The Islay Trip (summer holidays part 2)
pages & notes from our wonderful family holiday to the island of Islay this summer
I swear that, at one point in the past, my ancestors were island people, boat people, people of wind and salt and far off horizons. I seem to reach peak-peace on the top deck of a CalMac ferry, the smell of sea and chips, wind whipping my hair into my face. Sailing away from busy places, leaning into the wild and the rocky and the waves. I just love everything about being on an island. This year, we spent a perfect week on the Isle of Islay (pronounced eye-la), off the west coast of Scotland. Islay is the southernmost island of the Inner Southern Hebrides. It’s a place we’ve wanted to visit for a while, but only this year did we get brave enough to do the big drive to the ferry with both kids. Here are my sketchbook pages and some thoughts from the trip:
1.
Sometimes travel seems bizarre, doesn’t it? All those hours in the car, queues, traffic, waiting. Crossing the sea, driving single-track roads, passing places. All to get to one grid-point, chosen from photos on the internet. And yet, as soon as we got to Islay, and to Fairy Hill Cottage, it suddenly made sense. How on earth could we be anywhere else? It’s an old cottage, with purple paintwork, remote, with deer grazing in the garden, birds from every window, a path through the most magical woodland to the sea, where seals watch the kids swim.
Also on this page – a boat named Lucky Me, and the Islay Bird List – it wouldn’t be a Longmuir holiday without a bird list. The golden eagle might be a bit of a reach to be honest.
2. dramatic rocks near Port Ellen, geese in formation. Really quite cold but I had bothered putting my swimmers on so I got in the sea. Kids had a hoot in their wetsuits playing in the stream that met the sea. The beach seems to make them absolutely wild, screeching and frisking and exploding with exuberance. I feel a bit giddy at the beach, too, to be fair, but in a peaceful-glee sort of way, rather than a roll-about-in-wet-sand sort of way. Earlier in the day we were at the Mull of Oa, watching gannets flying in a row, three, four, five. We were 100m above them on the cliffs. There were wild goats scaling steep drops and fluffy seal pups on the rocks. A hummingbird hawk moth, daredevil harebells right on the edge of the cliffs, fluffy bog cotton, unknown butterflies.
3.
Piglet came face-to-face with a seal while he was floating about in his mermaid ring – only about six feet away, bright-eye to bright-eye. Then Piglet glanced away and when he looked back, the seal had gone. It was the quietest Piglet had been all day, all week. When he is happy and relaxed, he is constantly making noise – singing, chatting, humming, squawking, talking to himself, talking to Trix. He even talks in his sleep. But for the seal, he was silent.
I had to start an animal list for Islay as well as a bird list because mammals just kept appearing – an otter on the verge, a toad crossing the road, bats in the rafters, huge herds of wild goats. The seals were my favourite, though. They are so openly curious, calm, friendly.
4.
We went for pudding to a fancy hotel (the Machrie) and the kids had their first ever Sticky Toffee Pudding. Somehow Trix tipped hers onto her face and into her hair. Toffee sauce and curly hair and fancy hotel carpets are a bad combination. It was very funny. Then we went to the amazing white sands beach near there, and she got all salty, and she smelt like a wonderful bag of salted toffee popcorn for the rest of the day. We had the enormous beautiful beach to ourselves – just us, two cows and the oystercatchers.
The next day we went to Jura on the tiny tiny ferry across the sound. It was very misty and quite wet and beautiful. Seals on every rock, or maybe every rock was a seal, it was hard to tell in the mist. Added 50 shells to the snail shell collection which is an excellent day out for a snail shell collector.
I was waiting for the tiny tiny ferry back across the sound, long lines of gannets flying by, a smooth shell in my hand, and I thought that this trip was filling me up with all the things I need to survive a year – nature, wild, wind, quiet, watching, noticing, delight, glee – and I am really hoping that it did something similar for the kids. That somehow charging through waves, digging in the sand, never being rushed, freedom, feeling like you’re on the edge of the earth, somehow those things build their resilience.
5
The cottage had lots of windows, and out of every window there were deer to watch. It was addictive. I’d move room to get something, and ten minutes later I’d still be in there, staring out the window, watching the herds of fallow deer grazing. We don’t have fallow deer in the Borders and I was quite taken with their polka dot ginger coats. At the start of the week, I’d struggle to spot them, but by the end of the week my eyes had learnt deer – the flick of an ear, a glimpse of a white rump, the sway of the long grass as they munched. I loved their constant peaceful presence round the house.
6
on the ferry home, feeling grateful.
and 7
a drawing of the kids climbing the gate by the cottage, to see the deer bound away in the field. Also the site of their first experience of a cloud of midgies! A drawing of the two best kids in the whole wide world.
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