Who's Watching Who?

It’s been a windy winter. On several nights the wind has roared so loudly through the mountains that we couldn’t hear the television even at highest volume. But now the sun has returned to Lochranza village after two months of shade. I used to wonder why houses were built on the sunless side of the glen and suspected it must be for the deeper water when, in past times, the fishing boats came in. Now I realise it’s also the windless side; the oldest houses were built in well-protected positions. On the Campsite, in winter, the low sun pops in and out between the three surrounding hills. Any day now it will be clearing the summits.

In winter in Lochranza you go to parties in wellies. Lochranza has a strong community with lots of winter parties to warm up the short, dark days. Word of mouth travels much quicker than text messages here. In fact, when the gales of January 3^rd nearly blew the Stags Pavilion down, the whole village arrived to help in no time. (The Stags, by the way, has been rebuilt and is even better than before.)

Lochranza has no light pollution so on clear nights the stars appear to be very close and look like bright glowing lamps. Driving up the Boguillie Road at night you have to weave in and out of the black face sheep who like to sleep on the road. Stags too loom up in your headlights.

Our caravan base on the Campsite has an earth bank close behind, beyond which is a field and the dominating presence of Torr Nead. Sometimes we draw back the curtains to find the face of a red deer gazing in from the bank. Perhaps it is Deer-vid Attenborough busy observing the habits of the human being.

The Immortal Memory of Robert Burns

It might have been composed more than 200 years ago but for me, Robert Burns’s “My Luve is like a Red, Red Rose” is the most beautiful of love songs: “And I will luve thee still, my Dear,/ Till a’ the seas gang dry./ Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,/ And the rocks melt wi’ the sun…” Long sigh. Emotions go into meltdown. I especially like Eddy Reader’s version.

Last night Nigel and I went to our first Burns Supper in Lochranza Village Hall. Robert Burns was born, oldest son of a poor farmer, in 1759. He never visited Arran but must often have looked across to its soaring peaks from Ayrshire. However, he wasn’t a Wordsworth, finding his inspiration in the hills; it was from human society that Burns drew his creative power. He loved the lasses and they loved him back making him the father of about thirteen children in all, both to his wife and several other young women. And today there are few places in the world that do not know his song celebrating human bonds: “Auld Lang Syne”.

A Burns Supper involves a meal, speeches and recitals. There is a very specific order to the ongauns (procedures). The main addresses include: “The Toast to the Haggis”, “The Toast to the Lassies” and “The Immortal Memory”. I heard plenty of old Scots words I don’t know, but it’s not difficult to pick up the gist. The main speaker of the evening, Robbie Glen, ex- Glasgow prison officer, had the audience in stitches but also mused at one point how, in England, when Shakespeare’s birth and death day both fall on St.George’s Day i.e. April 23^rd, the date can just be allowed to pass by without a party lasting weeks!

The meal began with cock-a-leekie soup then the haggis, bashed neeps and champit tatties (mashed turnip and potato) main course. This is actually very healthy eating, and very tasty too - though don’t ask about the parts of animals in the haggis if you’re squeamish. Wooley’s of Arran oatcakes, Arran cheeses and shortbread with Arran Distillery Robert Burns whisky rounded off a delicious and warming winter evening supper.

The new Burns Heritage Centre at Alloway near Ayr is one of the most lively, interactive museums I’ve ever been to. The centre’s director believes that had Robert Burns been alive to day he would have been a rock star! It’s well worth a visit and not far from the ferry to Arran.

Looking towards the Scottish Mainland coast from the cliffs above Laggan Cottage.

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,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,