It’s April, and the wild garlic is profuse along the Water of Leith, pungent and wonderful as we zoomed by on our first bike ride of the year. The going was tough on muscles that have only traversed the breaking waves on a beach in India, so the following day  we  lay like invalids, just giving thanks that it was cold and wet and we didn’t need to go anywhere in a hurry.

Oh how lovely to be back. The daffodils, primroses and winter aconites rise from soggy mulch and there is a sharp, fresh wind with a promise of summer.

We drove north and I felt sad passing Dalwhinnie, a little hamlet on the A9 that once housed Aunty Mary. For years it was a natural stopping point to visit and exchange news.

It seemed strange just passing by, so instead we stopped to record the still snowy peaks of Ben Alder and the lacy pattern of snows on the lower mountains. The sky was dark, but we headed west to Fort William and gobbled up some very good fish and chips.

We crossed over to the Ardnamurchan Peninsula by the Coran ferry

and the sun blazed and we crawled along as the beauty of the place just unravelled before us. Wild, almost empty, with deer standing outlined on hill tops and grazing in valleys, their colours camouflaged with last year’s bracken.

John was intent on getting inspiration for building Bonnie a fairy house, and he decided in the end it would be better if she just came and played amongst the mossy rocks, the lichen covered branches and the fifty shades of green that is most certainly the home of millions of fairies.  I think he was quite inspired though!

We decided to drive to the end of the road, to the light house on the most westerly point of the British mainland.

We found a field of lamas, then couldn’t get past as a giant highland cow crossed the road. We patiently tried to photograph them for posterity but it was obviously a ‘bad hair day’ as they all turned their heads and wouldn’t give us their best angle. Oh well.

The single track road was murder, and l o n g. Finally we arrived at the light house, and I remember my James MacTavish and Suzannah from The Highland Games had a thing about this place, so I said to John to stand still so I could snap him with the mighty structure. It was like one of these very bad cartoons, I was so busy trying to get the height and John into the picture I fell back and lost my balance. By this time he was bored and had walked away. I was fizzing. Imagine if I had fallen into the wild sea? I looked out on the islands of Rum, Muck, Eigg, Mull and Tiree. Too far for anyone to spot me, that’s for sure.

The stupid lighthouse is all automated and all you can hear is a humming sound of computers.

What is the point of that great fog horn, without some eagle eyed human to spot the emergency?

Where is Grace Darling when we need her?

I gave her a lot of thought on the way back. She was a lighthouse keeper’s daughter on one of the Farne Islands, on the Northumberland coast, and on ‘one dark and stormy night’ at the age of twenty two she espied from her bedroom window, the wreckage of the Forfarshire, a paddle steamer that had ran aground on the rocks of the coast. She and her dad could not take the official life boat out due to the rough seas, so they took a rowing boat and rowed for nearly a mile and managed to rescue five of the survivors.

It was heroic, and later she became feted by one and all. Even William Wordsworth wrote a poem about her, and Queen Victoria congratulated her. Sadly she died of TB at the age of twenty six.

‘Together they put forth, Father and Child!                

         Each grasps an oar, and struggling on they go–

         Rivals in effort; and, alike intent

         Here to elude and there surmount, they watch

         The billows lengthening, mutually crossed

         And shattered, and re-gathering their might;

         As if the tumult, by the Almighty’s will

         Were, in the conscious sea, roused and prolonged

         That woman’s fortitude–so tried, so proved–

         May brighten more and more!’

 We found ourselves in Salen for the night, and we drank wine and sat out in the conservatory and looked out on the loch, still and black as a mirror, and watched the grey lag geese waddle on the marshy fore shore.

I thought of the Chinese poet, Lily Yu, who wrote in AD870,

“Wild geese fly,

Fish swim through water

And carry their thoughts

Across the miles.”

I ate local prawns and we both slept like logs.

The morning was fresh and we shared our breakfast time with an elderly gentleman from Kent. He had the soft burr of a highland accent that he had not quite forgotten. His mother had come from Arisaig. He told us of his love for photography and for this area, and how he and his wife had once stayed at Glen Borrodale House in 1957, following the wedding of his brother in Glasgow. Imagine the horror of finding the newlyweds just honeymooning down the road, thinking they had escaped from everything and everyone!

He told us of his project to photograph a circle of oak trees in the Aryundel forest, in Strontian. He had taken a photo in August, when the colours were rich, the bracken golden and the leaves full. He wanted to take the same shot in spring and in winter, but sadly he had a stroke last year and couldn’t manage the walk. He had gone back this year but couldn’t find the spot.

John and I now had a mission. We drove off, stopping for a while in a nature hide and were so lucky to see two otters playing on the rocks, then diving and swimming just in front of us, and to our right seals lay supine with their large eyes and whiskery faces.

I read the poem by Sorley MacLean that had been etched in wood in Gaelic, and I thought of Shiva in Goa, and how he had learnt how to speak this language, and would not have needed the translation.

I love this poet, not that I can read and understand in the native words that he writes, but from the interpretation that our minister in Glenelg used to share with us. Mr Beaton was Skye born, and loved all poetry but when he spoke Sorley MacLean’s words in Gaelic and then translated, suddenly the smell of the bladder wrack and sea shore came to mind or the soft mosses and silvery forms of the birches were there, in front of my eyes. I love this one about

The Woods of Raasay

Floor of bracken and birch

In the high green room

The roof and the floor

Heavily coloured, serene:

Tiny cups of the primrose

Yellow petal on green

And the straight pillars of the room

The noble, restless pines.

So we walked the Fairy Walk, through trees and over the river and I think we found the gentleman’s circle of oak trees – who can tell? Now we should come back in August and compare the stark spring shapes of the tree form with the rich plumes of summer colour.

John found a bench with the mighty Ben Resipole in the back ground and I thought of the inscription I found on a bench in Adelaide in Australia.

‘Sit doon a while, and tak the weight aff yer feet.’

Quite so.

We walked on looking for the signs of pine marten and wild cat but they are canny creatures, and do not take their strolls where we are likely to come upon them.

It was enough. We had seen otters and seals and buzzards and enough lichen and mosses to last for a while. We came home and our garden is full of soft purples and nodding daffodils. I miss the wild and wet lands of the west, of opening curtains in the morning and looking out on to rippling water and dun coloured mountains. I miss the wild hyacinths growing in the boggy riversides, and the leaves of the yellow flag irises. I miss the smell of seaweed and cold wind. And yet – how lucky I am to live just a drive away.

Lily Yu said,

“Pine trees are content

To live their lives

On high mountain slopes”

The moral? I suppose it is to be happy wherever you are!