Road Trip Junkies

          The four-week road trip that took us around the coast of Scotland is now over. We set off at the start of one heatwave and returned at the end of another. In between, we experienced a variety of weather conditions, which we expected and for which we were prepared. And variety is the key word also for our other experiences, which is what makes a road trip so special. Getting away from home is, in itself, a chance to break from habitual comforts and atrophied notions of how to live your life: visiting many different places makes the most of that opportunity.

          Leaving the Highlands, we travelled down the east coast to Dornoch for a two-night stopover with a couple of friends who have a house there. We were duly reacquainted with the pleasures of social dining around a proper table and sleeping in a large, comfortable bed – neither of which we had missed, until then. Having left behind the ragged, sparsely populated north and its train of adventurous European tourists, we had come to a genteel, wealthy enclave, where numerous Americans, attracted by the world-class golf course, ambled around the town’s other attractions. I didn’t set eyes on the golf course (of course) but did accompany our hosts on a fishing-cum-picnic expedition to a nearby loch, where we met – among others – an enthusiastic fisherman from Pittsburgh, USA. That was the closest I got to sport before it was time to move on, this time to the rich farmlands of Fife, further south.

          We stayed at the intriguingly named Pillars of Hercules, an organic farm with a shop, café and camping fields. This is a business committed to existing in harmony with nature and reaping its abundance without harming the source. There was no shortage of appreciative customers, attracted by the ethos and delighted by the charm of the surroundings. Considering it was established in 1983, it seems a living can be made without ‘scaling up’ or ‘franchising’ the concept.

          From the site, it was a short drive to Dundee, where the Victoria & Albert Museum opened its doors in 2019. The building itself is worth a visit, if only for its unique architecture and imposing presence on the waterfront (characteristics also evident in Santander’s Botin Centre), but its contents are equally impressive – as you would expect from one of the world’s top museums. The establishment of the museum was part of the city’s drive to reinvigorate its economy and, if what I read is true, the results are beginning to show. Technology in the form of video game development is a front-runner in the industries that are now replacing the staples upon which the city’s wealth was built, historically characterised as jute, jam and journalism.

          A day’s drive south took us to Worcestershire, where we stayed overnight adjacent to the improbably named Droitwich Spa Marina. Yes, it was, until 1950, a spa town and yes, there is a marina, though it is for the inland canal system and harbours hundreds of residential longboats. Nevertheless, the surrounding land is lush and, at its heart, there is the National Trust property, Hanbury hall. We went for a look around and found they were celebrating the 350^th anniversary of the birth of the artist, Sir James Thornhill, whose murals adorn Chatsworth, Greenwich Royal Hospital, St. Paul’s dome and, of course, Hanbury, where they look remarkably fresh for their age.

          On the final leg home, I began to sense the return to normal routines as a sort of prick to the conscience. Had all this gallivanting around the country, revelling in difference and delighting in small discoveries been no more than a distraction from the serious business of living my own life? Was it a sort of dereliction of duty? But then, it wasn’t long after I unpacked my bag that I was consulting the diary to plan the next expedition.

 

Most Northerly

          Yesterday, we were at the most northerly tip of Britain, Dunnett Head, where sits an elegant, still operational lighthouse, built in 1830. On a rise just above it there is a collection of abandoned box-like buildings that once housed radar equipment, their utilitarian ugliness blighting what is otherwise a romantic spot from which to gaze over to Orkney and scan the sea, hopefully, for whale sightings. A few days before, we were at another ex-radar station, Balnakiel, near Durness, though that one has been imaginatively repurposed as a craft village, complete with a chocolatier operating from a classy coffee shop. Radar stations per se have had their day, but lighthouses remain, a tribute to early technology and the role it still has in navigation.

          But the seas around here were busy with traffic long before the invention of lighthouses. On the island and mainland coasts, the remains of buildings from as long ago as five-thousand years reveal evidence of frequent and prolonged connections with Scandinavia. In the (most northerly) town of Thurso, there is a ruined church that looks nothing special, but we had the good fortune to visit it on a morning when Maureen, a volunteer custodian-cum-historian, was on duty to inform the curious. She was at pains to point out that what is visible above ground is only the latest iteration of a place of worship that has been on the site since the time of the Picts. In populous places, new buildings sit upon old foundations.

          Is the same true of cultural mores? I’ve been reading some short stories by George McKay Brown, an Orcadian author who was writing in the early 20^th century. His stories and characters are peppered with references to Vikings, Norwegians, whaling, fishing, crofting and religious observance, reflecting the cultural influences of the past upon the living. History, in that sense, is like archaeology. Funny-sounding place name? Probably of Norse origin and descriptive of a feature or purpose. But names stick, whereas other traditions fade more readily. There are only residual traces nowadays of the particularly strict Presbyterian ethic that is the backdrop of McKay Brown’s stories: supermarkets are open on Sundays until ten p.m. and churches in smaller hamlets have faded notices pinned to the doors announcing their closure and suggesting alternative venues for worship.

          Change is driven by many factors, incomers being one. Some people move here to build a different kind of life for themselves Like Phil, the Mancunian building contractor, who sold up and is now the contented owner of Windhaven (the most northerly campsite in Britain). Unlike me, he doesn’t miss Manchester. His neighbour, who crafts objects in wood, is from Yorkshire. In the town of Tongue (a corruption of the Old Norse “tunga”, a spit of land) there is a famous bakery that, when it closed its doors, was revived – with a great deal of style – by a young couple whose commitment to wholesome baking is apparent in the excellence of their goods. He is from London; she is from Japan. And, on a walk towards a remote beach, we passed through a croft and were greeted by the new owners, a young couple from England. They had been there only five months and were “loving it”. Crofting, they explained, is a pure form of sustainable farming. When it comes to the future of farming, there is no need to reinvent the wheel!

          This wild and windy corner of Scotland will stay that way for some time to come. The lighthouse could well be here in another 184 years. What is changing is the population. This current wave of incomers is another element of history-in-the-making. They will certainly adapt to the peculiarities of the terrain. They will also, in time, redefine what it is to be a Scottish Highlander.

Rock of Ages

          Gneiss is a word that doesn’t come up very often. It’s the name given to a metamorphic rock formation – one of the oldest in the world. Here at Scourie, on Scotland’s rugged west coast, surrounded by classic outcrops of the three-billion-year-old stuff, I’m beginning to feel that its qualities exceed a purely technical, geological identity. The landscape it creates is spectacular – menacing in rough weather, majestic in colour-enhancing sunlight – but the living it provides is far from bountiful and, to a city dweller like me, whose interface with nature is less raw, it is the rocks, not the small settlements huddled below them, that comprise the spirit of this place.

          The sparse human population hereabouts seems to be adapted to the habitat and even to relish being far from the towns and cities. I imagine these folk feel little affinity with the big bad world of geopolitics, seemingly so irrelevant to their daily grind of making a living out of grazing sheep, catching lobsters and servicing tourists. Theirs is a different way of life from the always-on complexity and intensity of life in teeming cities. What difference would it make to them if, say, the USA invaded Canada? At times, momentarily overawed by the ancient bedrock, I feel my own mind disengaging from its habitual agonising over the machinations of power-hungry tyrants and nations striving against each other. Could this become a permanent state of mind if I were to live in a place such as this?

          Well, only by determined choice. Even in remote places, connection to the internet is possible and the foghorn of Trump’s posturing breaks through the ether as soon as a signal is established. Fortunately, the signal can also bring good news, as happened a few days ago. We were approaching the port of Ullapool, where we were due to stay the night, when I picked up an Instagram post from of a couple of old friends. They were happily hiking around Ullapool and staying over while they waited for the ferry to take them to that legendary hunk of gneiss, the Isle of Lewis. Thus, the combination of serendipity and internet enabled a joyful catchup in a pub, which we couldn’t have arranged better if we’d tried.

          Ullapool itself is an apparently gentrifying town. Being a port and ferry terminal, its purpose in life is well established and there is money passing through. I noticed there is a library and a theatre – neither of which we had time to visit – as well as a street that contains a deli, an on-trend coffee bar and re-fuel and re-use shop (the latter being of most interest to me, as it was the welcome source of a rare commodity – loose-leaf Assam tea), all of which we did visit. Another place we stopped at, en passant, was Gairloch, where there is evidence of colonisation by alternative lifestyle people circa 1975. It takes the form of a café-cum-bookshop called (?), which we discovered on a previous trip around ten years ago. We called in to check that it still retained its hippyish charm and, sure enough, it does. Nothing has changed – not even the stoner soundtrack.

          Back on the road, we take pleasure in small things: the little stands outside crofts offering garden produce, eggs and chutneys in exchange for cash deposited in honesty boxes; the temporary neighbourliness on campsites, where courteous consideration is the norm and conversation rarely has the time to develop beyond small talk; the wet, windy days devoted to reading, interspersed with the bright ones, ideal for invigorating walks; and the travelling fishmonger who dispensed seafood with a good deal of jollity and wit, and whose French accent was apparent despite his insistence on being from Aberdeen.

          Then there’s the background to the whole show, the time-defying gneiss that offers an insight into how and why it all works the way it does.