The Tiree Pages

this year’s CalMac adventure to the island of Tiree

The countdown to this year’s Big Summer Holiday has been a long one. As soon as we left Islay last summer, the discussions began about which Hebridean island to visit next, how big the ferry would be, would we get to eat breakfast on the ferry and so on. All year the kids have played ferries – lining up toy cars into queues for boarding and using an upturned tray from the kitchen as the ferry itself. In January, Ross and I showed them where Tiree is on a map. They agreed to Tiree as our next island; a house was found; ferries were booked. When it finally come time to pack up the car and drive to Oban, it didn’t feel quite real. It had been talked about too much. We stayed one night in Oban. We watched the ferries come in and out of the harbour – trucks off, then cars off, foot passengers hurrying to the train, trucks on, cars on, bikes on, beep beep beep up goes the ramp and the great bulk of red and black moves slowly away. The ferries, these constructions of welded steel, are so romantic to me. The link between the Scottish islands and the mainland (the mainland itself an island) are at the mercy of the sea, sometimes shimmering in sparkling diamonds, sometimes black with rage, often grey and white and lumpy, and at the mercy of engineering (and oh, how often the engineering has let them down recently).

Finally, it was our turn, our ferry. The MV Clansman. Late afternoon, taking just over three and half hours, across a calm sea of every blue and some other blues that hadn’t been blues before today. The white spray from under the boat threw up a billion tiny crystals to make a billion tiny rainbows. A perfect day to be seafarers. The Tiree ferry makes its way round Mull for most of the journey before breaking away across the sea toward Coll and Tiree. When we broke free from the Sound of Mull into the ocean proper, the wind stole the breath from my throat and twisted my hair into ropes and whacked me about the face with them. From that moment, for the rest of the week, we were never without the wind. The wind on Tiree is relentless. A constant companion making outdoor sketching chaotic and whipping playing cards from hands and hats from heads and telling the grass to grow sideways. My first impressions of Tiree were of the wind and the wildness. Tiree is a low-lying grey rock in the ocean, ancient gneiss covered in bog and sand and flowers, so low that it feels as if it could at any moment be totally swallowed by the high tide, where certain life thrives and other things (trees, tree-nesting birds, certain kinds of people) don’t even try to live. I loved it immediately.

We had sailed away from a(nother) heatwave. While we were on Tiree, we read about the wildfires burning in the Cairngorms, and it seemed like a different reality. On Tiree I wore jumpers and boots and a beanie hat and allowed myself one week of not worrying about the dystopia unfolding. I am sure climate change is impacting the people and the environment in the Hebrides, too, but it was nice to get away from the strong sun and scorched grass of home.

On the first evening, after disembarking from the ferry, we drove across Tiree, tired eyes trying to make sense of the landscape. My mind blocked in the colours. I saw grey rock and green grass and white houses and grey-blue sea. But the next morning we headed out on foot and I was blown away by the colours and the details, especially the abundant wildflowers and the dancing butterflies and the wind-tossed little brown birds. The huge sweeping beaches of white sand and turquoise water are the headline, of course, but I loved the acid yellow lichens on the rocks and the miniature flowers on the machair and the sky-blue butterflies and the many shapes of the seaweed in the rockpools and the bright yellow periwinkle shells.

And those white sands and turquoise seas held stories once you started looking. There was a lot of death on the beaches. Crabs and empty shells, as expected. But also so many bones. Murdo would fill my backpack with his bone-finds. We found a leg with a hoof and fur still attached (that did not go in my backpack); I found a tooth; and Ross & Murdo found a carcass of something enormous and unknown. It added to the sense of wildness and strangeness.

Every evening, about 7pm, my cheeks would burn hot. I assume because of the wind. The week we were there the weather was mild and settled, sometimes sunny, mostly cloudy. On the last proper day, the wind got up. I mentioned to a man in one of the shops that it was windier today. He said this was nothing. That in the winter the wind takes your car door clean off if you park at a bad angle. I desperately want to be there in the winter to feel the wind do it’s thing and to hear the waves respond.

We spent the entire week either pottering in our cottage (I completed jigsaw. Heaven.) or pottering at the beach or pottering in a cafe. Ross & the kids played in the sea (I only went in once and immediately regretted it. Being cold and wet is rubbish, no?). We beach-combed and rock-pooled and pic-niced. The car gradually filled up with sand and bits of crab and stones and wet towels. Trix’s hair got curlier and wilder and her face frecklier with every day that went by. It was everything we dreamt of from a family holiday. And there were birds to watch everywhere – ravens on the hill behind the house; wheatears on the fence posts; lapwings by the dozen (like in the stories we hear of the good old days); ringed plovers so numerous we stopped pointing them out (but never stopped adoring them). Curlews, oystercatchers, squabbling terns. A glimpse of a white tailed sea eagle. Rock pipit, meadow pipit. Pied wagtails in every passing place. Geese, eider, shellduck. So many eye-treats for a family who normally live in the woods.

I don’t know what the children will remember from this trip. Murdo is seven, now, so he might have quite a few Tiree memories that will stay with him. Trix is only four and might not remember anything, but I hope her muscles remember climbing rocks and running in waves and kneeling to inspect tiny flowers. And Ross & I will cherish our Tiree memories, that’s for sure.