On the isle

 

 

This is the isle of Arran seen from the town of Troon. Out of order, as D and I went first to the island and then the town. But I wanted to start with this image of hazy beauty, and from there draw nearer.

 

 

 

The Caledonian MacBrayne ferry left from the mainland at Ardrossan Harbour. A rough crossing; earlier ferries had been cancelled, and the one that took us arrived with some  drama. As it took the narrow pass between the harbour walls, it started to lurch to one side in the swells. A gasp went up from the Cal Mac waiting room as it looked for a moment as if the boat would tip too far and slap into the water.

 

Thankfully, the captain manage to right things, and our crossing was a lot calmer than we had expected. D bought a nip of whisky as a palliative,  though I am of the opinion that it would have made matters worse. The crossing lasted 55 minutes and landed at one of the largest villages on Arran, Brodick.

 

 

 

Again, this photo is out of sequence, but the weather was the same: sun and gusts and flecks of rain.

 

D and I took a walk before picking up the later bus to our youth hostel in the North of the island. On our wanderings, we were mobbed by hungry ducks and geese, which we fed from a 50p bag of oats and other duck-appropriate snacks at the side of a woody path.

 

Along the roadside grew a profusion of this plant – raspberries, we thought. But like none we had seen before:

 

 

 

 

 

They did not taste as pungent as their red cousins, nor as sweet. Still, they were good with the Arran cheddar, Creeler’s hot smoked salmon and smoked salmon pate we bought at from shops at Queens Court.

 

But now to our youth hostel in Lochranza – the picture I shared yesterday was taken at the loch shore.

 

 

 

The staff at the youth hostel were so friendly (though D tells me, hard to get hold of when he was secretly arranging things). The rooms basic but scrupulously clean, and the views, of the rhododendron-blanketed back garden, or the loch-facing kitchens, were as gorgeous as any hostel I’ve stayed in. I hesitate to recommend this place as I’d rather it remain quiet for the next time we make it there, but really – it was lovely. A half minute stroll away was this:

 

 

 

The river meeting Loch Ranza, loch of the seals. An estuarine environment where the peereep call of Oyster Catchers stitches the air above the gentle hish of the waters over pebbles. The smell of salt and rotting seaweed fills your head. I associate the smell of the sea with healthiness, though it’s based on nothing at all. It never fails to make me feel better.

 

Further along from the hostel, the preserved ruined castle of the Macsweens sits on a spit of land.

 

 

 

Here’s a very short video I took on my camera of the panorama, taken from the very edge of the castle lands:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0rdAudEYdI&feature=youtu.be

 

 

We walked on to explore Lochranza, and found this swing set:

 

 

If these are not the swings with the best view in the world, then I would like to know which are.

 

 

 

The next morning we went back, because a thirtieth birthday should definitely include swinging on the best swings in the world.

 

 

What else is there to say of my birthday? Well, there was cake in the morning, and this present from my parents:

 

 

 

 

I’ve only just started playing with it, but I’m amazed with how well it works. This same camera was the one my father used to take (I think) the first picture of me, at a few hours old, in the hospital. Here’s one taken 30 years on from that day at the harbour in Lochranza:

 

 

 

 

We left the island for Troon, which as you saw in the first image in this post sits on the West coast looking out at the island. Our hotel was a step up from the hostel (though sadly not as good as it should have been for a 4 star place). The beach stretched on for miles under the mild high sun. But if I had my way, I’d be on Arran still, exploring the lanes and shoreside. We had such a fleeting visit we missed out on the standing stones and had no time  climb Goat Fell, whose shard-like edges and stories of murder add a menacing edge to the island’s profile. For another week, for another adventure, Arran will be waiting.

 

 

 

A taste of travel

 

 

I turned 30 on the 16th of June and this Saturday, D whisked us off to the isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, where neither of us had ever been. The picture above was taken on the 15th at Lochranza, or loch of the seals. A great breath in of salt dusk air – and midgies, but they seemed especially sluggish and easily out-maneuvered.

 

Come back here tomorrow for strange berries, ruins, and of course stories and pictures of those deep and changeable Atlantic/Firth waters.

Sojourn

 

 

D and I are staying with our friend A in Hamilton while we wait to take up the lease in our new flat in Edinburgh. On Sunday we took an 8-mile walk around the loch above, in Strathclyde Country park. It’s an artificial loch, and somewhere beneath it is the rubble of a village and coal mine (I believe the same colliery that sank Hamilton Palace, displacing the dukes and duchesses forever more).

 

 

 

 

Under blue skies, Lanarkshire is in a different country entirely. What was this odd building? Something belonging to the council, mysteriously cordoned off to all but the birds.

 

 

 

 

Another feature of the loch’s artificiality, this overflow weir, feeding into the narrow river Clyde just across the road. The rhythmic surge made it quite hypnotic, while the pedalos added accents of rubber-duck yellow as their riders chased the birds.

 

 

 

 

The forested rim of the loch provided a break from the rare scorching heat ‘Taps aff’ weather, as people have started to call it. That’s weather that results in men taking their t-shirts off. Generally anything above 16C will lead to this in Scotland. Many women – white women, at any rate – by contrast turn orange overnight, either through tan beds or sunshine from the bottle. In the picture above you can see the opposite phenomenon – the forest floor turning fluffy-white with seed puffs scattered from some tree I don’t know the name of.

 

 

 

We also had a relaxing moment with some of these tadpoles – which always remind me of my childhood on Skye. In summer we would go and scoop up frogspawn to put in our repurposed paddling pool. Then peer over them, watching them grow from day to day.

 

 

I’m happily posting these pictures, though they give a slightly distorted impression of what our stay will be like. I have work through in Edinburgh, and a long commute of about an hour and a half (as opposed to my usual 25 minutes on foot). Most of the time we all be too tired to head out on adventures like this one. Though at the end of the week, something special -  I turn 30 on the 16th of June. And D is in charge of events. I suspect a small adventure might occur then.

 

For the rest of the week I shall be digging into books on the long train journey. My friend P gave me a gorgeous hardback of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson in return for my battered ARC copy of the heart-wrenching The Light and the Dark by Mikhail Shishkin. I have been flying through it, as I do with Atkinson’s fiction – I think I’ve devoured just about every one of her novels, aside  from the detective stories (crime fiction and I are not on speaking terms, generally). I hope to have a review for you of this absorbing slab of fiction in a few days time.

 

Until then – reading, working, living in A’s flat, and little writing at all until the move once again into a room of one’s own.

 

Where we went part two: in the pines, in the pines

 

 

 

The above is Tentsmuir Forest, which bristles along a hump of coast North of St Andrews, and which hitherto I had not known about.

 

 

Sadly, there is no overnight parking right in this spot, where the dunes and grassland roll out forever towards the retreating sea, so we drove up to the small town of Tayport and hiked a little way back, camping in a dune edging on heather, in view of the Firth of Tay (the Tay estuary) and the lights of Broughty Ferry on the far shore.

 

 

With the tents set up, a barbeque had in the brief but nearly torrential rain, and many friendly dogwalkers greeted, we went out for a walk.

 

 

 

 

Super-saturation effect – taken at the time, to show how bright the woods were. My camera was struggling to catch their glow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That big estuary sky. We walked back to camp, then on back towards Tayport, where we had seen some World War Two defense huts still set up to watch the placid horizon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a bit of peering and scrambling and wondering, it was time for another barbeque and to watch the sun set (I should add that the first picture of the camp was taken at around 9pm, but we walked out and about earlier). The evening was in perfect light as the sun set and barred reddish gold through the trees.

 

As we started to get ready to turn in for the night, a fox came close to our tents. It circled twice, eyeing us and sniffing at where we had cooked. It was the only slightly unsettling part of our stay at Tentsmuir – how much difference can a sandy, dry heathland make to our sense of peacefulness. Even those odd remnants of war only seemed empty, catchments for dust and pine needles and graffiti. We slept well on the soft sand, though it was cold. We walked back to the car, lipping the wetlands and the huge sky overhead bore us no ill will.

 

Where we went part one: woods dark and deep(ish)

 

 

On Friday as we traveled North-West, the rains came and did not let up. Our plan to camp near Loch Fyne had to be abandoned, but we decided to have a day out anyway. We went into Cruchan, the hollow mountain – a hydroelectric scheme that was built inside Ben Cruchan in the nineteen fifties. Sadly, no photos from there as since 9/11, there has been some reluctance to let people take photographs inside working power plants. Suffice to say – the tour left lots unseen, and what was shown looked very much like a Bond villain’s lair.

 

 

 

 

But beyond that was Inveraray, a small touristy village that would be in good scenery if the mist had not closed in a little and the colours muted.Though the odd splatter of bloom provided colour against the whitewashed houses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, some places look better in the lashing rain. Textures stand out. There are fewer tourists, and the woods stand waiting.

 

 

 

 

We headed for a garden on the far shore of Loch Fyne that A had visited a year before, Ardkinglas. There was no one in the kiosk on the way in, nor anyone in the garden but us the entire time.

 

 

 

 

It was a beautiful place, managed but not manicured, full of rhododendron blossoms hanging like powder puffs, and moss and yellow- leaved skunk cabbage (which, D informed A and I, does indeed smell of skunk), a river, old stumps grown over with lichens – all hazed over, all damp and tentative in the late spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this small respite from the rain, a hut full of poems and snippets about trees:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And further along the trail, the tallest tree in the UK, at about 64m in height:

 

 

 

 

and the widest tree in Europe:

 

 

both Firs of some sort, and just sort of there, standing stoic. Us the only witnesses.

 

I’ll leave you with one last picture of a fairy-like pool, with an odd looking tree in the middle of it. It sums up the mood of Ardkinglas quite well I think. A place to be read on a rainy day. A place hat can bear the weight of a thousand glances and still have something more to hint at below the surface.

 

 

 

 

 

We stayed on Friday night at A’s flat, in a lot more comfort than we would have been had we tried to set up camp in the downpour.  We spiked out all hopeful the next day to the East Coast. Tomorrow, I’ll post pictures here of our second adventure of the weekend – and a completely different landscape.

Two stories

 

 

D and I have returned from our adventures. As you can see, the weather was – variable. However, this is just a taster for tomorrow, as I have to go through several hundred photos tonight. You’ll have to wait to find out the full story – a picture does not always tell so much as tantalise.

 

Some other news – sadly, I didn’t get selected for Black Balloon Press’ Horatio Nelson Prize, so no tour of the US in an eyepatch. I do hope for further luck for Kilea. And I look forward to seeing who wins.

Love letter 7 – stone collisions

 

Because Edinburgh is built over hilly terrain and up against and on the crest of volcanic cliffs, it is often hard to navigate for those who do not know it well. Points of visual reference, such as the castle, prove useless when suddenly you find yourself at a lower level than the street you wanted to be on. Now you’re under a high spanning stone bridge. Now you’re curving round, looping back on yourself. You just saw that infernal castle a moment ago, but now the compass is spinning and wherever you are, it’s oddly dark for a Spring afternoon.

 

 

Pro tip- that’s not actually the castle. It’s the governor’s house of the old Calton Jail, on Calton Hill.

 

At other points, the landscape of the city provides an chaotic but visually appealing collision of stone and texture. Over the years a sequence of building and rebuilding and adjuncts and buttressing has lead to brick and stone insets in the natural cliffsides (ruins of old churches, or stopgaps to prevent rockfall) and to the picture at the top of the page, where an alley smashes into itself as two buildings come to a head.

 

 

It confounds the eye – one building heaving into another. Lights rim the floor so that in the dark there are some simpler definitions for the foot passenger to use as guide. But not all of Edinburgh is like this, of course. There are the grand parades among the frenzy of knots and neuks.

 

 

And then there’s the final image I will leave you with here. One of my favourite parts of the city, where the vistas open  and the cliffs rise in their changing colours over the rough and short cropped grass. Holyrood Park, by the Scottish Parliament:

 

In the late afternoon, hyacinths

 

In the late afternoon, hyacinths. Cut wax curls. A scent of some flower – not hyacinths, which I think smell of nothing but squeaky greenness – in a cloud over the pavement.

 

I think, looking back, of this song, Spring-like, warm:

 

At the right hour

 

- you’ll catch a sky like this over Embra. A gloaming sky.  A few solitary clouds like this, delicate but moving fast.

 

If you’d like something to read, whatever hour of the day it is with you, I’ve written the next installment in a series of essays on The Female Gaze recapping Supernatural. One essay per episode per season (of which there are currently 8 – 8 essays). They do contain spoilers but I’m trying to dig into aspects (as well as problematic sides) provided in each episode.

 

Here’s a taster of the current essay:

 

You’ve thought it before. People have sung of it: Our lives could be very different to how they are now. Those tiny twists in fate accrued over time and became a part of you. That coin you dropped and didn’t stop to pick up. That spelling mistake on a job application. That face whose glance you chose to return with a smile. That time you pulled the bottle from your lips and made it stay put down.

You might not want things to be any different, but it doesn’t stop you thinking about how it could have been.

READ MORE

 

Aside from these essays, I’m trying to summon the energy to alter an essay on the Aethiopika, though the priority this week seems to be to edit Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts down to a sharp white point. I really want to tackle the long essay – stirred to do so by the kindness and insight of Chris J Rice – but whenever I sit down, it’s the novel I am dragged to. Make it better, make it lighter. Why are you taking so long with what will be a little clawed snow hare of a thing when it’s done?

 

My friend C gave me some advice that kicked me into action. Very simply, it was to number chapters, rather than write ‘chapter one’ etc as I had been doing. Such a small change made the text feel immediately fresher. And highlighted the soft squashy lines (and whole paragraphs) that needed peeling down.  Revelation. My eyes furring up as I struggle a page at a time, into the night.

 

So while I grow tired often and sometimes feel creatively spent, or isolated, I know that there is a community of writers and wise souls. Virgils, yes. But not leading me down to the inferno.  Writing back from their own spaces, waving across the ravines. Thank you, all.

 

The cool air between the pines

 

D, A and I went walking this weekend in the woods of Chatelherot, close to where A lives. These were the old hunting grounds of the Lords (and perhaps ladies?) of Hamilton – the woods were kept and cultivated as an environment for deer and foxes.

 

Pictures of the forest, calming on a Monday. Take a deep breath, imagine the creaking of the branches. The flittering sounds in the leaves and red flash of robins. The streaming sunlight turning to washed-out white as the clouds are blown overhead. Here to the right is oak and beech:

 

 

 

Some of the oaks have been dated to the 1460s, when the parklands were planted, though the mounds around these wood monsters were shaped by iron age hands. Modern hands had tied a yellow ribbon round the branch of the tree below. And a millennial has been included for scale:

 

 

Sometime around the Second World War, Norwegian pines were planted – the giveaway is how all the trees in certain parts of the forest are around sixty to seventy years old and planted in straight lines:

 

 

 

We walked the eight kilometer trail which rises and falls, crosses the Green bridge over the river Avon, and climbs up to the rim of the valley, before returning to Chatelherot itself – a grand frontage which overlooks Hamilton, and which despite appearances, was never more than kennels for the hounds and a dining room and chambers for the hunting party.

 

 

 

The sunlight was high and the sky was blue and dashed with white cloud. It is almost Spring, it says – the 18th century buildings, the green short grass, the families out walking, the children rolling down hill, shrieking happily. Or if no Spring comes this year, it is promising something else. A good Summer, perhaps. A chance at a pause. Saying, wait. Look. Breathe in and out.

 

A good walk in a dark and light place. The smell of pines and a sheep farm. The steady, strangeness of ancient trees. A long field rolling out towards the townships.