Paisley Abbey

As the crow, or the seagull, flies, Arran is not many miles from Glasgow, yet the waters of the Clyde make it seem worlds away with its peace, wild beauty and quirky island traits. This is not to say that there are not many interesting places to stop and explore on your journey to Arran through the urban sprawl of the Central Belt.

Last weekend I visited Paisley for the first time. It’s close to the M8 and Glasgow Airport, and, though famous for its beautiful patterned shawls manufactured in its mills in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, it is not mentioned in many tourist guides. I particularly wanted to visit Paisley Abbey. Its origins go back to 1163, making it steeped in the Scottish past.

Once inside the Abbey I was fortunate enough to coincide with organ practice. Several local volunteers were devotedly cleaning and polishing, and just being available to share their knowledge of the abbey’s history. In Scotland’s formative years as a nation, the abbey was close to the pulse of power and politics. It was founded by Walter Fitzalan in 1163, who was the first hereditary High Steward of Scotland. It’s also more than likely that William Wallace was educated at the abbey.

Like many old churches, it has a palpable sense of suspended time. As you tread softly from the west end of the nave to the east window you walk through ecclesiastical architecture from 1163 to the present day. Daylight streams colourfully through the gorgeous stained glass windows and there is so much fine detail in the wooden carvings and sculptured stone that it must be difficult to focus attention on a sermon!

On my return home I googled Paisley Abbey for more information. I was somewhat taken aback to discover that even churches get star ratings out of five on the Internet these days! It seems to me that a grander scale is required for a beautiful building that has stood for almost 900 years, survived religious reformation, and held so many human hopes, loves and griefs within its ancient walls.

If you pay Paisley Abbey a visit, it’s easy to find parking spaces nearby and you can have a break in the café in the cloisters. The Abbey is also the venue for many musical events throughout the year.

Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me at Paisley Abbey. Instead, here is a picture of Lochranza’s little Kirk of St.Bride’s which celebrates its 300^th anniversary this year.

Winter on Arran

The Broad Road that Stretches

It’s almost Christmas and Nigel and I have just returned from our first big road trip in a camper van. Tracy the van is old-ish, and clatters and rattles a fair bit, but she hasn’t let us down.

Our route, loosely planned around visits to family members, took us to the Lakes, Yorkshire, the south of England, France, Germany and Switzerland, returning to Britain by overnight ferry from Zeebrugge to Hull. A good thing about living on an island (Arran or Britain) is that journeys begin and end with a boat which is the best way to really feel the excitement of landing on distant shores or returning to your own.

Camper van travel is about the journey and not the destination. This means the pleasures of the back roads, not worrying about the time, and noticing the places you pass through. If you use your camper van as a base taking pushbikes with you for small local journeys is an excellent idea.

I love camping in a tent and always have, but practically it’s problematic when days are short. Camper van travel has the pleasures of snail-like self-sufficiency: your bed, kitchen and toilet are with you at all times. Getting to grips with electric hook-ups and chemical disposal points is straightforward. Living space is better than you expect: in our van there is room for four to sit comfortably when the driving seats have been swivelled round to face the benches in the back, which also become a double bed. The only problem we found was lack of space to store gear (if you want to do activities whilst on holiday which involve a lot of gear, like canoeing) but it gives you a challenge to take less.

The van was a cosy and flexible home, even in midwinter, though we were pleased to find some campsites still open. Naturally, as campsite wardens, we believe in supporting local economies, and in any case campsites offer electric hook ups, waste disposal and level ground. There are joys to wild camping in lonely places but getting any sleep isn’t one of them in my experience- my senses won’t go off full alert. (I should never have given my drama classes the exercise: you’re parked down a dark, deserted road, suddenly there is knocking on the window. What happens next?!)

We’ve now returned to the windy western edge of Europe. Travel makes you enjoy new places and appreciate the advantages of home. We’ve paid a fortune in parking fees but on Arran there are none. We’ve tried to visit historic sites that were chained and padlocked for the winter (the battlefield of 1066 is actually surrounded by metal spikes! We sneaked a look but worried we might get strung up from the nearest gibbet if caught) but Arran’s wealth of prehistoric sites, such as the stone circles of Machrie Moor, can be freely visited the year round. It is rare to find PRIVATE signs or CCTV here to prevent access to water with canoes, unlike parts of the Lakes.

Finally, how does camper-vanning work out cost-wise, I hear you ask. Well, our tour cost less than a week in Mallorca at this time last year. It’s the kind of travel where it’s up to you to decide how much to spend as you go along.

We won’t be selling the van.

A month of mountains and mists:

Torr Nead as we set off at the top

Mountains in the Vosges at the bottom

We stayed at the following comfortable campsites that open in winter:

www.kloofs.com (Sussex)

www.thequietsite.co.uk (Cumbria)

www.sandholmelodgeholidaypark.co.uk (East Yorkshire)

www.bluerosepark.com (East Yorkshire)

www.obernai.fr (Le Vallon De l’Ehn Camping Municipal, Alsace, France)

This is a blog I wrote back in early November:

Caught in the Rhododendrons!

As someone who is used to climbing high mountains, I had the surprising experience of finding myself stuck on a low-level walk the other day, within a stone’s throw of the chimneys of Lochranza.

I had walked along the hills behind the Whisky Distillery to the site of the hill fort above the youth hostel, before descending towards the castle. All was well until I came up against the belt of the invasive ponticum variety of rhododendrons that has grown up on the steep lower slopes behind the houses. As the village was so near by, I pressed on into the thicket. Rapidly, the vegetation became so dense that I had to wriggle headfirst downwards on my stomach under the lowest stems. There came a point when I felt I actually could not move in any direction; the vegetation was impenetrable and I was trapped in a rhododendron prison as effectively as a fly in a spider’s web! Hope came in a glimpse of the top end of Jane Nichol’s garden fence, and eventually I escaped, embarrassed and bedraggled, with scratches on my knees and ticks on my foot. Jane was kind enough not to send me back the way I had come.

The moral of the story is “Don’t go into rhododendrons without a machete”. Seriously though, it’s important that action is taken about these destructive invaders which are spreading throughout upland Britain. We are fortunate to have the Arran Trust and Arran Access Trust who work hard at both protecting the natural environment and providing safe access to the hills.

A wet October decorated the trees with moss.

Arran has a wealth of mosses, ferns and lichens with its clean air and warm, moist climate.

A Walk over the Saddle, Glen Sannox to Glen Rosa - October 2011

Wild and Wet

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

From Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I’ve always liked this poem (this is just the last verse) and it came into my head with the wild, wet weather we’ve had. Outside, the burn is a foamy torrent. If you pay attention you can hear all sorts of strange sounds in it: conversations, church bells, disco music, a woman singing….

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It’s got to that time of year at Lochranza when I see more wild creatures than people in the course of a day: a late basking shark, a badger, 12 seals following my canoe, several red squirrels and countless red deer in one day last week, to be more precise. Every morning I open the curtains to see which of the golf course stags has won the hinds in the night. There’s ongoing tension between two stags who keep charging towards each other from different sides of the burn, but they stop short of a fight. The hinds meanwhile keep making a run for it. I watched one sitting down firmly some way from the herd and, of course, the stag soon arrived to get her back. When she didn’t move, he stuck out his foreleg and, Punch-and-Judy-like, struck her sharply on the head!

Deer Bath

You’d pay a lot in a 5* hotel to have a muddy wallow like this

As well as red deer, Lochranza has a significant badger population. I see their tracks in the morning raking of the bunkers; a tell-tale sign of their overnight raids to Mrs. McAllister’s garden. By the way, a comfortable place to see the local red squirrels close-up is in Val and Rino’s garden at the Stags Pavilion; you can watch squirrel acrobatics on the bird feeders over a coffee.

We’ve finished clearing the ditches and hopefully it’s helped to channel the plentiful rain out of the glen and into the sea. Rain and the Gulf Stream make Arran a lush island where all kinds of tropical plants can flourish. In fact, in the past, Lochranza’s hillsides were bare due to being churned up by cattle. Without these beasts, invaders like gorse, the ponticum rhododendron, ragwort and bracken are spreading fast- all beautiful but destructive…… a bit like the deer.

Our second season is nearly over- we close on Oct 31^st. Looking back over the year we’ve been wet a lot, we’ve been blown around a lot, done smelly tasks a lot, and back breaking tasks a lot. We rarely get out of our fleeces and wellies! But……we’ve had a wonderful time. How could it be anything else when we live so close to nature?

It’s also been a joy to meet so many of you and hear your tales and enjoy sharing your experiences, if only briefly.

When the season ends we’re going motor-homing and are looking forward to being world-wanderers ourselves for a little while. I’ll keep you posted how we get on,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Nigel and Will- probably the last dip of the year

It’s not just the south of England that can enjoy playing in the sea in Autumn (admittedly it was ten degrees cooler here).

Autumn Diary

Just now nature is busy ensuring its survival into next year. I came across a red squirrel the other day, so totally absorbed in hiding its horde in a tree root it didn’t notice me behind it. But it’s the clamour of the rut that dominates Lochranza life in early October. The stags are in such a frenzied state guarding their herds that they don’t eat. These red deer are wild and roam the northern hills of Arran, but belong to the Laird, and are managed, that is to say some are culled each year to maintain healthy stock and sustainable numbers. One year when culling did not take place, many deer starved to death. It’s the stags that are being culled at the present time; later in October it will be selected hinds. Out on the golf course you can regularly hear the creaking, clacking and clattering of entangled antlers as young stags practise battle. They have also gouged out new hazards for golfers in the form of round wallows: muddy pools they like to bathe in, in order to rise out of them looking dripping black and scary.

There is a dramatic shift of focus in our lives at this time too. As only the hardiest visitors come to the campsite and golf course in October, it is time to get on with hefty outdoor maintenance tasks: clearing the ditches to drain winter floods, cutting back hedges and mending fences. Like the animals, as one year comes to fruition for us, it’s time to start working towards the next.

The Mountains of Arran in September

Ticket to Islay

A motorbike, a little tent, and a Calmac ferry ticket….. what more do you need to be happy?

Nigel and I have just returned from a two day motorbike tour of Islay – an island we missed out on our sea kayaking tour of 2009 because we got distracted by Arran. So many of our visitors travel on to Islay from here in Lochranza that we felt we simply must go and see the island for ourselves.

Getting to Islay involves crossing by ferry from Lochranza to Claonaig, then a seven mile journey across Kintyre followed by a two hour sailing to Islay. The route takes you through West Loch Tarbert and into the racing tides of the narrow Sound of Islay. On the brand new ferry, the Finlaggan, large, light windows frame the picturesque island-scapes as you travel.

Negotiating rough island roads on a motorbike is never easy but it’s always worth it. Little used roads take you through out-of-the-way places and give you glimpses of island life: highland ponies dozing; cows paddling at the edge of the sea; fields of geese, and seals singing on rocks. Islay is lovely in an understated way, with whitewashed villages huddled round harbours, and farms and fields that seem little changed in many years, though the island used to support a far greater population than it does now. On a motorbike you smell the whisky distilleries before you see them. You feel the place, you don’t just see it.

Islay was an important political centre in medieval times when the culture of Dalriada, which included the more southerly Western Isles and Northern Ireland, was a powerful influence in Scotland. If you think of the sea as the main highway it becomes comprehensible why such a now remote island should be a busy cultural centre then. Today Islay still has a thriving Gaelic culture and takes pride in traditional skills such as peat cutting, evident from the public notices in village shops.

Islay has two campsites- one at Port Charlotte, and another at Kintra Farm where we camped amongst the dunes, and watched a radiant pink setting sun tumble from a low grey sky. We ate our favourite camping meal of corn beef hash cooked on a Trangia. Later on, when it was dark, we watched lighthouse beams sweeping the sky.

Happiness.