Dun Telve, Dun Troddan

I left Sandaig Bay most reluctantly.... Sandaig, with its beautiful but tragic memories of Gavin Maxwell and Kathleen Raine...

... Sandaig, with its razorshells and coiled lugworm casts and enormous jellyfish (some of them 1 and a half ft in diameter) on the beach, and its rockpools, and islands, and hard clusters of baby mussels...

Before heading further north, away from the unspoilt, heavenly Glenelg peninsula, I took 2 more walks - the 1st in Gleann Beag, one of the loveliest of all the Scottish glens. Here you can find 2 of the best preserved brochs in the whole of Scotland, both within half a mile of each other. This is Dun Telve...

... and this is Dun Troddan...

Brochs are drystone, hollow-walled structures of circular design, found only in Scotland - mostly in the far north (lots in Caithness), and in the Northern and Western Isles. Their function is unclear to this day. Defensive forts? Places of refuge? Homes for those high up in the social pecking order? What's beyond dispute, however, is that they were built in the Iron Age - between 2000 and 3000 years ago. They're astonishing, atmospheric places (later I saw another preserved broch - Dun Carloway, on the Isle of Lewis). Another broch-visitor, whom I'd been chatting to earlier, suddenly called out from 50 yards down the road: "Look up!" 3 golden eagles were soaring majestically above the topmost crags of the glen, each in a different part of the sky...

For my 2nd walk I took an overgrown, little-used path which snaked north-east from the small watery settlement of Glenelg. First I battled through 7 ft high ferns (some plants seem to grow taller on this western coast - which is bathed in warm Gulf Stream waters). Then I squelched across high, boggy moorland. It was all unbelievably lonely and remote. I met no other walkers. Finally I joined a forestry track which led steeply down to Ardintoul on Loch Alsh.

Returning along the narrow strait of Kyle Rhea - which separates Glenelg from the Isle of Skye - I passed a solitary sailing boat drifting in the middle of the channel. Loud music blared from the boat and echoed round the hills - I think it was an Elton John song, played over and over - but I saw no one on board. It reminded me of the Mary Celeste...

I roamed through a paradise of wild flowers - tutsan, heath spotted orchid, eyebright, bog asphodel, ragged robin. A yellow mist of meadowsweet. A froth of purple-tinged wild angelica. Ravens cronk-cronked, oystercatchers piped and a stonechat flew out of a gorse bush. A seal barked from far away. Then the rain, which had been threatening for hours, poured down. I scurried back to the car under a dripping blanket of pines. It had been a tiring but wonderful day...

Ring Of Bright Water

He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water/Whose ripples travel from the heart of the sea,/He has married me with a ring of light, the glitter/Broadcast on the swift river. KATHLEEN RAINE. From The Marriage Of Psyche.

This is Sandaig on the Glenelg peninsula - halfway up Scotland's indented West Highland coast. The writer and adventurer Gavin Maxwell lived here with his beloved otters during the late 1950s and 1960s. The old lighthousekeeper's cottage where he used to live no longer exists, for it burned down in 1968 (Maxwell's otter Edal died in the fire). The site of the cottage is the patch of long grass you can see centre-right in my 2nd pic. The 3rd pic shows a different view of it - the patch of long grass is now centre-left. (In Maxwell's day the slopes behind would not have been covered with larch and sitka spruce as they are now.)

Part of the time Maxwell lived here with the poet, critic and scholar Kathleen Raine. (The title of his famous book Ring Of Bright Water comes from one of Raine's poems, The Marriage Of Psyche. This 'ring' of water, made up of freshwater stream and saltwater sea, almost encircled their cottage - in my 2nd pic you can just make out the course of the stream, which runs behind the site of the cottage, beneath the grassy headland and into the sea.)

Raine was besotted with Maxwell - she's on record as saying he was the love of her life - but their relationship ended tragically. Despairing of his homosexuality, she laid down a curse: 'Let Gavin suffer in this place as I am suffering now.' Not long after that she accidentally 'lost' his otter Mijbil which he'd brought home all the way from Iraq. This led to Mijbil's death at the hands of a roadmender. And Raine also blamed herself and her curse for the cancer which killed Maxwell in 1969. He was only in his mid-fifties.

Forget the film starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. Go back to Maxwell's book - it's a classic of natural history writing and romantic autobiography. Maxwell is an eternally intriguing and controversial character, a man full of contradictions: a loner yet possessor of numerous, diverse friendships; a despot whom many described as unfailingly generous and kind; a homosexual who was nevertheless drawn to women; a restless adventurer and traveller, who tried to create a permanent home for himself and his otters; a passionate conservationist ahead of his time, yet also a harpooner of basking sharks. (He once owned the island of Soay off the Isle of Skye, where he attempted but ultimately failed to set up a viable shark fishery business. Basking sharks are sadly prized for their their huge livers, which yield copious amounts of oil, and for their fins, which are used in shark's fin soup. Scotland's basking shark population has still not recovered.)

On the site of Maxwell's former cottage stands a boulder, scattered with shells and stones which pilgrims have placed there...

... and in the centre of the boulder there's a simple slate memorial...

Home Is Where Your Tent Is

I left Glen Nevis and drove further north, first alongside Loch Lochy, and then through Glen Shiel, which is dominated by the tall, shapely peaks of The Five Sisters of Kintail. I pitched my tent in Shiel Bridge at the head of Loch Duich. The campsite was small, cheap (£5 a night) and uncrowded. I soon made myself at home...

Shiel Bridge is the gateway to the lonely and beautiful Glenelg peninsula. Just one road leads in - a narrow, single-track road which climbs via a series of hairpin bends high up to the Mam Ratagan pass and down through Glen More to Glenelg. A little further south of here lies Sandaig, once home to Gavin Maxwell and his otters. In his book Ring Of Bright Water Maxwell disguises Sandaig under the name of Camusfeàrna (Bay of Alders). But, when reading the book in my early 20s, I quickly worked out its real location from clues in the text. And I've wanted to make a pilgrimage there ever since...