't matter. SATCHEL PAIGE

The three ages of man: youth, middle age, and 'You're looking wonderful!' DORE SCHARY

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed. ANTHONY POWELL

You know you're getting old when you go on holiday and always pack a sweater. DENIS NORDEN

You know you're getting old when you're dashing through Marks and Spencer's, spot a pair of Dr Scholl's sandals, stop, and think, hmmm, they look comfy. VICTORIA WOOD

I don't feel old. In fact I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap. BOB HOPE

Old is when your wife says, 'Let's go upstairs and make love,' and you answer, 'Honey, I can't do both.' RED BUTTONS

Mick Jagger told me the wrinkles on his face were laughter lines, but nothing is that funny. GEORGE MELLY

I don't eat health foods. At my age I need all the preservative I can get. GEORGE BURNS

You gotta stay in shape. My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is. ELLEN DEGENERES

By the time you're 80 years old you've learned everything. You only have to remember it. GEORGE BURNS

My grandmother is over 80 and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks straight out of the bottle. HENNY YOUNGMAN

Sometimes it's fun to sit in your garden and try to remember your dog's name. STEVE MARTIN

If I had my life over again, I'd make the same mistakes - only sooner. TALLULAH BANKHEAD

At age 20, we worry about what others think of us; at 40, we don't care what they think of us; at 60 we discover they haven't ben thinking of us at all. BOB HOPE

Your kids will forgive you someday. Of course, by then you'll be dead. SOPHIA PETRILLO

Always be nice to your children, because they are the ones who will choose your rest home. PHYLLIS DILLER

- To what do you attribute your long life? - To the fact that I haven't died yet. INTERVIEWER and SIR MALCOLM SERGENT

Now that I'm 78, I do tantric sex because it's very slow. My favourite position is called the plumber. You stay in all day, but nobody comes. JOHN MORTIMER

They say such lovely things about people at their funerals, it's a shame I'm going to miss mine by just a few days. BOB MONKHOUSE

I told my wife I want to be cremated. She's planning a barbecue. RODNEY DANGERFIELD

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion. AVRIL SLOE

Sandwood

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. JOHN MUIR

The beach at Sandwood Bay in the far north west of Scotland is one of the loveliest you might ever hope to find, and this is much to do with its remoteness. You can reach it only on foot. You park in a small car park just south of Sheigra - the tiny inlet where I'd wildcamped the night. (There's a small toilet block there, with facilities for a wash and brush up and for filling your water bottles.) Opposite the car park begins a path which takes you 4 and a half miles across grassy, heathery peatland, past a series of jewel-like lochs, to Sandwood Bay.

It was early in the morning and there were few other walkers about. After a couple of hours I crossed the machair and descended seawards through sand dunes bristling with marram grass. A few rag-tag groups of beachcampers had already struck camp and were heading back towards 'civilization'. By the time I'd placed my first footsteps on the fine, silvery sand, only one solitary tent remained. I had the mile-long beach practically to myself.

I made for an outlying platform of low rocks half-way between the bay's twin headlands (see pic), then perched on one of the rocks and scanned around with my binoculars. Oystercatchers probed for cockles and clams in the wet sand of the shoreline. Gannets thronged the skies above, gliding on stiff, black-tipped wings and plunging for fish in the turquoise ocean. As they dived, their wings folded back in a streamlined 'W' pattern. Lone cormorants flapped over the bay in direct, purposeful flight; others hung out their wings to dry on a distant sea stack, looking for all the world like giant vampire bats. Twice I briefly glimpsed a large, black and white shape in the water. No sooner did I focus on it than it submerged again. Could this have been an orca, or killer whale? It's quite possible - there are regular sightings of killer, minke, humpback and other whales, not to mention basking sharks, dolphins and porpoises, round this part of the Scottish coast.

I turned away from the water's edge, and walked beyond the strandline and behind the dunes to sheltered Sandwood Loch. Here 8 ringed plover scurried along the shingle rim of the loch, teasing out invertebrates among the stones. Every so often, after a spell of frenzied motion, they would freeze, their brown and white feathers and black and white heads (resembling highwayman's masks) merging perfectly with the pebbled background of the loch's foreshore. It was so tranquil here, so unspoilt, so utterly beautiful - I almost felt I'd reached the very gates of Paradise itself.

(Like Ben and Glen Nevis, the Sandwood Estate is owned and managed by the John Muir Trust. It's a very special, indeed unique place. There are 2 main types of rock: Torridonian Sandstone - formed around 600 million years ago - and Lewisian Gneiss, which is 2 - 3000 million years old. The pattern of rivers and lochs, cliffs and bays, humps and hollows tell a tale of moving glaciers and melting ice during the last Ice Age - a mere 10,000 years ago. The strip of grassland along the coast, known as the machair, supports an astonishing variety of plants and insects (200 kinds of wild flower have been recorded, including 8 orchid varieties), and it's also home to such uncommon birds as the twite and the corncrake, and the increasingly rare skylark. Today, amongst the human inhabitants, crofting and fishing are continuing, important sources of employment, and the Estate has 54 working crofts.)

Beautiful In A New Way

Norman MacCaig had a friend in Inverkirkaig (where he spent his summers for many years) called Angus MacLeod. When his friend died, he wrote a moving sequence of poems in his memory - Poems For Angus.

A. K. MacLeod

I went to the landscape I love best
and the man who was its meaning and added to it
met me in Ullapool.

The beautiful landscape was under snow
and was beautiful in a new way.

Next morning the man who had greeted me
with the pleasure of pleasure
vomited blood
and died.

Crofters and fishermen and womenfolk, unable
to say any more, said,
'It's a grand day, it's a beautiful day.'

And I thought, 'Yes it is.'
And I thought of him lying there,
the dead centre of it all.

This affects me deeply. It's so bare and simple and understated. And what a truth MacCaig recognizes when he writes of the village people not knowing what to say - except to comment on the weather. I think we can all understand this. For words are inadequate in the face of death. Perhaps we can say more through some homely truism or short comment such as 'It's a grand day' - or through silence - than we ever could through some wordy lament or grandiloquent speech.

A Man In Assynt

Who owns this landscape?-/The millionaire who bought it or/the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning/with a deer on his back?/Who possesses this landscape?-/The man who bought it or/I who am possessed by it? NORMAN MACCAIG A Man In Assynt

Just north of Ullapool is the National Nature Reserve at Knochan Crag. I drove there on the Monday I returned from Lewis, and idled round the short nature trail which winds across this geologically famous cliff. Every now and then you stumble upon minimalist rock sculptures and fragments of Noman MacCaig's poetry set in stone. From the top of the crag you look out over an extensive, glaciated, grey-blue, grey-green world of scoured valleys, bare, rugged mountains and tiny lochans. This ancient, deserted landscape - it's the parish of Assynt in the Scottish region of west Sutherland - contains some of the oldest rocks to be found anywhere. And, in nearby caves, the bones of extinct bears, wolves and reindeer have been discovered.

Deserted. Or, more accurately, cleared. For, in 18th and 19th century Highland Scotland, a forced evacuation of the peasant population took place with even more devastating effect than that produced by the English Enclosure Acts (which I've written about before). Scottish landowners - in a bid to improve profitability by turning huge areas of land over to sheep farming - ran roughshod over the old, cottage-economy, crofting culture of the Highlands. Whole communities were broken up and scattered to lowland and coastal areas. Entire populations of hills and valleys emigrated westwards (which is why one meets so many people of Scottish descent in the Americas - from Canada to Patagonia). Poverty, economic forces, the process of clearance and other self-interested acts by a relatively small number of rich, private landowners - these are the reasons why this part of Scotland is so depopulated. Although some landowners were comparatively benign, and tried to create a sustainable life for their tenants under the new farming system, others were notoriously cruel - such as the 19th century Countess of Sutherland, who quite literally burned crofters out of their homes, and whose name, even today, is mentioned only in hushed, shocked tones by present-day Sutherlanders.

I continued through this vast, humbling landscape, in the shadow of the Ben More massif, to the castle of Ardvreck, romantically situated on the northern shore of Loch Assynt (see pic). I paused a while and explored its ruined tower. It's beautiful here, with the rocky fortress of Quinag to the north, and the distinctive peaks and ridges of Canisp and Suilven to the south. At the end of the glen is the little fishing village of Lochinver, and just to the south of Lochinver, on the road to Inverpolly Lodge and Altandhu, lies Inverkirkaig, at the head of Loch Kirkaig - a sheltered sea inlet into which the lively river Kirkaig flows. It was here the poet Norman MacCaig spent his summers fishing in the lochs and lochans, and no doubt honing his fine, pithy poems - full of verve and wit - as he cast his line.

I pressed on round the rocky, indented coast of Assynt, through Clachtoll, Clashnessie and Drumbeg - along a narrow track of infinite bends and endless ups-and-downs - until I finally joined the A894, which took me to Scourie and Laxford Bridge. When I reached Kinlochverbie it was already late afternoon. A minor road led from here northwards, past tiny, cliff-top settlements, to Sheigra, my day's destination. I drove slowly down a bumpy track and parked on the machair overlooking a small sandy beach and the sea. Here I wildcamped. It was very peaceful. There was only a handful of other tents dotted discretely about the bay. Later I climbed the bay's northern headland - its firm gneiss rock was comfortingly grippy - and gazed out over the wind-chopped Atlantic. Some climbers appeared from nowhere at my feet - they'd been bouldering and free climbing out of sight on the sea-cliffs below. It was the most wonderful place, and only 12 miles from Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point on the British mainland...

(Richard Baker's picture of Ardvreck Castle is available from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License.)

Turnstone

I have a new blog. It's called TURNSTONE: Shards, Sweepings, Stealings, Sayings, Secrets. You can find it here.

I've been uncovering lots of quotations, ideas, thoughts, poems, jewels which there isn't room for on this blog. So I'm putting them on the new one. The posts will be short and frequently updated. Please take a look if you have a moment. I hope you enjoy and will revisit! Do tell me what you think, and feel free to comment.

The turnstone is a shoreline wading bird with black, white and chestnut plumage. As its name implies, it turns over stones - in a ceaseless quest for food.

Endless Renewal And Other Things

It's November 1st. Last night was the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-een), marking the end of one year and the beginning of the next, a time for settling affairs in preparation for the period of darkness and renewal ahead according to The Book Of Wicca by Lucy Summers. On a supernatural level, it is the time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest and spirits, elementals, and divine beings are able to walk upon the earth unsummoned.

Outside the weather's wild and wet. But mild. I remember when Novembers used to be bone-chillingly cold with freezing fog. We'd huddle round the bonfire on November 5th in balaclavas and warm coats, looking forward to a feast of roast chestnuts and butter-drenched baked potatoes after the firework display.

Yes, its blustery but mild today, and the wind is whistling round our ornamental cherry tree, shaking leaves of deep burgundy onto the driveway (see pic). After a hard week's work it's nice to stay indoors, relax and curl up with a good book or two. In fact two books arrived from Amazon last week (I'm an Amazon addict. After resisting for months, I've caved in yet again.)

I think I have a treat in store with Rumi's Selected Poems (I've enjoyed so many poems by Rumi on various blogs that I just had to read more) and John Hillaby's Journey Through Britain - somewhat of a landmark book for me. It was one of the first books to inspire my walking adventures. I had a hardback copy once before - which I've either lost, sold or given away.

(Like most other things, books come and go. The whole of my professional life I've been involved with books - buying them, selling them, collecting them, lending them, donating them, just falling short of stealing them, Joe Orton-style. My collection of books is constantly changing. Changing as the seasons themselves. Changing like Samhain following Lughnasadh. Changing as the colours of a flowering cherry tree.)

Back to John Hillaby's Journey Through Britain. I want to reread it. I have half a notion to retrace his journey, then try and write a book about it. We all need these dreams and aspirations. Personally speaking, I find I have more and more dreams and aspirations the older I get. The less time I have, the more I seem to want and need to do. I no longer have the luxury of youth's careless idleness and enviable procrastination.

I love life! And I want to live and experience and read about and thrill to more and more things with each passing year.

That Old-Time Religion: The Opiate Of The People?

I spent my last day on Lewis in Stornoway (Steònabhagh in Gaelic), the burgh where one third of the island's 26,000 inhabitants live. I pitched my tent on Laxdale Lane's small, immaculate campsite, then washed some clothes and hung them out to dry on a line I'd strung between the branches of a nearby tree. Rain had threatened in the early morning but had managed to hold off. Clouds were still massing, but the sun popped out from time to time, and there was a warm, welcome breeze.

I took a stroll across town in the general direction of the harbour. It was Sunday and the place was dead. Not a shop, not a bar, not a café was open. Bizarrely, the only money changing hands in the whole of Stornoway was in the public toilets - where an attendant demanded 20p for the use of his pristine facilities. I roamed aimlessly through deserted streets. Apart from the occasional scream of gulls, the only sounds came from the churches: a congregation's swell of voices, a preacher's hectoring boom.

Religion is big here on Lewis. Strict observance of the Sabbath is still adhered to. Traditions are ingrained, preserved like the bog corpses which are sometimes dug out of the surrounding peatland - proudly-kept traditions such as crofting, turf cutting, speaking Gaelic. A deep strain of Calvinistic Presbyterianism holds sway, particularly amongst the older generation. Even the smallest settlements often have their own church - crude, not pretty buildings, but generously proportioned, dominating the rest of the village. Scottish Presbyterians believe in hard work, abstemiousness, simplicity - the extravagance of ornate, expansive church architecture would offend their moral rigour. In these austere churches the decor must not detract from the business of worship.

The Presbyterian Church of Scotland was founded by John Knox (a follower of Calvin) in 1560 as a consequence of the Scottish Reformation and the break from Rome. Unlike the Church of England, it's completely independent of the 'state'. In its fervent desire that everyone should read the Bible, the Church promoted the idea of universal, public education - and Scotland became the first country in the world to adopt such a system.

Over the following centuries, various splinter group churches formed and reformed, seceded and reunited. There is now a plethora of Presbyterian denominations - the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland, the United Free Church, the United Free Church of Scotland, the Associated Presbyterian Churches... Don't ask me to make sense of it all! Suffice to say that all these churches are united in their belief in education and life-long learning, and put a strong emphasis on Bible study and church doctrine. But they also keenly advocate turning passive knowledge into informed action: there are firm traditions of generosity and hospitality, the pursuit of social justice, and the witnessing of Christ's Gospel.

In the afternoon I took a delightful saunter through the grounds of Lews Castle - the only deciduous woodland on Lewis. This was the country house built for the businessman-philanthropist, Sir James Matheson, in the mid-nineteenth century - and paid for with his profits from the Chinese Opium Trade. (Matheson went into partnership with one William Jardine, and this was the origin of today's Jardine Matheson company - which still maintains such a strong presence in Hong Kong and the Far East. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the company's present promotional literature erases any reference to opium, upon which the fortunes of the firm were built.)

Whether the influence of Matheson - who actually owned the whole island before selling it to Lord Leverhulme in 1918 - was baleful or benign is a controversial issue in Lewis to this day. Though I think it's beyond dispute that Matheson did much to alleviate the islanders' one-time starvation and poverty - the result of a potato famine.

There are several water mills on Lewis, and I came across one on Matheson's old estate (now belonging to the democratic Stornoway Trust) at Lews Castle. Its overshot water wheel has been painstakingly restored - the wheel fed by a reconstructed leat which channels water from a nearby stream (see top pic). The mill stones - vertically positioned - were used to grind grain, and the grain was dried in kilns. Other mills (Norse mills, saw mills, carding mills) in the area had horizontally placed grinding stones. Anyone who read the recent post I wrote on my father will not be surprised at my more-than-casual interest in these pre-industrial mills...

Early next morning I took the ferry back to Ullapool. I could have caught one a day earlier - on the Sunday - as Calmac, the ferry company, had just won a decades-long battle with the religiously entrenched authorities on Lewis to allow a Sunday crossing. But I decided to leave on the Monday. Just for old times' sake...

The Standing Stones At Calanais

One of the most remarkable sights on Harris and Lewis is the standing stone complex at Calanais (Callanish). These ancient megaliths are black, white, grey, pink, green-lichened. They are all different shapes - like people. They stand defiantly upright, but their strata strain to the horizontal. Tourists gaze uncomprehendingly in the rain.

We know the world in shorthand, through a veil. Much travelled we may be - but how deeply travelled? We tick off the landmarks - but do we look beyond? Do we really know the first thing about the places we visit?

There are many theories and suppositions about Calanais, but actually we know nothing for sure about the true purpose and significance of these haunting monoliths.

The True Subjugation Of The Ego

Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930)

Diligent readers of this blog will know by now that my favourite British newspaper is The Guardian, or The Manchester Guardian as it was known until 1959. It's a platform for liberal and left-wing opinion - a political stance which corresponds roughly with my own. It's strong in the fields of Culture and The Arts. Its writing and reporting are consistently outstanding. And reading the Review supplement every Saturday is one of the highlights of my week. I often cut out, underline or mark in some way striking bits and pieces from the Review; and some of these occasionally end up in my blog. I've singled out from last Saturday's Review this final paragraph from Sara Wheeler's appreciation of the great Norwegian Arctic explorer, Fridtjof Nansen:

When I camped on the Greenland icecap, I sensed the ghostly presence of Nansen. (It was he, along with five companions, who made the first crossing of that huge country). Of all the frozen beards who had been there before me, only Nansen communicated a sense of the true subjugation of the ego that endeavour can bring. Failure, he acknowledged, would mean 'only disappointed human hopes, nothing more'. This great poet of northern latitudes concluded: 'If we perish, what will it matter in the endless cycle of eternity?'

Nansen was an extraordinary person, and you can read more about him here.

The Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821. Its most famous editor was C. P. Scott, who edited the newspaper for 57 years from 1872. During the Spanish Civil War it supported the Republicans against Franco and fascism. In 2005 The Guardian underwent a radical and award-winning transformation of design, adopting the 'Berliner' format (a little larger than the traditional tabloid) with a new masthead and typeface. It has no foreign proprietor dictating editorial policy (unlike some newspapers I could mention), and is unique in being owned by a foundation (the Scott Trust, via the Guardian Media Group).

Blowing In The Wind

The 1st time I saw Joan Baez was in August 2003 at the Summer Sundae event in the grounds of De Montfort Hall, Leicester. She appeared alongside Chrissie Hynde, Billy Bragg, Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle. I saw Joan Baez again last night in Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall. Her voice is still in great shape and she gave an unforgettable performance.

The 1st time I saw Bob Dylan was in June 1978 at Earl's Court, London, where he took the stage for 6 nights. These were the 1st shows Dylan had given in the UK for 12 years. He sang 27 songs, including 'Blowing In The Wind'. At about the same time his 20th album, 'Street Legal', was released - apart from 'Blood On The Tracks' his finest album of the 1970s.

Since then I've seen him around 30 times (I have a proper list somewhere documenting time and place but can't find it right now). The last time I saw Bob Dylan was on 24 April 2009 at the Sheffield Arena. He sang 17 songs, both new and old, and once more included 'Blowing In The Wind'.

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Diamonds and Rust

Two hours ago I heard Joan Baez sing this live in Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall. What a dignified, commanding, wonderful presence...

May You Never

One final clip from the 'Transatlantic Sessions'. It's the incomparable, late lamented John Martyn (1948-2009)...

'May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold
May you never make your bed out in the cold...'

'Love is a lesson to learn in our time...'

The Snows They Melt The Soonest

When I first heard the voice of Cara Dillon I truly believed it was the voice of an angel...

The Blacksmith

This is Planxty - one of the greatest ever Irish folk bands. From left to right are: Donal Lunny (yes, that's him from the 'Transatlantic Sessions'), Andy Irvine, Liam O'Flynn (playing the uilleann pipes) and Christy Moore (Paul Brady took over from Christy in a later reincarnation of the band). This video must date from the very early 1970s. Their compilation album 'The Planxty Collection' was never far away from my turntable at that time...