Yes, the MILD west. Of Scotland!
Anyone who followed my Land Rover 110 home-made lifting roof adventure will know what I've got.
Last week I took my son William (7) for a run over to the west coast, to my home district of Lochaber, to show him some of the places I used to work and play in (wild). Main part of the adventure was to go to the Fossil Burn near Lochaline and 'liberate' some Gryphaea fossils from the rock as he's a keen dinosaur and geology buff, do a bit of wildlife watching, a bit of fishing and visit the most westerly point on the British mainland - Ardnamurchan. Only four days but long enough to have a bit of fun.
The plan was to do a clockwise trip around Ardnamurchan Peninsula, west from Fort William to Corran, through Ardgour to Lochaline, cut back to Strontian and on to Kilchoan, then back round to Glenuig and Lochailort, before the long lochside run back to Fort William via Glenfinnan. This is wild country, with sparse communities, rugged coast and many single track roads. It's also a place I spent a lot of my youth working as a carpenter/joiner, in remote country houses, small farms and crofts and anywhere else needing repaired. Given the rain-forest amounts of precipitation in this area, there was a lot of rotten wood to wrestle with, which I did in all sorts of weather, getting sunstroke as often as near-frostbite, but usually just very very wet.
And so as we slowly bimbled along in my 26 year old Land Rover each corner revealed a new jaw-dropping vista which elicited tale after tale of the places I'd worked, the people I'd encountered, and the wildlife spectacles that had unfolded in front of me. These involving the usual cast of characters: wildcats, eagles, red deer, wild goats, and the memorable day almost 200 dolphins came up Loch Sunart to Camas Inas following a shoal of mackerel, and not forgetting the tale of the otter that bit my foot, which William never tires of hearing. So game on – as we made slow but stately progress William happily shouted “OTTER! – TICK!” as we spotted yet another wild thing going about its business.
First day out driving across from the east coast down the Great Glen to Fort William was a wet and windy affair - the forecast for the day was stormy, lightning and hailstones. We got two out of three (no lightning). First stop was Kingairloch, a small community of a few houses on the side of Loch Linnhe. This is a magic location, rugged hills and wild goats wandering on them, and great places to camp along the shore with views to die for. Only problem was the wind - it was winding itself up to give a good blow an stopping on the exposed shoreline with a fabric-sided roof didn't appeal. Instead I went a forest track into some old scraggly pines, a lot of which had been blown down and which were starting to whip back and forwards. Some of them looked very very unsafe so we'd to carefully choose a spot where we estimated no falling tree could hit us. Not easy! It was a wild night but the trees gave us shelter and despite the cold it was cosy in the 110.
But unspoken, and floating through my mind from time to time were my recollections of people. Carpentry is all about wood, but it's also all about meeting people's needs, and often those needs were more than practical. It's probably tempting to look at these images and think how idyllic it all looks. For some it is. For others it's certainly not. Working in remote rural areas of the Highlands in the 1970's and 80's I quickly realized the high psychological price many people paid for their solitude, often enforced through their partner's work choices or limitations. Many times I left some remote cottage at the end of a lonely glen to drive the 2.5 hours back home acutely aware that my joinery skills had taken second place to my love of conversation and the sharing of stories, and the owner's desperate need for company.
One conversation sticks in my mind, with the wife of a forester living in a cosy little house in a remote glen, surrounded by woodland, deer in the garden, pine martens coming in her window and raiding her breadbin, and loneliness. After a week in her home replacing windows, and chatting amiably on a range of subjects with her, we were on good terms, and aware the job was finishing and I'd probably not be returning, she finally broke down “Look at this, look at this, what's it all about, what's life all about?” she said on the edge of tears, then couldn't hold them back and began to cry in earnest, shoulders heaving “Trees….just trees, trees everywhere……I hate the ************* things, look, they're all around me…. I can't see anything beyond them! Is there anything beyond them? Not for me. It's trees and trees and more trees, my life is all trees…………..and I've come to loathe them.” and defeated she disappeared off out the door.
And there were a few folks whose desire to shake off whatever demons possessed them had led them to some idyllic spot, miles from any other habitation, but who had yet to realize that whatever haunted them had simply come along for the ride, and its malevolent presence stalked them daily. There were one or two places I worked where there was a palpable sense of risk. I learned a lot about people in those years.
But William and I saw very few people on our first day out. We drove through Kingairloch, and saw no one, and no cars passed us either way. And settling for the night in a stretch of forest on the hillside saw nobody, and heard no cars pass, only the thrashing of the trees as the forecast gale, which was stopping us camping on the exposed shoreline of Loch Linnhe, gained momentum and whacked them to and fro.
Next morning the gale abated, and as the rain showers passed through Castle Stalker appeared across the Loch at Appin. William loved the story of me rowing across to the castle to repair the windows on a winter day, another round in the endless fight against several centuries of corrosive salty air.
My favourite of the great West Highland driving-games is roadsign spotting, ‘bagging' carefully crafted and often subtle alterations made to passing place and direction signs, the work of wandering wags with a penknife and a felt pen. These are the best we spotted, William got the first two, spotting them well before me, and crying out “SIGN! – TICK!” but thought the third one was a real ‘thing' and insisted we should look out for ‘cow jockeys' on the road. This being near Lochaline, he might be right!
Anyone who followed my Land Rover 110 home-made lifting roof adventure will know what I've got.
Last week I took my son William (7) for a run over to the west coast, to my home district of Lochaber, to show him some of the places I used to work and play in (wild). Main part of the adventure was to go to the Fossil Burn near Lochaline and 'liberate' some Gryphaea fossils from the rock as he's a keen dinosaur and geology buff, do a bit of wildlife watching, a bit of fishing and visit the most westerly point on the British mainland - Ardnamurchan. Only four days but long enough to have a bit of fun.
The plan was to do a clockwise trip around Ardnamurchan Peninsula, west from Fort William to Corran, through Ardgour to Lochaline, cut back to Strontian and on to Kilchoan, then back round to Glenuig and Lochailort, before the long lochside run back to Fort William via Glenfinnan. This is wild country, with sparse communities, rugged coast and many single track roads. It's also a place I spent a lot of my youth working as a carpenter/joiner, in remote country houses, small farms and crofts and anywhere else needing repaired. Given the rain-forest amounts of precipitation in this area, there was a lot of rotten wood to wrestle with, which I did in all sorts of weather, getting sunstroke as often as near-frostbite, but usually just very very wet.
And so as we slowly bimbled along in my 26 year old Land Rover each corner revealed a new jaw-dropping vista which elicited tale after tale of the places I'd worked, the people I'd encountered, and the wildlife spectacles that had unfolded in front of me. These involving the usual cast of characters: wildcats, eagles, red deer, wild goats, and the memorable day almost 200 dolphins came up Loch Sunart to Camas Inas following a shoal of mackerel, and not forgetting the tale of the otter that bit my foot, which William never tires of hearing. So game on – as we made slow but stately progress William happily shouted “OTTER! – TICK!” as we spotted yet another wild thing going about its business.
First day out driving across from the east coast down the Great Glen to Fort William was a wet and windy affair - the forecast for the day was stormy, lightning and hailstones. We got two out of three (no lightning). First stop was Kingairloch, a small community of a few houses on the side of Loch Linnhe. This is a magic location, rugged hills and wild goats wandering on them, and great places to camp along the shore with views to die for. Only problem was the wind - it was winding itself up to give a good blow an stopping on the exposed shoreline with a fabric-sided roof didn't appeal. Instead I went a forest track into some old scraggly pines, a lot of which had been blown down and which were starting to whip back and forwards. Some of them looked very very unsafe so we'd to carefully choose a spot where we estimated no falling tree could hit us. Not easy! It was a wild night but the trees gave us shelter and despite the cold it was cosy in the 110.
But unspoken, and floating through my mind from time to time were my recollections of people. Carpentry is all about wood, but it's also all about meeting people's needs, and often those needs were more than practical. It's probably tempting to look at these images and think how idyllic it all looks. For some it is. For others it's certainly not. Working in remote rural areas of the Highlands in the 1970's and 80's I quickly realized the high psychological price many people paid for their solitude, often enforced through their partner's work choices or limitations. Many times I left some remote cottage at the end of a lonely glen to drive the 2.5 hours back home acutely aware that my joinery skills had taken second place to my love of conversation and the sharing of stories, and the owner's desperate need for company.
One conversation sticks in my mind, with the wife of a forester living in a cosy little house in a remote glen, surrounded by woodland, deer in the garden, pine martens coming in her window and raiding her breadbin, and loneliness. After a week in her home replacing windows, and chatting amiably on a range of subjects with her, we were on good terms, and aware the job was finishing and I'd probably not be returning, she finally broke down “Look at this, look at this, what's it all about, what's life all about?” she said on the edge of tears, then couldn't hold them back and began to cry in earnest, shoulders heaving “Trees….just trees, trees everywhere……I hate the ************* things, look, they're all around me…. I can't see anything beyond them! Is there anything beyond them? Not for me. It's trees and trees and more trees, my life is all trees…………..and I've come to loathe them.” and defeated she disappeared off out the door.
And there were a few folks whose desire to shake off whatever demons possessed them had led them to some idyllic spot, miles from any other habitation, but who had yet to realize that whatever haunted them had simply come along for the ride, and its malevolent presence stalked them daily. There were one or two places I worked where there was a palpable sense of risk. I learned a lot about people in those years.
But William and I saw very few people on our first day out. We drove through Kingairloch, and saw no one, and no cars passed us either way. And settling for the night in a stretch of forest on the hillside saw nobody, and heard no cars pass, only the thrashing of the trees as the forecast gale, which was stopping us camping on the exposed shoreline of Loch Linnhe, gained momentum and whacked them to and fro.
Next morning the gale abated, and as the rain showers passed through Castle Stalker appeared across the Loch at Appin. William loved the story of me rowing across to the castle to repair the windows on a winter day, another round in the endless fight against several centuries of corrosive salty air.
My favourite of the great West Highland driving-games is roadsign spotting, ‘bagging' carefully crafted and often subtle alterations made to passing place and direction signs, the work of wandering wags with a penknife and a felt pen. These are the best we spotted, William got the first two, spotting them well before me, and crying out “SIGN! – TICK!” but thought the third one was a real ‘thing' and insisted we should look out for ‘cow jockeys' on the road. This being near Lochaline, he might be right!
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