Return to Scotland’s Loneliest Coast
Snapshots of childhood and the restless beauty of a forgotten landscape
Coming home is a ‘you never step in the same river twice’ experience. You’ve changed, the river has changed — there may not even be a river where you thought one had been.
I haven’t lived in Scotland since I was 17, it’s even longer since I lived in the Highlands, yet I receive that as new information every time I look back on my biography.
How I experience myself today is deeply rooted in memories of childhood that are as distinct and undeniable as the clumps of sheep’s wool snagged on rusted barbed wire along the burn where I fished for sticklebacks, and idled on the bank among the flowers; tiny lilac speedwells, nodding sea pinks, and golden coltsfoot.
Northerly winds blew mercilessly across the fields year-round, whipping shallow waves across the mud flats when the tide came in. The brackish water was never warm even in summer yet that’s where I learned to swim. My older brother leaked the air out of my armbands, little by little, until triumphantly announcing that they were empty and I’d been keeping myself afloat for ages.
The laundry froze on the line and the ghosts of our flat, disembodied clothes were folded across the clothes horse to be resuscitated by the coal fire hissing in its grate.
I remember how the double-decker bus swayed between hedgerows, delivering kids from farms and villages to high school in town where we sat next to kids from Texas and Louisiana whose dads worked in the brand-new oil industry. The first day it snowed, those kids ran out of class to stand eyes wide, hands and mouths open to the wonder of the sky.
Surely those years account for a proportion of my lifespan that is at least equal to that I’ve spent tending to the childhoods of my children?
Look back at the landscape of childhood and provable, recorded facts dot the horizon as unassailable pinnacles, but the dreamscape of time that passes while simply growing up is harder to plot. There is an unmeasurable distance between the facts and what feels true.
At the time of writing, I have just arrived in Scotland to explore how I fit into the life of this country and how it fits into mine. I’m still getting my feet under me so I’ve reworked a previous piece for you. It’s from a late summer tour in the Highlands around this time last year.
Points North
Recent visits home had taken me to Inverness but I hadn’t visited the north coast of Scotland in almost thirty years. There had been day trips to the farmland in the east, and the famous lochs and mountains in the west, but this year I brought a Danish companion and we went to explore northern lands familiar to the Vikings.
We started early and drove up over the Black Isle. Lairg was the last town we would see for a while so we stopped at The Pier on the banks of Loch Shin for coffee and homemade cake. It was late August and the schools were back in session but the restaurant was busy with local visitors; people like us with silver in their hair and time to drive, bike, and walk while the weather remained friendly.
Just beyond Lairg, the road narrows to single track with lay-bys on either side to allow oncoming vehicles to pass. As we followed the bank of the loch north and west towards the coast, heather moorlands with some late purple blooms stretched out on either side. Occasional pastures of rough grass were dotted with grazing sheep and wind-worn hills rose up on each side as we left the broad shallow valley behind.
The road is one of the few signs of human habitation in this region. In the early 19th century, most of the land was owned by the Duchess of Sutherland, the most notorious proponent of the Highland Clearances. Hundreds of families attempted to eke out a living here before the land was given over to sheep and they were forced to move to new settlements on the coast, to the city, or even further afield to the New World. The Highlanders’ homes were often set alight to discourage their return and now there are only occasional stone ruins on the heath, two-roomed but and bens missing their roof timbers.
I learned this history at school back in the 1970s. My mother was the headteacher of a village school a little further south and I remember being taken on long drives like this as a child. I would fend off carsickness in the back seat next to my younger brother, both of us bored and bickering over packets of fruit gums while Mum did her research.
“There’s nothing to look at,” I’d grumble, “just hills and rivers and heather.” Youth isn’t all that’s wasted on the young.
We make a right turn as the River Laxford opens into a loch of the same name. The tide has stranded a wide ribbon of mustard-orange seaweed on the wet black rocks; the sun is hidden by a flotilla of heavy clouds but the seaweed has some secret inner fuel and flares bright.
Our destination is an Airbnb at Rhiconich, near Kinlochbervie so we drive across the rocky point where white sheep pull at bright green tufts behind barbed wire fences. A mizzling rain is falling as we reach the caravan and we are glad of the supplies we have brought to make a warming supper.
The Lonely Coast
Next day, we drive north to Durness on the north coast. We leave Cape Wrath, the northwest tip of Scotland, behind us. The Cape is owned by the Ministry of Defense and entry requires bookings and permits we haven’t arranged.
It’s a clear-skyed summer’s day but still cool enough to need a sweater as we walk by the ivy-clad ruins of a 13th-century church on our way to the shore. On the sands, we see a few people walking their dogs and a handful of tourists like ourselves. In warmer climes, this and the many other glorious beaches along the coast would surely be filled with swimmers and sunbathers.
Just outside Durness, we come to Balnakeil Craft Village. The uninspiring collection of prefab buildings was installed during the Cold War as an early warning station in case of a nuclear attack. It was never made operational and in the sixties, some imaginative soul on the District Council suggested it be converted into a craft village. Artists and craftspeople submitted business plans and were invited to make their homes and studios there for minimal rent.
The village has changed since its early days so I didn’t immediately recognize it but standing on the green at its center, I have a sudden, poignant memory of my younger brother. We are running in circles while our mother visits the studios and shops.
The feeling of it stops me in my tracks as memories of David always do. We didn’t know it then but he was more than halfway through his life, just a few years away from the road accident that is the jagged, unassailable pinnacle at the end of my childhood.
Some of the renegade feel that made Balnakeil suit our mood back then remains, though the gourmet chocolate shop is an addition David would have welcomed.
After checking out the artwork for sale, the Dane and I press on along the seacoast. The banks of Loch Eriboll take us inland, the ribbon of road winding under the watchful gaze of sandstone hills, across moors of green-brown heather, the soft greens of bog moss, and small stands of tawny grass. At every turn, another stunning vista is revealed, it is the most astonishing and beautiful of landscapes.
Back at the caravan, we contemplate a walk. By now, we are practiced in looking to the clouds that sail across the peaks to our southeast before deciding which clothes to layer ourselves in. Sometimes the clouds are mild and lofty, or rich with sunset orange and pink. Often they’re gray with heavy cargoes of rain.
We follow the track between a handful of white-washed stone cottages then clamber down the footpath to Polin Sands. No one else is there. From above, the sand is tinged pink and the sea turns grey and turquoise with the changing of the light. Down on the shore among the looming black rocks, the sea turns dark blue as it bobs beneath the fishing boats passing by.
To walk this ragged coast is to witness time piled upon time, shored-up grains fallen from great lonely cliffs staring down the insurgent North Sea.
Wind and waves carved gods into these cliffs long before people settled here with tools of stone or bronze. Before the roving Norsemen arrived in long boats to trade fire and fury with the fishers and farmers clinging to a living here. It was the sea that decided what the story of this place would be.
The afternoon is growing late. We watch as black-oiled cormorants cut through the sea, arrows with dagger beaks and prehistoric wings pressed into flights. They disappear into the deeps for so long I think I must have missed their return. When they eventually resurface, they flap themselves over to the rocks where they swallow their catch and dry their wings in an outstretched mea culpa.
There will be a full moon tonight and the tide floods towards us so we retreat up the shore and watch the sea swell to sweep our footprints from the beach.
Thanks for reading and listening, I appreciate your company as I travel along.
The next stop on my journey is a house-sitting gig where I’ll look after two elderly Bichon ladies. They live in a charming old seaside town next to the dilapidated city where I was born.
More on that and probably some cute photos next time.
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Beautiful, both the writing and the recording. I loved seeing with you this place whose story the sea has decided long ago (brilliant that). And I know what you mean when you say memories of David stop you short. That’s how it is with the people we never imagined, losing, isn’t it? I’m sorry you lost him.
Thank you, Beth, for another beautiful post.
Look back at the landscape of childhood and provable, recorded facts dot the horizon as unassailable pinnacles, but the dreamscape of time that passes while simply growing up is harder to plot. There is an unmeasurable distance between the facts and what feels true."
A perfect summing up of the odd experience of memoir. I look forward to hearing more about your travel through that 'unmeasurable distance'. Beautiful, evocative writing that tells a deep story.