Scotland~
Oh wow, haven't I just been neglecting this journal? After my first post all full of promises too. Oh well, better late than never. I will start adding things on here every now and then throughout the autumn. Here's a piece I have written optimistically as an entry to a travel writing competition. I spent a week at the most remote youth hostel in the U.K, at Loch Ossian in the Scottish highlands. 'Aimie' is my first cousin and you can blame her father for the very strange old-english spelling of her name.
Scotland and Back Again.
“Oh, this is it! Quick!”
The train had lurched to a halt in the middle of a peat bog, but Aimie has noticed the scrappy building works and, through plastic cones, a sign marked “Corrour”. We hurtle with the experience of city living off the train into the drizzle, bags and boxes of biscuits jammed under our armpits, waterproof trousers rustling with anticipation. I pause for a moment, gazing back at Rannoch Moor, envisioning the great stag himself to hove into view against the background of the Highlands in the peak of summer.
Instead it is dingily autumnal and we’re being stared at by a bemused group of rail workers in tic-tac orange jackets. One of them tells us how far it is to the loch. “Well over a mile; I tried it a couple of times and then came back.” It’s not.
The hostel is an eco-place, but satisfyingly kitted out with a proper stove, eat-who-dares spaghetti in a cupboard and a dog. The downside is that there are no showers, but the backpacking life has taught me the art of washing my hair in the sink and that antibacterial hand gel makes for a passable dry wash.
It’s impossible to get lost around the Loch, although we give it a brave attempt. The cloud is low, making kettle-steam wisps that obscure the tops of the peaks; themselves all jumbled up and black like wedges of marmite toast. We march aimlessly alongside the water, admiring the crone-backed rowans resplendent in their gowns of scarlet baubles, and the trumpeting crimson of the toadstools. The Loch is purple-grey and the pines stand lush and verdant.
The Highlands come in all colours of bruise.
The sun makes a shy appearance and it cheers things up modestly. It also brings out the midges, which in great excitement and disorganization make strawberry mottling of our pale necks. Aimie shrieks in horror and coddles her head in her bobble hat. For some reason, I’m just not as tasty.
We stop to eat flapjack around the midges, and garlicky sandwiches on the bridge at the top of the Loch, which would be miserable in any other circumstance, but seem cheerily homespun now. “If that’s ‘Lake-town’,” Aimie says, waggling a finger at the Estate and the old boat house, “Then the ‘Lonely Mountain’s’ got to be somewhere over there.” Having forgotten the map, we’ve been naming things to our own geeky tastes. We squint at the sulking mountains, but there’s no sign of Smaug.
Stiff and damp we ramble back to the hostel. “We should go canoeing tomorrow,” I say as we stop to watch a pretty yellow wagtail spring from rock to rock. Aimie hums in agreement. We cross a waterfall and find a patch of wild strawberries, which peek like fairy jewels out from a sappy pine log. “That was fun,” Aimie says brightly, scratching her midge bites. I look at my sore wet feet.
“Yeah, I guess it was.”
Scotland and Back Again.
“Oh, this is it! Quick!”
The train had lurched to a halt in the middle of a peat bog, but Aimie has noticed the scrappy building works and, through plastic cones, a sign marked “Corrour”. We hurtle with the experience of city living off the train into the drizzle, bags and boxes of biscuits jammed under our armpits, waterproof trousers rustling with anticipation. I pause for a moment, gazing back at Rannoch Moor, envisioning the great stag himself to hove into view against the background of the Highlands in the peak of summer.
Instead it is dingily autumnal and we’re being stared at by a bemused group of rail workers in tic-tac orange jackets. One of them tells us how far it is to the loch. “Well over a mile; I tried it a couple of times and then came back.” It’s not.
The hostel is an eco-place, but satisfyingly kitted out with a proper stove, eat-who-dares spaghetti in a cupboard and a dog. The downside is that there are no showers, but the backpacking life has taught me the art of washing my hair in the sink and that antibacterial hand gel makes for a passable dry wash.
It’s impossible to get lost around the Loch, although we give it a brave attempt. The cloud is low, making kettle-steam wisps that obscure the tops of the peaks; themselves all jumbled up and black like wedges of marmite toast. We march aimlessly alongside the water, admiring the crone-backed rowans resplendent in their gowns of scarlet baubles, and the trumpeting crimson of the toadstools. The Loch is purple-grey and the pines stand lush and verdant.
The Highlands come in all colours of bruise.
The sun makes a shy appearance and it cheers things up modestly. It also brings out the midges, which in great excitement and disorganization make strawberry mottling of our pale necks. Aimie shrieks in horror and coddles her head in her bobble hat. For some reason, I’m just not as tasty.
We stop to eat flapjack around the midges, and garlicky sandwiches on the bridge at the top of the Loch, which would be miserable in any other circumstance, but seem cheerily homespun now. “If that’s ‘Lake-town’,” Aimie says, waggling a finger at the Estate and the old boat house, “Then the ‘Lonely Mountain’s’ got to be somewhere over there.” Having forgotten the map, we’ve been naming things to our own geeky tastes. We squint at the sulking mountains, but there’s no sign of Smaug.
Stiff and damp we ramble back to the hostel. “We should go canoeing tomorrow,” I say as we stop to watch a pretty yellow wagtail spring from rock to rock. Aimie hums in agreement. We cross a waterfall and find a patch of wild strawberries, which peek like fairy jewels out from a sappy pine log. “That was fun,” Aimie says brightly, scratching her midge bites. I look at my sore wet feet.
“Yeah, I guess it was.”