An eye on the hebrides, p.1
An Eye on the Hebrides, page 1
Mairi Hedderwick is one of Scotland’s most popular authors and illustrators. Born in Gourock, she first experienced island life as a mother’s help to the Laird’s family on the Isle of Coll. She later returned there to raise her own family and set up Malin Workshop, an enterprise which produced hand-sketched maps and postcards. She is the author of the much-loved Katie Morag and Peedie Peebles books and has also written a number of travel books, including Highland Journey, Sea Change and Shetland Rambles.
for John – who wanted to
know more about the Islands
An Eye on the Hebrides
AN ILLUSTRATED JOURNEY BY
Mairi Hedderwick
This edition published in 2021 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
10 Newington Road Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
First published in 1989 by Canongate Publishing Limited, Edinburgh Subsequently published by Birlinn Ltd in 2009
Copyright © Mairi Crawford Hedderwick 1989, 2021
The moral right of Mairi Crawford Hedderwick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 78027 731 8
ePUB ISBN: 978 1 78885 450 4
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Designed and typeset by Mark Blackadder
Printed and bound by Clays Ltd Elcograf S.p.A.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Map of the Hebrides
Introduction
Preface to the 2009 Edition
Arran, Cumbrae and Bute
Gigha, Islay and Jura
Seil, Easdale, Luing and Kerrera
Colonsay and Oronsay
Mull, Iona, Erraid, Ulva, Gometra and Lismore
Tiree and Coll
Barra, Vatersay and Eriskay
South Uist, Benbecula, Grimsay, Berneray and North Uist
Muck, Eigg, Rum and Canna
Skye and Raasay
Harris, Scalpay, St Kilda and Lewis
Acknowledgements
The Gaels have a wonderfully ambivalent proverb that absolves them of responsibility for the absolute truth of any given piece of information:
‘Ma’s briag bhuam e, is briag h-ugam e’
(If it be a lie from me, it’s a lie to me)
Population statistics that appear in the book are based on the 1981, 2001 and 2011 censuses.
The author would particularly like to thank The Scottish Post Office Board for believing in this island odyssey from the outset and for providing financial assistance.
Such sponsorship is particularly appropriate when we consider the crucial role the Post Office plays in the lives of the islanders. Not only are letters and parcels delivered to the most remote crofts and passengers carried on the postbus, but the Post Office is itself often the focal point for activity, particularly on the smaller islands.
The author would also like to thank Caledonian MacBrayne, whose advice and route planning kept the van steering in the right direction.
Preface
Looking back through An Eye on the Hebrides thirty years after it was written reminds me of a time of change in my life. My children had grown up and I had a new freedom. I had always loved maps and was obsessed with islands. In 1989 I was given an opportunity to travel and learn about the people and places of the Hebrides. It was a challenge, like a blank canvas.
My journey took six months. One day here, three days there, between boats, sketching every day and no camera. But by the end of each day there were sketches and notes to remind me of places and people. I filled lots of little notebooks which I kept in a cupboard in the campervan. The islanders I met along the way would come up and stand around me when I was sketching and look at what I was doing.
I am delighted the book still holds interest, and I like to think of people standing around the pages of this new edition and starting up their own conversations.
Mairi Hedderwick
Kinerras, February 2021
Introduction
Most people dream of being in a position to take six months ‘out’. Alone. And to the location of their dreams . . .
To be able to justify and implement this selfish fantasy is indeed an enviable situation to be in. I set off to do just that in a doughty old camper van, gearless bicycle atop.
Travelling alone offers total freedom of choice on timetabling and route planning. It also offers the private cop-out clause with impunity. Months of planning and several days of second thoughts had gone into the project: to continuously travel and sketch throughout the length of the Hebrides.
Since childhood, the islands of the West Coast have had an extraordinarily powerful effect on me. Our house in Gourock, high on the hill, overlooked the River Clyde. I soon learned to tell the time of day by the different boats that steamed or paddled their way southwards and westwards along the Clyde Coast, some eventually going to the distant Atlantic. The destination names of the mailboat Lochfyne and the cargo boat Loch Carron were sweet music to my young ears; Colonsay, Iona, Coll, Tiree, The Uists, Harris and Skye.
In those days all these islands were supplied from the waterway of the Clyde. As I got older I realised with shameful awareness that being born on the south side of the river meant that I was an inferior being. I was a Lowlander. I wanted to be a Highlander and Islander.
My first island was Arran. School holidays were spent there with three aged spinster aunts, the Miss Crawfords of Chestnut Cottage in Corrie. Here I heard Gaelic spoken for the first time. The eldest – and biggest – Aunt Jean, uprightly stiff with rheumatism and stays, told many tales of derring-do in her father’s skiff in which she regularly rowed out to meet the packetboat from Ayr. I thought she was wonderful. As was her island, her way of talking, her girdle scones so thick and salty compared to the perjink versions of Tower Drive, Gourock.
Student jobs on the islands of Arran and Coll and ten years of family rearing, 60s style, on Coll was the culmination of that childhood dream. Subsequent years of mainland exile were made tolerable by recidivist return.
Hence the decision to ‘do’ the Hebrides in an attempt to come to terms with this island obsession. The Clyde islands are not truly Hebridean but the Aunties insisted on their inclusion.
The journey was continuous and encompassed 40 islands, 750 sea miles, 4,500 land miles, 30 boats, innumerable breakdowns – mechanical and spiritual, including two overnight punctures in magnificent but remote locations; to say nothing of the four very big storms (Cumbrae, Muck, Harris and St Kilda) and the barely contained sea sickness; the sunstroke (Mull, Barra); the millions of midges the size of eagles (Rum); the far too many soul-searing sunsets.
And every day for 195 days the discipline of sketching, sometimes five or six times a day. I had bargained for the midges and the sea sickness but not for the exhaustion caused by such an intensive daily activity. The self-imposed regime was hard; alleviated, however by the many bemused islanders who befriended me along the way and island friends who provided me with baths and meals and beds when the going got rough. Not only did I have an eye on the Hebrides, I was privileged to have an ear on them as well, listening and talking as much as drawing and painting.
The moods of the islands change as quickly as those of the traveller. Sun, rain, wind or midges can be the chief memory of a particular place. On reflection one wonders what these journeys are for? To discover ourselves or our surroundings? By the end of my journey I think that I found the answer.
Like the islands themselves the answer is elusive and, at heart, private. It is several years, the late ’80s, since the ‘momentous’ journey. A time of accelerating change, especially in communications, that still shifts and shunts the island communities ever forward to the new millennium. Never before have the old ways been under such threat. There is a generation of old people on the islands that will take something with them when they go that cannot be replaced. At least two of the old characters I met are no more.
The new ways, unsettling though they are, will surely have their own integrity given time.
Since the first publication of this book Gigha has had three different owners, Muck its first pier, Vatersay is causeway-linked to Barra and most of the Rare Breeds have left Coll. Conservationists and superquarriers battle over the ancient rock of Harris. Traditional jobs in farming and fishing diminish as employment in tourism expands. Islay has a swimming pool.
But some things never change. The sunsets, the storms. And the sea that surrounds us all. ‘The water in between’ always has the final say in the making of our individuality.
Mairi Hedderwick
Isle of Coll, 1994
Preface to the 2009 Edition
I would like to thank Birlinn for reprinting An Eye on the Hebrides. It belongs to a very special time in my life, all of 20 years ago. But for mellowing stamina and lack of a campervan, I did, for a moment, toy with the idea of doing the journey once more. Then, I thought not. Better to leave the historical visual narrative intact and unedited.
It belongs to a time of stasis and despondency on a lot of the islands. Especially the smaller islands, where some landowners were s till thralled to Victorian-style paternalism, and some new owners only wanted to roman- tically perpetuate the same. But it was not all bad and I feel privileged to have known the cusp of those days. Subsequently seeing and experiencing and accepting two decades of change is another kind of privilege.
As indicated in the ’94 reprint, even more dramatic changes have occurred. Gigha, Eigg and Rum are now community owned. Coll and Colonsay have airports. Sabhal Mor Ostaig College on Skye and BBC Alba based in Lewis revitalise the Gaelic language in all aspects of learning, appreciation and communication worldwide.
The internet has transformed islanders’ lives. Universal mobile phone coverage and broadband are still to come, however. Mountaintops surrounded by water, for that is what islands are, are not always forgiving. Rereading the Barra section of the book, I muse on the fact that nowadays that poor woman’s crisis could have been immediately communicated by mobile to her nephew – in the right spot on the Sound of Mull, albeit – and a lot of distress avoided.
Environmental issues are to the fore; Harris explores National Park status, Barra hosts an Inter Isles Conference on Carbon Reductions and Islay’s community-owned Energy Trust leads the way in wave-power development. I could go on and on.
Not all change is for the good; the ghosts of the old folk nudge our elbows every so often and hope we listen to their concerns. If we keep telling their stories whilst engaging with the new, and keep remembering the ‘water in between’, they will rest in peace.
Additional sketches trawled from the old notebooks have been included in this edition.
Mairi Hedderwick
Isle of Coll, March 2009
Arran, Cumbrae and Bute
ARRAN, ARAINN, MARCH 19
Approx population: 3,845 (1981); 5,058 (2001); 4,629 (2011)
Land area: 166 sq. miles
I arrived in Arran on a damp mid-March morning. Brodick pier was quickly deserted after the boat had gone back to the mainland. There is nothing more silent than an island pier after the boat has called. Where does everyone go to?
Arran has a large resident population which almost trebles once the tourist season gets under way. The invading hordes had not yet turned up.
Hotels and boarding houses were dead-eyed save one with open doors. It was cluttered up with 4 by 2 timbers. The owner, clad in a leather apron with a pencil behind his ear, was preparing to extend his property and, perhaps, the season. Only another fortnight and it would be Easter. Till then a single blue-hulled catamaran was moored on the gently rain-pocked bay. Rows of empty pink floats bobbed in languid limbo.
Leaving behind the slowly emerging chrysalis of the capital, I headed north to Corrie, ancestral home of one set of forbears. There had lived the ‘Old Aunties’. The Misses Jean, Bessie and Nellie Crawford. All dead now, but the village looked the exact same. I felt safe the first night in the van knowing full well that the kind bossy eye of Big Aunt Jean was on me.
The next day – day one of 195 days – was sparkly with a hint of frost. The Firth of Clyde was a band of creamy blue silk below an even bluer sky. There was new snow on Goatfell. I washed bravely in the burn, returning to an open-door breakfast in the van. Little unbroken incoming waves lapped at the edge of my foreshore patio.
A porpoise rhythmically undulated a perimeter patrol of our adjoining policies. Little flies shimmered above the gorse in full bloom.
What a euphoric beginning for the van and me.
Arran was one of the first of the islands in the ’60s to develop the symbiotic link with growing numbers of summer visitors and the new wave of mainland invaders, called artists and craftspeople.
Invaders, white settlers, green settlers, refugees, ferry loupers – different islands, different names. On Arran at the beginning of this century, they were called Kerrsagins meaning ‘the Kerrs – again’, referring to the predominant family name of Irish settlers. Today they could be called Yorksagins. Cheery Yorkshire accents abound behind counters and on village hall platforms.
There always have been ‘invaders’ and always will be. It is a vexed question. I was to meet it time and again in the months ahead.
I set out to climb Goatfell with one of those early artistic settlers. Steve had also been a founder member of the Arran Mountain Rescue, which was reassuring when high winds turned us back at the snow-covered col.
Determined to climb to the top of my first island peak and set a standard for the rest of the trip, I set off on my own next day blessed with sun and little wind. Ice-coated snow and no crampons on the last pitch reminded me that killer mountains do not have to be Munros. Descending geology students – ‘the Geolly Boys’ – whooped their fleet-footed achievement back down the length of the Corrie burn.
There is another Arran on the opposite side to the limbering up hoteliers and traders. ‘Try our Candy Floss. The only machine on Arran’ already proclaimed Joe’s Newsagents in Whiting Bay.
Over to the south and west are the rolling fields and long standing hedgerows of Sliddery and Machrie. Budding daffodils speared through last year’s dead grass. Lamb gangs played King of the Castle on an upturned trough. Their mothers grazed seriously on.
Parked that night by Kildonan shore, I enjoyed a son et lumière performance as the Pladda Lighthouse beamed into the darkened van. A dramatic Beethoven piano concerto on the radio accompanied the simmering tatties – Arran Wonders, of course – and wild chive leaves picked in Glen Ashdale.
The following morning the Geolly Boys – and a jolly girl or two – passed by on an early trudge to find rock samples. The previous night’s bar smoke from the Kildonan Hotel still thickly woven into their jackets.
To the north and west of Arran, wild coastline and moors with the place names South, Mid and North Thundergay lead to eerie cliffs near Lochranza where an all-year-round sunless spot is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. Thousands of red deer know this is silent country, free of transistors – and candy floss.
The latest edition of The Arran Banner had just been published before I boarded the boat for the return to Ardrossan; 97 per cent of the population of the island take the once weekly newspaper. The back page is crammed with ‘What’s On’ diary dates. From brass bands to sub aqua (do these two ever get together?), it is exhausting enough activity to just read through the list of clubs and events.
I noted that the clocks were to be put forward that weekend and that the opening of the Lochranza Tennis Club was scheduled for 3.00 p.m. on Saturday.
Unfortunately I would be unable to attend. There were thirty-nine more islands to visit.
CUMBRAE, CUMARADH, MARCH 29
Approx population: 1,300 (1981); 1,434 (2001); 1,376 (2011)
Land area: 9 sq. miles (including Little Cumbrae)
‘Due to adverse weather conditions at Ardrossan Harbour the Isle of Arran will be diverting to Gourock.’ I needed to get to Largs, northwards of Ardrossan, the scheduled port for the crossing to Cumbrae. Huge grey, spray-frayed waves, looking as ludicrously artificial as the wind tunnelled ones in Atlantic Convoy film sets, raced the car ferry northwards up the Clyde. Arran, and soon Cumbrae and Bute, were left behind in a furious salty haze.
Armed for most eventualities, especially the sea in its rougher moods, I sucked some homeopathic travel pills, adjusted my Chinese pressure point wrist bands, took alternate nibbles of brown bread and apple (Icelandic fisherman’s tip) between sips of brandy (my tip), and arrived in Gourock in fine fettle for the immediate return land journey. Back along the self-same shore edge to rain-lashed Largs.
The afternoon ferries to Cumbrae had been cancelled, but there were firm assurances that the teatime boats for the high school children and the islanders would be sailing. Too early in the season to be worrying about holiday folk. Hot apple strudel and real Italian ice cream in ’30s luxury liner style Nardini’s pleasantly stabilised the heaving world and passed the wild weathered time.
