The train journey from Euston to Fort William has something faintly Edwardian
about it. As I embarked and was shown to my berth, I felt I should have had
a leather trunk, a large moustache and a handkerchief to wave goodbye with.
And for children, the tiny beds, the corridors, the dining car, create a
lasting memory.
When I lifted the window blind in the morning, there it was: a big green fire,
streaked with foxgloves and heather, and the white lines of water pouring
down off the mountains. I really did see a red stag running away from the
train, which had slowed almost to walking pace as it inched over a minute
bridge next to Loch Treig.
In Fort William, I picked up a car and a hitchhiker, whose name was Michael.
He was Czech and he needed a lift to Mallaig, where he was hoping to find
work in a canning factory. “I travel the world for 20 years and then I go
home to be politician,” he said. We would have a very different world if all
politicians followed his life philosophy.
Mallaig bubbles with arguing gulls, and there is that wonderful smell of
seaweed and diesel. From here, the journey to Skye takes just 15 minutes. As
my ferry tied up at the small harbour, the rain was thick and warm, and the
mountains had vanished. The trunks of the trees lining the path down to
Talisker Bay were covered in mosses and lichens, bearing witness to the
moist air given by the Gulf Stream. The ridge above the bay was dotted with
heath spotted orchids.
Just beyond the Talisker distillery is the Old Inn, with low ceilings and a
peat fire chugging away in the snug. I ate on the terrace at the back,
overlooking Loch Harport and, as the sun finally won through the clouds, the
Cuillin Hills emerged like a row of teeth. Dark and complicated, they can
have a nasty bite. You need ropes and courage for the ridge. All mountains
are teachers — if you walk alone, you learn to listen.
Eight miles north of the Old Inn, and about a mile from the main road, is the
Ullinish Country Lodge. It is quiet and comfortable, but it has the air of a
land without children. There is a good short walk from the hotel down to
Ullinish Point, then over a shingle breakwater stippled with yellow
periwinkles to the tiny island of Oronsay.
Portree is the biggest town on the island: it has banks, hiking shops and an
Indian restaurant, but if you are after some retail therapy, you should head
to Broadford, for Teo’s hand-spun knitwear. I wasn’t, so I crossed the
island to Glenbrittle, gateway to the Black Cuillin. As I arrived, the sun
came out and everything changed colour, became colour — the sea turning
blue, spilling small white waves onto the beach.
I headed up through Coire Lagan, past a tumbling waterfall and into a
loch-bottomed bowl. Dave and Sue from Glasgow had found a cranny out of the
wind and emerged covered in Gore-Tex. They were heading for the summit of
Sgurr Alasdair, which at 3,255ft is the highest peak on the island. I
watched as they became smaller and smaller — consumed, almost, by a tangle
of black rocks — until they disappeared into the cloud base. I wanted to go
with them, but there was a ferry to catch.
So, on to Uig, up in the northwest of Skye, where the glass in the pub next to
the ferry terminal is scratched by the wind. It’s worth taking the car
ferry; you can’t see the lie of the deserted land, and just how tall the
huge wave of western cliffs is, without taking it. About an hour and a half
later, you come up alongside the treeless skin of North Uist, then dock at
Lochmaddy, which has, thank God, nothing pretty about it.
There is, in fact, nothing pretty about the Uists and Benbecula. Their central
strand is like the Fens — but without pubs. As I drove south, the setting
sun compressed between the clear west and a heavy black line of clouds in
the east. I didn’t see one stand of cereal crops, no wheat, no barley, just
small fields sweet and thick with buttercups and red clover, the flower
heads the size of golf balls.
AT THE southern end of South Uist is the Lochboisdale Hotel. Inside, the
flames were flickering over a peat fire, the scallops melted in the mouth
and the langoustines had hard, shining shells. It is a wonderful place.
Unlike the Ullinish Country Lodge, it isn’t just for tourists: it is part of
the community, and shares its rhythms, and because of that you can really
relax.
Further south still is the island of Eriskay, where the sand is as white as
the Caribbean — as it is along vast swathes of the islands. I saw nobody —
nor a single footprint — for mile upon mile of sand, broken only by the
occasional rocky outcrop.
The islanders don’t do colour. The houses that are lived in are modern — they
keep the heat better. The rest are empty and in various stages of beautiful
decay, abandoned to the mercy of the ever-present wind. To understand this,
read Soil and Soul by Alastair McIntosh, who was in the bar of the hotel the
evening I was there. His book is both elegant and prophetic. There is earth
in the ink and, yes, this is the voice crying out from the wilderness. Good
bedtime reading in the Outer Hebrides.
The next day, I rented a mobile home from a softly spoken man called Robert.
It stood beside his front garden; the view from the back started with broken
tractors and extended to banks full of buttercups, then the sea. He very
kindly put the gas on for me because “it’s still a wee bit sharp out there”.
The eggs at breakfast had orange yolks. I can’t say it was the morning: the
cockerel was up and at it at about quarter past three, and frankly could
have shattered glass. Still, a lie-in is out of the question when there’s so
much exploring to do.
The southern islands of the Outer Hebrides are connected by one main red road
— the A859. Feeding off this are narrow single-track lanes with passing
places. The one I followed weaved between pools — the colour of whisky, and
covered in white water lilies — and dark green land occasionally flecked
white with the bobbing heads of cotton grass.
The western sides of the islands are almost unpopulated, heady expanses of
bogs and rocks where the sea lochs reach deep into the body of the land,
leaving husks of crabs among the heather and haunting the water with pale
seaweed that rises up to sup the light. At the end of the road, a good path
leads through the only trees I saw, out to the base of Beinn Mhor, which is
the highest mountain in the southern islands. The sky began to bruise and
the rain and wind arrived, quietening the wheatears and tumbling the hooded
crows around.
I was hoping to see a Hebridean song thrush, which wears dark feathers on its
back and has a white-as-white breast. I stopped the car several times next
to some promising-looking meadows to listen for the rasp of the corncrake. I
thought I had heard it, but it turned out to be a rusty bicycle.
The man who was riding it was wobbling rather than steering, but he was most
definitely wearing a tartan flat cap and 1970s sunglasses. He stopped for a
chat: yes, he’d heard them, but he’d never seen them.
Everywhere I stopped, people liked to talk. You will need a car, but there are
not too many of them on the islands, and in every one you pass, the
occupants acknowledge you. Every one, that is, apart from the old Nissan
containing two nuns; but they should be pardoned, I think, because they were
clearly in the throes of a heated argument. On the way back to Fort William,
I stopped at the Sligachan Hotel, on the Isle of Skye. They have what
resembles a university dining room built onto the side of the hotel. The
food was nothing to write about,
but the music was a different matter. Coming through the speakers was a
female singer called Ishbel MacAskill, and if there had been dogs, good God,
they would have lain down, and old men would have held onto their whisky and
stopped their talking. She pulled the tears from my eyes and sent them down
my cheeks. There is a pathos about the southern-island chain of the Outer
Hebrides, a sadness that isn’t present on the Isle of Skye. But I have never
seen such a silver on the water. Take the train — it’s the romantic way to
go — and prepare yourself for a place we can never have on the mainland.
Travel brief
Getting there: First ScotRail (0845 601 5929,
www.firstscotrail.com) operates the Caledonian sleeper service from Euston
to Fort William (a 110-mile drive from Portree), with a journey time of
about 12 hours; return fares start at £38.
Inverness is a similar distance from Portree: fly there with Eastern Airways
(0870 366 9100, www.easternairways.com), from Birmingham, Leeds/Bradford,
Manchester and Newcastle; EasyJet (www.easyjet.com), from Gatwick, Luton,
Belfast and Bristol; British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com), from
Gatwick; BMI (0870 607 0555, www.flybmi.com), from Heathrow; Ryanair
(www.ryanair.com), from Liverpool; or Aer Arann (0800 5872324,
www.aerarann.com), from Dublin.
Getting around: in Inverness, Avis (0844 581 0147,
www.avis.co.uk) has a week’s car hire from £121, inclusive. Or try Arnold
Clark (0845 607 4500, www.arnoldclarkrental.com). In Fort William, try Hawco
Volkswagen (01397 700900, www.hawco.volkswagen.co.uk). Caledonian MacBrayne
(0870 565 0000, www.calmac.co.uk) runs ferries from the mainland and between
the islands; fares from Mallaig to Skye start at £36 return for a car and
two passengers.
Where to stay: the Ullinish Country Lodge (01470 572214,
www.theisleofskye.co.uk) has cosy doubles, some with great views, from £120,
B&B. Also on Skye is the Sligachan Hotel (01478 650204); doubles from
£96, B&B. Overlooking the harbour on South Uist is the Lochboisdale
Hotel (01878 700332, www.lochboisdale.com), where doubles start at £90, B&B.
