Westward Ho.

We’ve been off travelling, overseas, to a land where temples to the sun and moon arise out of the landscape, where the natives speak an ancient tongue, where rare orchids are to be found and where there are tales of pygmy islands. A land of white sands and turquoise seas.

No, we’ve not been east of Zanzibar, more like west of Ullapool. A trip to the Outer Hebrides, to the Long Island, to Lewis to be precise, in order that LotH could recharge her Gaelic batteries and revisit youthful haunts and not-so-youthful relatives.
As the ferry approached Stornoway, we were welcomed by a pod of porpoises jumping ahead of the boat. A good omen and so it proved for the weather, so often a limiting factor on the Atlantic’s edge, stayed fair throughout our stay.
LotH enjoyed reliving her childhood all over the island, as well as doing all the tourist spots. The Callanish stones were, as usual, too crowded but we were able to soak in the atmosphere at Callanish II and III , the smaller circles in splendid solitude

Callanis II

A trip across the Bridge over the Atlantic took us to Bernera with its wild rugged scenery and spectacular beaches. The sea looked so inviting on a warm day; it was only the realisation that the waters were those of the North Atlantic and not the Caribbean that stopped us dipping a toe. LotH spied a golden eagle sitting on rock surveying us with imperious eye. And, yes, it was an eagle. We were in eagle country.

The bridge over the Atlantic

Neolithic sites, round every other corner, standing stone or chambered cairn or stone circle jostled for attention with Iron Age brochs, duns and crannogs and early Christian chapels and anchorite cells.

In between, there was time for a bit of orchid hunting. The Hebridean Spotted-orchid is native to the island but it proved elusive, hybridising as it does with other species. I think I found one but it was probably a hybrid with the Heath Spotted-orchid or with the Northern Marsh orchid which also abound on the moors and machair.

Northern Marsh, Heath - spotted, Hebridean ? Which orchid is which?


The Isle of Pygmies? Oh yes. Luchruban or Eilean na Luchrupain is a small outlier separated from the Butt of Lewis by a narrow channel and steep cliffs.

“On the sea coast about 1 mile WSW of the Butt of Lewis is a precipitous grass-covered rock, rising some 60 - 70ft above the sea, and isolated from the mainland by a deep cleft. It is known as Luchruban and has been identified with the 'Eilean na Luchrupain', or Isle of Pigmies or Little Men, recorded by Dean Munro in about 1549, and later writers. At the SE corner of the summit, which measures about 80ft - 70ft, is a building, built partly underground, which lies NE-SW and comprises an almost circular chamber about 10ft in diameter at the SW end, connected by a passage 9ft long and 2ft wide to a rectangular chamber 8ft long and 5 1/2ft wide. There is an entrance to the passage from the S, and opposite this on the other side there is a recess.” (RCAHMS
The building where the pygmies were thought to live is now regarded as yet another anchorite cell from the early Christian era like so many dotted around the island fringes, the Pabbays, Pappys, Pappas and Pabails of the western and northern isles.
Some thirty years ago, in younger fitter and, on reflection, foolhardier times, I climbed the cliffs to get on to the island. I have no idea how I managed it but I do recall a buttock tightening moment getting over the overhang on the way back.
A somewhat faded thirty year - old shot of the cell on Luchruban

Older and wiser counsel now prevailed and we viewed the island from the safety of Roinn a Roidh – the promontory of the bog myrtle (?). LotH announced that if she had known about it, I would never have made the first visit.
The weather continued to favour us but alas still neither sight nor sound of the elusive corn crake. BiL assured us that one had been calling just below the family croft and SiL had actually seen one crossing the road but, as usual, as soon as I arrive they take a vow of silence.
An expedition to find a chambered cairn on the moors aroused to proprietary instincts of a pair of Arctic skuas but at leas they weren’t as aggressive as their big cousins, the bonxies, whose ire I had aroused on previous field trips and who can really mean business when it comes to driving off intruders.

Tramping or in my case hirpling, across moors and machair made us appreciate the pleasures of the sauna and jacuzzi in our accommodation as well as the local restaurants and take-aways – Malay. Thai, Chinese, Indian, Italian and, of course, that most Scottish of cuisine, the chippie.
I wonder if there would be a market for a Hebridean restaurant serving Lewis lamb, Stornoway black pudding, tatties and salt herring, fresh mackerel, perhaps even guga in season. Guga? Oh that’s another story! Google it, if you you want to know more.
Sailing back across the Minch, expedition over and not a pith helmet or native bearer needed, it had turned out a fruitful trip in space and time.

Pushing the boat out

Conditioned as we are to the to the sea haar and the easterly winds, when the sun shines it brings out the old joie de vivre, so, on a whim, LotH and I went off down to the harbour acting the tourists and took a trip in the latest addition to the local fleet – the Glass Bottomed Boat.
As the North Sea fish stocks diminish, the fishing community are turning, in some cases reluctantly but in others eagerly, to catching a new species - the visitor. It must be a lot easier life than fighting the elements and literally risking life and limb for uncertain returns. The trawlers, prawners, crab and lobster boats have been joined or sometimes replaced, by sub aqua dive boats, sea angling boats and, now, the Glass Bottomed Boat.
LotH and I boarded from the pontoon jetty with its gently slopping ramp. Another concession to the new market, you can’t expect land lubbers to climb down harbour ladders.

An easy life

The harbour seals are so spoiled they nosed expectantly round us as we chugged out to sea. Entrepreneurial local merchants or fish cadgers as they are called, have started selling fish to the visitors to feed the seals. A win-win-win situation. The fish sellers get rid of any unwanted fish, the tourists have a great time interacting with the wild life and the seals have a pleasant superannuated existence, eating and sleeping on the rocks.
There had been word of minkes moving up and down the coast, following the mackerel but neither they, nor the porpoises were to be seen but the trip was otherwise a great success.

Gannets soared up, folding their wings and diving like arrows, kittiwakes dipped into the water like children ducking for apples, and guillemots, swimming like penguins, shot under the boat, all in search of the sand eels which seem to be plentiful again. We even saw a solitary puffin. There are only about ten breeding pairs on the Head but even this is an improvement on previous years.

The shallow draft and the expertise of the local skipper who knew every rock of his native coast, let us get close into the breeding birds on the cliffs and outliers Shags, herring gulls, razorbills, fulmars, kittiwakes, all alight, take off, sleep and breed on the crowded ledges. The gannets have their own colony further up the coast on the Bass and other islands in the Forth.

High density accomodation

Despite the absence of the big sea mammals, a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Seeing the land from the sea is a bit like coming into a town by train rather than car, you see familiar surroundings from a different angle. It made us feel even more like holiday makers so, after disembarking, a stroll to a harbour-side restaurant for lunch seemed obligatory.
We are so quick to dash off to foreign climes we sometimes ignore what is on the doorstep.
As Wallace and Gromit would say… “ a Grand Day Out”.

Puncturing my beliefs

As soon as I straddled the usually reliable bicycle, I knew there was something amiss. The seat is never that comfortable but today it was positively attention grabbing. I had just read an article about excessive cycling as a threat to masculinity and this seemed the positive proof. A glance behind confirmed my suspicions. I had a puncture in the back tyre.
A quick whirl of the wheel revealed a tack in the tread. A curse on the local school and its poster campaign against dog fouling, Primary 3 & 4 thumbs are not up to pushing drawing pins into unyielding substrates and I had unwittingly fallen foul, if you will forgive the pun, of a stray drawing pin,
Mending a puncture is to have a Proustian moment, a remembrance of things past, like winding the clock or being able to do mental arithmetic. It took me back to school days when bicycles were just bikes not mountain bikes and had, if you were lucky, a Sturmey-Archer 3 speed gear.
It was with some trepidation, I approached the prospect of removing the rear wheel of a bike equipped with a fifteen speed derailleur “French “ gear with multiple cogs and shifts. I recalled the time when I broke the chain and, having managed to insert a new link, was faced with the prospect of re-aligning the chain and the gear wheels, especially when the aforesaid bicycle is turned upside down sitting on its seat and handlebars. A task that involved staring at the picture in the manual and then imagining it upside down and back to front.
Getting the tyre off was the first task. As far as I recalled, this used to involve a pal and two spoons filched from the kitchen drawer, the bent handles of which had to be explained afterwards to an irate parent of the female persuasion. There were no pals or spoons available so a couple of flat keys and a lot of cursing sufficed. Then the ritual of pumping up of the punctured tube, the immersion in a basin of water to find the tell-tale bubbles, the little yellow crayon to mark the hole, a sandpaper strip to roughen the surface, the rubber solution, peeling the backing of the patch, sticking it on and then, grating the French chalk over the patch to stop it adhering to the tyre, then the struggle to replace the tyre and the satisfying “plop” as it fits back onto the wheel.
There is something very satisfying about mending a puncture. In an age when cars are computerised mysteries and all electrical appliances are cheaper to bin than to repair, mending a puncture takes you back to youth, to “the blue remembered hills…. where I went and cannot come again” .
Once, in discussion about age, we concluded that once you were unable to do a cartwheel or climb a tree, you were old or, at least, no longer young. It is a couple of years since I, for a dare, performed a sort of cartwheel and as long since I climbed a tree but, yesterday, I mended a puncture.

Come wind, come weather

The westerlies have returned.
The trade winds started to blow again last week, in mid June, and brought with them the torrential rain, our own mini-monsoon, that ruins so many sport events and outdoor gatherings planned with no thought of the weather cycle.
It happens with remarkable regularity, year in year out, but, cocooned as we are from the elements, we are hardly aware of it.
The buffeting winds and squally rain did not deter a group of archaeologists on a dig on one of the mounds that are scattered over the high moor above the village. The moor is where an outstretched limb of the Lammermuirs eventually descends to dip its toe in the North Sea at St Abbs and is as exposed a spot as one can find. Living there must be like living on the deck of a ship.
Folk did live there and still do.

The dig team assisted by "locals"

The dig was on a “settlement” that had just been de-scheduled from the list of ancient monuments probably to save the expense have to fence it off and it would appear to have been an exercise in checking to make absolutely certain there was nothing of significance on the site before leaving it to the depredations of the rabbits and the sheep.

Not much of interest, an external ditch, not really defensive, probably just to keep livestock out: a few spots where there was evidence of levelling out bumps in the bed-rock or of infilling depressions, to make a level floor; a water cistern cut into the rock. Not much, just folk making themselves a little more comfortable. An Iron Age farmhouse, probably occupied by people of the Brythonic tribe the Romans called the Votadini. A farmhouse then, just a hundred yards from the current farm house, a good place to live, high and dry above the marshy, wooded valley bottoms, a place with wonderful views of the coastline, a stream close at hand and the ability to exploit every resource from the fish in the sea to the game on the moor with the fertile ground to farm between the two, it would have been occupied for generations.

The modern farmhouse, on the right, is only a few yards away after 200o years


The only significant find was a huge post hole, one of four that would have supported the centre of the circular roof. It was extremely large and deep and the reason for all the effort to embed it so deeply in the bedrock floor was there for all to see or, rather, feel. It would have needed a firm setting to withstand the wind and keep the roof from blowing into the North Sea.

Those Iron Age people would have been only too aware of the return of the westerlies.

Bunker shots

What with all the furore surrounding the D-Day commemoration reminding us how Tom Hanks won the war and a repeat showing of Churchill’s Secret Army on Channel 4, I thought I’d go and check out the secret wartime bunker hidden about a couple of miles outside the village. I heard about it from a pair of local worthies who stravage about the countryside even more than I do. They discovered it some years back dug out the entrance, got in and photographed the interior but kept it very quiet. I was given a rough idea where to look, so off I went.

The Main Entrance

Apparently in 1940 or so when a Nazi invasion was on the cards, a group of volunteers from the Home Guard were picked for training in sabotage, demolition, and survival. In the event of a German landing they were to leave their families, disappear and go underground, literally
Bunkers or “operational bases” were hidden in woods. I suppose, our village being close to the East Coast main line and the A1 with all it bridges, it would have been an obvious spot. Equipped with guns, explosives and supplies, these men would have formed the basis for a resistance movement ….or a suicide squad.
Needless to say they were never called upon and, in latter part of the war, were disbanded. Having been sworn to secrecy and signed the Official Secrets Act, they never divulged the details of the scheme and most of them, if not all, are long gone.
In these days of off- the-record briefings, smear campaigns, leaked documents, lost c.d.’s, and stolen lap-tops, their honest, loyal, honourable integrity seems touching.
They were told not to say anything so they didn’t
Would they have been so quick to volunteer if they had known what a collection of freeloaders, shysters and opportunists, now represent the democracy they were so keen to protect?

The Escape Hatch

The bunker is still intact, fifteen feet below ground, nearly seventy years after its construction from corrugated iron and brick. All there, entrance, escape hatch, blast wall, a tribute to the workmanship and quality of materials used even in wartime. How many of today’s housing estates will be standing above ground in seventy years?

The Interior (courtesy of the original finders)

Altogether, a fun day out. There is an Adopt- a-Monument scheme for preserving old buildings. I wonder if we could preserve it as a historic monument. We could alert the government to its survival. After all, they probably still own it. If not, someone could claim a second home allowance for it.. It is certainly an attractive spot and I’m sure there are those in the spotlight at the moment that might just welcome just such a tranquil hideaway.

The view from the bunker

Rhymer's Reel

The Eildons

Fed up with the limitations imposed on my wanderings by a game leg and frustrated by erstwhile climbing companions gleefully reporting” there’s still snow on Ben Wyvis”, I decided to test myself on our own mini-mountains, the Eildon hills. The remains of an ancient volcano, Trimontium of the invading Romans, and oppidum of the native Selgovae, the Eildons stand out from the surrounding country and would, I thought, be a fair trial.

Melrose Abbey

Setting off from the site of the Eildon Tree where True Thomas the Rhymer met the Queen of Faerie, I trekked up North Eildon with much grunts and muttered expletives. It took a long time but it was worth it. On a clear day, such as it was, I could see as far as the moor above our village away on the coast and had a great view of Melrose Abbey where that other Border wizard, Michael Scott, lies buried.


Rhymer's Tower

Thomas the Rhymer was a real 13th century man. His keep still stands in Ercildoune (Earlston) and his name appears on documents of the time. He is credited with some of the earliest recorded Scots poetry. His poem-play, Sir Tristem ,was resurrected by Sir Walter Scott who also took the great landscape artist Turner to Rhymers Glen by the Huntley Burn. Turner’s watercolour of the glen is in the National Gallery.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was so intrigued by the tale that he started to compose an opera about Thomas. Sadly, it was never finished.

Thomas, apparently met the the queen of Elfland while resting under the Eildon tree, she took him away and he was not seen for either three or seven years depending on which version you read. He was given the gift of prophecy but cursed with only being able to speak the truth. An Orphean figure,his prophecies were widely consulted for hundreds of years down to at least the eighteenth century. Only being able to speak the truth might indeed be a curse but also quite a handy reputation to have once word got around that everything you said was gospel.

Our current politicians would give all their expenses for such an accolade. Many of them seem to have been “away with the fairies” when it came to filling in claim forms
Thomas probably worked as a spy, maybe even a double agent, in the days when borders were fluid and kings and families battled for overlordship as the Canmore dynasty came to an end. Quite handy then to disappear and claim to have been abducted by the fairy folk

In some versions, Thomas fell asleep by the Huntley Burn and woke to meet the fairy folk. The folk that go to sleep there nowadays awake to find bits of themselves missing. It is the site of our District General Hospital.

Midddle and West Eildon from North Eildon

After getting to the top of the North Eildon I could see the path up the next one but discretion being the better part and all that, I made my reluctant way back to the car., Still, a good day out and, on return, thank goodness for hot baths, ibuprofen and whisky.

Patriot Games

The restoration of the thirteenth century Priory that dominates the centre of our village proceeds apace. A Cinderella amongst the great Border abbeys, it has been neglected for decades. Thanks to the efforts of local interest groups, support has been garnered from every conceivable source even including a visit from rock megastar, bassist, metal detector enthusiast and gentleman, Rolling Stone, Bill Wyman.

It all started after the local council started laying waste to the area with strimmers and chainsaws. My involvement came by chance as I rushed to protect three gean trees I had planted; one for each daughter in what was the wild area surrounding the ruins. That led to committees and meetings as I felt obliged, in my mind, to give useful advice or stick my nose in as others may have seen it.

The ruins are now being stabilised. The ancient grave slabs, including the enigmatic “Templar” crosses, are being professionally restored and interesting finds being unearthed. A wheel-head cross and an inscribed stone are probably from an even earlier establishment, closer in time to St Aebba herself. A Northumbrian princess, allegedly fleeing an arranged dynastic marriage, she was an Dark Age example of what is now called “girl power”. It is also a reminder how random are national boundaries.
This was once part of an Anglian, from whence “English”, kingdom. Aebba’s brother, Oswald, having already annexed Mercia, the area south to the Humber, marched north to the Forth and defeated the Scots. Aebba’s other brother, Oswui, consolidated the kingdom. Her nephew Ecgfrith laid siege as far north as Dunottar. Had it not been for the victory of the Picts at Nechtan’s Mere, Scotland and England might never have evolved into separate nations with arguably different characters. We might well have become part of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria and be now worrying about Newcastle United’s imminent relegation from the Premier League. Way-ay, the lads
I tell myself this as part of an auto-conditioning process. In the event of Scotland not qualifying for the next World Cup, I will have to cheer on England, especially with four English grandchildren. I will have to shout encouragement to Rooney (sounds Irish): Rio Ferdinand (sounds Spanish enough to have sailed with the Armada): Gerrard (un morceau de sang normande, peut-etre ) and their Italian coach.
Nations are mere constructs and we should not get too hung up on them.
Mind you, if by the longest of shots, Scotland do qualify then I might sing a different song.
“ 0’ Flower of ….”