Category Archives: Travel

Isobel Wylie Hutchison: North to the Rime-Ringed Sun

Cover of North to the Rime-Ringed Sun by Isobel Wylie Hutchison

We were northward bound for Alaska and her blue midnights! Her golden blossoms! Her trackless forests! Her naked tundras!

I’ve written about the redoubtable Isobel Wylie Hutchison before—a Scottish lady of independent means who spent her life travelling and botanizing, often while walking prodigious distances alone. She recorded her travels in articles for National Geographic magazine, and also in a series of books. North to the Rime-Ringed Sun (1934) is subtitled, in its British edition by Blackie & Son, Being the record of an Alaskan-Canadian journey made in 1933-34. Which, together with the cover art, just about sums it up. (The US edition, published by Hillman-Curl in 1937, went for the less wordy An Alaskan Journey, choosing to ignore Hutchison’s time in Arctic Canada.)

Hutchison’s title comes from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The Long Trail”, which has more than a hint of Robert Service about it:

It’s North you may run to the rime-ringed sun
Or South to the blind Horn’s hate;
Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay,
Or West to the Golden Gate –
Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass,
And the wildest tales are true,
And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
And life runs large on the Long Trail – the trail that is always new.

Her plan for this trip was to get to Herschel Island, on the north coast of Yukon Territory. Along the way, she was going to collect plants for the Royal Herbarium at Kew, and purchase artefacts for the Museum of Ethnology in Cambridge.

Her itinerary involved leaving Britain as a passenger aboard a cargo ship, which was carrying, among other things, beer to the newly post-Prohibition United States. Disembarking in Vancouver, she would board a Canadian Pacific Railway steamer, bound to the old gold-rush port of Skagway. Then via narrow-gauge railway over White Pass to Whitehorse in Canada, and thence by stern-wheeler riverboat down the Yukon to Dawson City, the boom-town of the Klondike gold-rush of 1897. From Dawson, she aimed to take a succession of boats all the way down the Yukon to the tiny settlement of Mitchell, where she hoped to board a ship taking her to Nome, on the Barents Sea. After that, she planned on “trusting in Providence (for on this section of the journey American Express Companies and tourist itineraries no longer functioned)”. But the hope was to obtain a berth on a vessel heading north through the Bering Strait to the town of Barrow, on the Arctic Ocean, and then another boat to get to Herschel Island before the winter pack ice shut down sea travel. (Barrow, it transpires, was something of a hub for Arctic trading and supply vessels—boats from farther east would make their way to Barrow to pick up supplies coming in from the west, and would then scamper homewards before the ice closed in.) The following spring, she would push farther east to the Mackenzie Delta, and follow that river south until she could connect with the Canadian railway system.

She made this trip alone, with 300 pounds of luggage, which had grown to 500 pounds by the time she had completed her collection of artefacts and purchased Arctic clothing. Things went swimmingly until she reached the town of Tanana, on the Yukon, where it became evident that the boat that would take her farther down the Yukon was delayed, and that the ship she planned to meet for her journey to Nome might well not be available. This was a problem, because she needed to reach Nome before the last ship of the season headed north. So, undaunted, she took the train to Fairbanks, and arranged to fly to Nome aboard a scheduled Pacific-Alaska Airways floatplane. (Most of here extensive baggage came on in a second aeroplane, a few days later.) Then, after a period of ecstatic botanizing in Nome, she found a berth aboard the tiny M.S. Trader (pictured in the cover art at the head of this post) which, after multiple tribulations in the ice, got her to Barrow. There, with winter closing in, she hooked up with Gus Masik of the M.S. Topaz, who promised to take her east as far as the encroaching ice allowed:

She was a boat of much the same size as Trader, though the cabin was larger and had the advantage that one was able to stand upright. As it was also the engine-room, however, the smell of petrol and the constant noise somewhat counter-balanced this advantage. […] From the rigging hung the stiffened carcass of a frozen caribou, which became a sadder and sadder wreck as the journey proceeded, supplying most of the breakfasts, dinners and suppers of our six days’ voyage.

Gus got them as far as Barter Island (a place where the Inuit of Canada and Iñupiat of Alaska traditionally meet to trade) before the sea became impassable, 120 miles short of Herschel Island. At which point, Isobel was invited to stay at Gus’s place:

… the quaint “round-house” of wood, turf and canvas (built by himself) which was Gus’s trading-post.

She stayed for several weeks with Gus in his single-room dwelling, listening to his stories and taking walks along the length of the little shingle island he called home. They seem to have got along well enough, since Gus came to visit her in Scotland, during a trip to Europe a few years later, as recounted in the recent compilation of her writings, Peak Beyond Peak.

Isobel Wylie Hutchison at demarcation pillar on Alaska/Canada border
Click to enlarge

Then, with the sea-ice thick enough for dog-sledding, Gus ferried her to the RCMP station on Herschel Island—stopping off on the way for a photo opportunity at the little obelisk that marks the border between Alaska and Canada.

From Herschel, onwards by a series of dog-sled journeys into the Mackenzie Delta, sometimes having to run behind the sled in deep snow at forty degrees below zero*, before reaching the settlement of Aklavik. (Aklavik was prone to frequent flooding from the Mackenzie River, and in the sixties the main population centre moved to the new town of Inuvik.) Hutchison tells us a bit about the economics of travelling as a passenger on a dog-sled:

Ten dollars a day is the customary charge in Alaska and Canada at this season, full price being charged as a rule for the return journey (without the passenger). Travel by dog-sled in the Arctic is thus, for a long distance, still considerably dearer than an aeroplane…

Finally, another flight, this time on a ski-equipped plane, down the length of the Mackenzie River, stopping off at a series of outposts with the word “Fort” in their names before reaching the railhead at Fort McMurray:

Next morning a taxi conveyed me to the station at Waterways, where I caught the weekly train to Edmonton.
But I had heard the call of the wild on star-lit nights under the Northern Lights; I had slept in a snow-hut; I had broken a new trail at the foot of the splintered Endicotts, and my heart beat for the wilderness.

My first edition of this book has a nice map of Hutchison’s journey, in the old useful style—at the back of the book, and designed to fold out sideways so that it can be consulted while reading, without flipping back and forth. Here’s my own map, prepared for your delectation (you might need to click for an enlarged view):

Isobel Wylie Hutchison travels in Alaska and Canada, 1933-34
Click to enlarge
Prepared using Natural Earth data

Through all this, Hutchison is an amiable, observant and apparently unflappable companion, and her narrative paints a detailed picture of life along the north coast of North America in this era. I was fascinated by the sheer number of people she encountered, going about their business in a landscape that, while desolate, is dotted with trapper’s huts, mission stations, RCMP posts, trading posts, and the shelters of indigenous hunters.

I particularly enjoyed her visit to two eccentric and reclusive Polish woodcarvers in the little settlement of Purgatory (“a hell of a place to live in”), on the banks of the Yukon—you can read more about them here. Hutchison reports:

Some years ago, when the steamer called at Purgatory, the passengers noticed on the beach a fresh pile of gravel about the size of a newly-made grave, above which was a cross reading:

‘He robbed my cache and here he lies’

When the local Marshal and two deputies arrived to investigate this murder, they found that the grave contained only the corpse of a Canada Jay, a bird so clever at robbing food caches that it’s known locally as the “camp robber”.

And then there’s an episode reminiscent of a Clive Cussler novel—the encounter between the Trader and the derelict S.S. Baychimo, embedded in the ice fifteen miles from the settlement of Wainwright. The ship had been abandoned by her crew in 1931, after becoming locked in the ice, but continued to drift around the Beaufort Sea for another 38 years. A little later, as Trader threaded its way between the ice floes close inshore, it was actually overtaken by the Baychimo, which was moving eastwards with the pack ice farther out to sea.

Second-hand copies of the original volume seem to be relatively rare and correspondingly expensive. You can borrow a scanned version of the book online from the Internet Archive, and it has been reissued recently, in paperback and hardback editions, by Hassell Street Press.


* Forty degrees below zero is the same temperature in Celsius and Fahrenheit. I’ve been waiting for years for the opportunity to write “forty degrees below zero” without specifying the units.

Strathglass

Strathglass routes
Click to enlarge
Contains OS OpenData © Crown copyright and database right 2018
Path data © OpenStreetMap contributors under the Open Database Licence

I’ve been meaning to write about Strathglass for a couple of years now, but have never got around to it. This post therefore merges three separate visits to the same location, marked by the little red dot in the middle of my map, above. So you’ll encounter a strange mixture of photographs from spring and autumn. Each time, we stayed in the same log cabin poised above the valley of the River Glass.

The area around the cabin has fairly frequent visitors:

Red deer at Tringa, Strathglass
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

There’s a large rear deck, with a view northeast along the length of the strath:

Decking of Tringa cottage, Strathglass
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© 2023, The Boon Companion
Strathglass in autumn
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© 2023, The Boon Companion
Young red deer about Strathglass
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

Autumn is the time to see red deer calves still in their spotted natal coats:

Red deer calf, Strathglass
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

And the bird feeders attract interesting visitors, too. This one’s a great spotted woodpecker (the chaffinch in the background is clearly waiting his turn):

Great spotted woodpecker on feeder, Strathglass
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

Though some, like this goldfinch, prefer to cater for themselves:

Goldfinch in Strathglass
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

When not lounging around watching the wildlife, we wander the nearby glens.

Glen Affric is wild in its upper part, with the Allt Beithe hostel sited a good nine miles from the public road system. But the lower reaches are pleasantly domesticated, with car parks and way-marked trails. It’s a lovely spot in autumn:

Autumn in Glen Affric
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Boon Companion
River Affric
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

(The craggy point in the distance above the line of the river is Sgurr na Lapaich, I believe.)

Our other favoured glen is Strathfarrar. Unusually in Scotland, access to this glen is protected by a locked gate—only 25 cars are allowed into the glen on any given day, and it’s closed to vehicular traffic (except, of course, for residents and estate workers) for a day and a half a week. The Boon Companion and I generally turn up on a Tuesday, when the glen is closed for the full day. We park in the little car park just short of the gate, and amble up the road beside the river for as far as the spirit moves us, largely untroubled by traffic.

In the morning, the warm tarmac tempts out the local reptiles. We’ve encountered basking common lizards here, and also this:

Slow worm at Strathfarrar
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Oikofuge

It’s a slow worm. Despite the name, not a worm; despite appearances, not a snake—it’s a legless lizard. Unfortunately, it departed too quickly for me to hunker down and check its eyes, which (unlike a true snake) it blinks regularly.

And, hanging around the car-park, checking out the visitors, there’s Susie the goat:

Millie goat at Strathfarrar
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

Occasionally we head east out of Cannich, but stop short of the Nessie-themed horrors of Drumnadrochit. We drive up to park near the neolithic chambered cairn at Corrimony and then walk farther up the River Enrick, though the route to Corrimony Falls seems curiously elusive.

Corrimony chambered cairn
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© 2023, The Oikofuge
Enrick bridge at Corrimony
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

In the spring, the lambs of Corrimony seem curiously trusting. This one came running across the field to take a look at us:

Lamb at Strathfarrar
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

In the other direction, we head through Beauly and Muir of Ord (pausing at the Bad Girl Bakery) and into the curiously named Black Isle, which isn’t an island at all. At Fortrose, we weave our way along minor roads clogged with camper vans and out on to Chanonry Point (a name I’ll come back to), where there’s a madly busy car park at the end of a remote and apparently undistinguished promontory.

Chanonry Point
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Boon Companion

On the shoreline, when the tide is right, there’s a crowd of people staring out to sea, going “Ooooh,” and sometimes “Aaaah.”

Dolphin-watchers, Chanonry Point
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© 2023, The Oikofuge

That’s Fort George on the far shore, built by the Hanoverian army to control the narrows here at the entrance to the Moray Firth. On the rising tide, shoals of fish pass through this choke-point, and they’re pursued by a pod of bottlenose dolphins, which is what everyone’s here to see.

Bottlenose dolphin, Chanonry Point
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Boon Companion

Back to that name Chanonry, which is the Scots equivalent of English canonry—a place where canons live. The canons involved are those belonging to the thirteenth century diocese of Ross, who seem to have had an establishment in Fortrose, dating from before the building of Fortrose Cathedral.

Back down the road a way, in Beauly, the religious theme continues with Beauly Priory:

Beauly Priory
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

This monastery is the reason a town in Scotland has ended up with a French name—Beauly comes from beau lieu, “beautiful place”. And before the Reformation, the priory housed members of the French Valliscaulian order.

Back at base, I was sitting reading one evening when I glanced up to see a pine marten scampering across the decking outside. So next time we arrived prepared—strawberry jam, sultanas, and a motion-activated camera:

But the poor marten was not without competition:

Who knew that red deer like strawberry jam?

Orkney: Part 2

Map of Scapa Flow area of Orkney
Click to enlarge
Contains OS OpenData © Crown copyright and database right 2018

I finished my previous post about our Orkney trip with a photograph of the salvaged propeller of HMS Hampshire, which sits in the forecourt of the Scapa Flow Museum on Hoy.

The Hampshire wreck actually lies on the seabed some distance from Hoy and Scapa Flow—between Marwick Head and Brough Head, on the Atlantic coast of Mainland Orkney. It sank in 1916 after striking a mine laid by the German submarine U-75, with the loss of 737 men. One of those on board was Field Marshal Earl Kitchener, who was travelling on a diplomatic mission to the Russian port of Arkhangelsk. Kitchener being something of a Big Deal, a tower was erected to his memory in 1926, on the bleak summit of Marwick Head.

Marwick Head, Orkney, Brough Head in distance
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

The promontory in the distance is the Brough of Birsay, a tidal island. (Pronouncing unfamiliar -ough words is always a puzzle—this one is pronounced /brox/, like the Iron Age stone tower, a broch.)

The fact that it’s called the Kitchener Memorial, rather than the Hampshire Memorial, says a lot about the times. The dedication reads:

THIS TOWER WAS RAISED
BY THE PEOPLE OF ORKNEY
IN MEMORY OF
FIELD MARSHAL EARL KITCHENER
OF KHARTOUM
ON THAT CORNER OF HIS COUNTRY,
WHICH HE HAD SERVED SO FAITHFULLY,
NEAREST TO THE PLACE
WHERE HE DIED ON DUTY.
–o–
HE AND HIS STAFF PERISHED ALONG WITH
THE OFFICERS AND NEARLY ALL THE MEN OF
H.M.S. HAMPSHIRE ON 5TH JUNE 1916.

The other 736 men come across as a bit of an afterthought, don’t you think? But in 2016 funds were raised to add the little curved wall visible in front of the tower in the photograph below:

Kitchener Memorial, Marwick Head, Orkney
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Oikofuge

On its inner curve, this memorial wall lists the names of all those who died on the Hampshire, as well as nine more from HM Drifter Laurel Crown, who died when their ship struck another of the mines laid by the U-75.

Apart from Scapa Flow and Vikings, Orkney is also famous for its Neolithic remains—you occasionally drive past a house with a standing stone at the bottom of its garden.

On a strip of moorland between two lochs sits the Ring of Brodgar:

Ring of Brodgar, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

We timed our visit to avoid the regular tour-groups, and had the site more or less to ourselves for twenty minutes, during which time the place was alive with birdsong—curlews, meadow pipits, skylarks:

We kept an eye out for an Orkney vole, but were disappointed.

Nearby are the Stones of Stenness—fewer in number than the Brodgar ring, but substantially larger:

Stones of Stenness, Orkney
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Boon Companion

The stones you can see here are all that remains of what is probably the oldest stone circle in Britain. These are Orcadian icons, and you can see their shapes echoed in everything from the glass restaurant awards on display in our hotel dining room to the Arctic Convoys memorial on Hoy:

Arctic Convoy memorial, Lyness, Hoy
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© 2023, The Oikofuge

And then, of course, there’s Skara Brae, a Neolithic settlement beside the Bay of Skaill that had been hidden under a huge sand dune, until a massive storm in 1850 stripped off the stabilizing grass cover and blew away enough of the sand to expose the buildings beneath. (That vanished dune, by the way, was the original Skara Brae, brae being a Scots word for “hill”. Norse again, I need hardly say.)

Skara Brae and Skaill House, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

Although being in the presence of something older than the Giza pyramids is quite a striking idea, the site itself was weirdly disappointing—having read about it often, and seen it frequently on television, the real thing felt oddly small and anticlimactic. Strangely, the reconstructed house beside the visitor centre seemed more impressive. I feel like I should actually apologize for that.

Interior of reconstructed Skara Brae house, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

We both found ourselves more drawn to the neolithic site at Barnhouse, near the Stones of Stenness. For all that it lacked the three-dimensional, visibly lived-in aspect of Skara Brae, there was something pleasing about its symmetry—and, of course, we had the place to ourselves.

Barnhouse neolithic settlement, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

You’ll perhaps notice a distinct change in the weather, in the photograph above. The Boon Companion and I had been swanning around under pristine blue skies and light winds for several days, and found ourselves frequently congratulated by native Orcadians for “bringing the good weather”. In fact, a guide at Skara Brae laughingly assured us that, “there is no word in Orcadian for a fourth successive day of sunshine”.*

So it all started to go pear-shaped, midweek.

Stormy weather at Deerness, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

One day we drove out to the abandoned gunnery range buildings at Yesnaby, and the wind almost took the car doors off.

Gunnery range buildings, Yesnaby, Orkney
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© 2023, The Oikofuge

Wearing every item of warm clothing we possessed, we skittered along the top of the cliffs, keeping well back from the edge, to pay a visit to Yesnaby Castle sea stack:

Yesnaby Castle sea stack, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

Then we skittered back again, and the doors almost came off the car, again.

The next day, with the wind still howling across the flat fields, we decided it might be a day for indoors pursuits, so we visited Stromness.

Stromness, Orkney
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© 2023, The Oikofuge

The tourist guides say not to take your car into town, because the roads are so narrow. The main street didn’t seem that bad to me, but it does have some extremely steep and narrow lanes opening off it:

The Khyber Pass, Stromness, Orkney
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© 2023, The Oikofuge

We dived out of the wind into the wonderland of Stromness Museum, a marvellous clutter of Orcadian history packed into a confusing sequence of tiny rooms. One section is devoted to Dr John Rae, the Orcadian Arctic explorer who (among other things) gleaned the first useful information about the fate of the lost Franklin Expedition to Arctic Canada (I’ve written quite a lot about that in this post). But Rae had the misfortune to be the honest bearer of bad news—he passed on Inuit testimony that the starving sailors had resorted to cannibalism when in extremis, which did not sit well with Victorian society, and he found himself attacked and defamed by no less a figure than Charles Dickens.

But he is now commemorated by a fine statue at Stromness pier-head:

John Rae statue, Stromness
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

And I have to say I’m much taken with the effigy that marks his tomb in St Magnus Cathedral. Rather than reclining stiffly and symmetrical on a marble slab, looking simultaneously pious and dead, Rae’s effigy is practically an action figure:

John Rae tomb, St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall
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© 2023, The Oikofuge

He’s quite obviously sleeping comfortably in the wild somewhere, his notebook and his rifle ready to hand.

So that was Orkney. All seasons in a single week, but mainly Spring.

Roadside daffodils, Orkney
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Boon Companion

* We took his point, and enjoyed the joke, but now I’m left wondering if a language exists in which there is a word designating a fourth successive day of sunshine.

Orkney: Part 1

Map of Scapa Flow area of Orkney
Click to enlarge
Contains OS OpenData © Crown copyright and database right 2018

The advent of a new scheduled flight between Dundee and the Orkney Islands, off the north coast of Scotland, seemed like too good an opportunity to miss, and the Boon Companion and I booked seats shortly after the flights began in April.

The route goes pretty much straight north from Dundee, and we had a nice day for it:

Glen Clova & Glen Muick from Dundee-Orkney flight
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

Those who know the Angus glens will recognize Glen Clova (coming in from left of frame) and Loch Muick (behind the propeller blade) with snowy Lochnagar beyond.

The Orkney Islands are old Norse territory—part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Norway and Sweden until an event that’s splendidly known as the Impignoration, in 1468. In that year, the impoverished Scandinavian King Christian I had to come up with a dowry for his daughter, Margaret, who was to marry King James III of Scotland. In the absence of hard cash, he effectively pawned the Orkneys—handing them over to Scotland, but with the option of redeeming them at a later date for the sum of 50,000 Rhenish florins. (A further 10,000 florins was due to be paid in cash, but after a year Christian had only been able to cough up 2,000, so the Shetland Islands went into pawn, too, for the remaining 8,000 florins.)

But the long Scandinavian residency has left its mark on the landscape, leaving a legacy of Norse placenames—there are gills and fells and dales and holms here. But I hadn’t previously encountered “quoy” (from Old Norse kví, “enclosed land”), which turns up in many Orcadian placenames.

The Orcadians are proud of their Norse heritage, and that pride is on display as soon as you land at Kirkwall Airport:

"Grimsitir" runes at Kirwall Airport, Orkney
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© 2023, The Oikofuge

Yep, the airport sign is written in Nordic runes (the Younger Futhark, to be precise). It reads ᚴᚱᛁᛘᛋᛁᛏᛁᚱ, which we can transliterate as GRIMSITIR, and translate as “Grim’s homestead”. The modern placename is Grimsetter, and the airport evolved from a wartime airfield, RAF Grimsetter. (Because of the strategic importance of the anchorage at Scapa Flow, Orkney boasted no fewer than four airfields during the Second World War—the other three were at Skeabrae, Hatston, and the unfortunately named Twatt. The Air Force was spared the ignominy of operating out of RAF Twatt, however—the airfield was used by the Fleet Air Arm, who in naval fashion designated it a landlocked ship, and referred to it as HMS Tern. So that all worked out well.)

The drive into Kirkwall in our shiny new hired car was short, and we had time to kill before we could check into our accommodation, so we stopped for a wander around town. This proved to be utterly mobbed with middle-aged-to-elderly couples wearing identical red parkas—evidently, a cruise ship had come in. But we found a quiet location for a stroll, around the Peedie Sea*—a pleasant little lake full of swans and waterfowl. When we visited it was hosting a flotilla of very natty-looking long-tailed ducks. They’re passage migrants in the UK, and were presumably just stopping off for a rest and a feed on their way north to breed in Iceland.

Across the water, we had a view of the Kirkwall skyline, dominated by the twelfth-century bulk of St Magnus Cathedral.

Kirkwall and St Magnus Cathedral seen across the Peedie Sea
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© 2023, The Boon Companion
St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

Our accommodation, when we got there, gave us a nice view of Scapa Flow, one of the largest natural harbours in the world. Once, this would have been full of British warships; now it plays host to the occasional between-jobs oil-rig, as well as tankers arriving at the oil terminal on the island of Flotta.

British Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow, 1916
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Oil rig in Scapa Flow, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

On our first day we headed east and then south, threading our way down the series of causeways that connect the large island of Mainland to the small islands of Lamb Holm and Glimps Holm, and then the somewhat bigger islands of Burray and South Ronaldsay.

During the First World War, the gaps between these islands were partially blocked by deliberately sinking ships in the channels, thereby limiting the number of potential routes in and out of Scapa Flow, and reducing the number of coastal defence installations required to protect access to the anchorage. With the onset of the Second World War, more of these blockships were sunk, and plans were drawn up for the construction of the Churchill Barriers between the islands, completely sealing off these approaches. (The need for such a thorough blockade was demonstrated in 1939, when the German submarine U-47 managed to circumvent the existing blockship in Kirk Sound, between Mainland and Lamb Holm, and enter Scapa Flow undetected, where it torpedoed and sank HMS Royal Oak.)

The barriers were constructed during the course of the Second World War, with much of the work carried out by Italian prisoners of war. While the 1929 Geneva Convention on the treatment of PoWs prohibits their employment on purely military projects, the fact that a roadway was to be built along the top of the barriers magically transformed their construction into a civil engineering project, on which PoW labour could be used. One gets the feeling that the letter, but not the spirit, of the Convention was being adhered to.

As you drive across the Barriers today, you can look out and see the remains of the blockships in shallow water. Here’s the SS Reginald beside Barrier Number Three, looking back towards Glimps Holm, with the barrier itself at left of frame, marked by the big blue bus:

SS Reginald blockship, Churchill Barrier 3, looking towards Glimps Holm
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Boon Companion

Over the decades, Barrier Number Four, between Burray and South Ronaldsay, has gathered an extensive beach along its eastern side, and the associated blockships have all been engulfed in sand. Back in 1990 the superstructure of one blockship could still be seen protruded from the beach:

Blockship at Churchill Barrier Number 4, Orkney Islands, in 1990
Image © Copyright Elliott Simpson, used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Licence

The Italian PoWs left a lovely legacy on Lamb Holm, where they constructed a chapel from two Nissen huts.

Italian Chapel, Lamb Holm, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

The interior is gorgeously decorated with trompe-l’œil painting:

Interior of Italian Chapel, Lamb Holm, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

Farther south, we wandered through the narrow streets of the curiously named town of St Margaret’s Hope:

St Margaret's Hope, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

While I’m sure Saint Margaret of Scotland was a hopeful lady, this is another one of those Norse names— hóp meant “shallow bay”.

Some of the houses on the waterfront seemed to have their own private slipways, one of which had attracted a visitor:

Seal on boat ramp, St Margaret's Hope, Orkney
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Boon Companion

West of St Margaret’s Hope lies Hoxa Head, overlooking the Sound of Hoxa, which is one of the main entrances to Scapa Flow. Unsurprisingly, it was well fortified during the First and Second World Wars, and most of the military buildings are still standing (some just barely), like this observation post:

Battery Observation Post, Hoxa Head, Orkney
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Boon Companion

The next day, we took a ferry to the island of Hoy, which has a completely different character from Mainland Orkney. Instead of flat farmland, Hoy is all rolling moorland:

Main road, Hoy, Orkney, looking towards Ward Hill
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Oikofuge

We headed down to the Atlantic-facing beach at Rackwick, and then walked up the steep path that curves around the shoulder of Moor Fea. (More Norse—fea is an Orcadian version of Norse fjall, “hill”.) From a strategically placed bench, we were able to look back down on the bay:

Rackwick Bay, Hoy, Orkney
Click to enlarge
© 2023, The Boon Companion

It all looks very peaceful, until you consider that Rackwick is rek vík, “wreckage bay”.

We ended our Hoy trip where we started, at the Lyness ferry terminal. Lyness is now no more than a scatter of houses, making it difficult to imagine that it was once a massive naval base, housing 12,000 personnel during the Second World War. (The ferry uses one of the jetties constructed for that base.) The Scapa Flow Museum is just a short walk from the ferry terminal, and will fill up your brain with the military history of the area, if you’re that way inclined.

Scapa Flow Museum, propeller of HMS Hampshire, Hoy, Orkney
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© 2023, The Boon Companion

The propeller is from the wreck of HMS Hampshire, which didn’t sink in Scapa Flow. I’ll write more about that next time, when I deal with our various wanderings around Mainland, the main island of Orkney.


* Peedie is an Orcadian word, meaning “small”. Orcadians use it whenever a mainland Scot would say “wee”, and they like it enough to put it on souvenir T-shirts and mugs. Then again, they also decorate their souvenir T-shirts and mugs with reproductions of the road-signs directing drivers to Twatt. There’s no accounting for taste.

Isobel Wylie Hutchison: Peak Beyond Peak

Cover of Peak Beyond Peak by Isobel Wylie Hutchison

I am quite clear in my own mind that I’d set my face in the right direction, though I don’t pretend to know why I should be destined to visit Greenland any more than Timbuctoo. Maybe I’m not, and I shall be able to visit Timbuctoo another day, for one journey leads naturally to another. One thing I am sure of, I have never regretted any journey I have ever made, and I do not imagine any other traveller ever regrets having travelled. I wish every person in the world, as part of his or her education, could have at least one year of world travel.

Isobel Wyle Hutchison was born in 1889, at Carlowrie Castle in West Lothian, back in the day when that was a private family home rather than a wedding venue—so that wing of the Hutchison family were clearly not short of a bob or two. The fact that she had a trust-fund income allowed her to dodge the conventional domestic fate of young women in those days—she built a career on independent travel. Inspired by a trip to Iceland in 1927, she spent a decade botanizing her way around the Arctic, and documenting her journeys in a succession of books: On Greenland’s Closed Shore (1930), North To The Rime-Ringed Sun (1934) and Stepping Stones From Alaska To Asia (1937)*. She also published a semi-autobiographical novel (Original Companions, 1923) and several volumes of poetry. One of her earliest poetic works, How Joy Was Found (1917) is still available in several knock-off reproduction editions—you can find a scanned version freely available on the Internet Archive.

From an early age she was an enthusiastic walker, and quite soon seems to have decided that she preferred her own company. A lot of her travel-writing involved long-distance walks that she self-deprecatingly described as “strolls”—for her “Stroll To Venice” (which she narrated in a National Geographic article in 1951) she started in Innsbruck and walked across the Dolomites, for example.

Much of her botanizing ended up in Kew Gardens; many of her manuscripts ended up stacked in a box at the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, or on file with the National Library of Scotland. They were rediscovered in 2014 by Hazel Buchan Cameron, who set about transcribing and editing them for publication in Peak Beyond Peak (2022).

Twelve essays are assembled in this collection. Although it is subtitled The Unpublished Scottish Journeys Of Isobel Wylie Hutchison, three of the pieces collected have been previously published in National Geographic. Cameron explains in her preface that in these cases she amalgamated Hutchison’s original text with the edited and revised published version, while “trying to be as true to Isobel’s writing intentions as possible.” The earliest essay is dated 1909; the latest, 1956—so we have glimpses of Hutchison across four-and-a-half decades of her life, from an enthusiastic twenty-year-old clambering over the Corrieyairack Pass, to a knowledgeable woman in her late sixties, taking a National Geographic photographer on a motor tour of Scotland’s “literary shrines”.

Having descended the Corrieyairack fairly recently, I was interested to read Hutchison’s account of the old Wade Road zigzags, “disused since 1830” and “nearly washed away by the mountain torrents”. The thing is now a Scheduled Monument, and has been restored to its former glory. And her tour of literary shrines is a positive blizzard of information about Scotland’s writers. I was particularly struck by her story of Scott’s View over the Eildon Hills.

Driving out from his beloved home of Abbotsford, Sir Walter was wont to halt his carriage on the high road at Bemersyde and feast his eyes upon the hills he loved. On the day of his funeral one of the horses drawing the hearse stopped here of its own accord, bringing the mile-long cortege to a momentary halt.

The time between these two essays spans two world wars, and Hutchison gives us glimpses of life on the islands of Scotland during those times. During the First World War she is in the Outer Hebrides, and describes how the Atlantic beaches received a constant burden of the wreckage of ships and the bodies of seamen—and the occasional drifting mine, striking the rocks and exploding with “deep thundering reverberations” over the quiet landscape. She visits Orkney and Shetland at the end of the Second World War, and recounts the story of the German bomber pilot who made a low pass over Lerwick, waving the citizens back from the harbour area before returning to drop his bombs on the ships, and of the Norwegians who arrived on the islands in small boats, having escaped German-occupied Norway. And her later “Stroll to London” (from Edinburgh!), in 1948, is along roads largely untroubled by motor traffic, because petrol is still strictly rationed.

It’s also interesting to see Hutchison experimenting with different narrative styles. Her later works are often pell-mell data dumps, because a lifetime of reading has filled her head with so much information about the places she visits. But in her early work “A Pilgrimage to Ardchattan” (1926), she plays with a narrative style evocative of traditional Gaelic storytelling.

The day was hot and very glorious, fragrant with the honeysuckle that lay in great swathes upon the hedges, and the first thing I came to was a Gaelic well called Tober Donachadh. There was an iron cup hanging from a chain with a worn inscription in the Gaelic which I could not read, but I made no doubt that it told the tale of the finding of the well, and it is this: Thirty-five years ago there was a water-famine in the country and a man of Clan Donachadh found a spring that never ran dry and he sold the water to the people, and it’s the rich man I’m thinking he would be, for the spring never ran dry in all the time of drouth, and all the time he sold its water. But I can’t help thinking it’s the greedy man he was all the same.

And then there’s her tongue-in-cheek and wonderfully evocative account of “meeting a fairy” while sitting in the “haunted peace” of a sunny evening on the Isle of Skye in 1925:

Suddenly I heard a pattering noise. Two rams came running from behind the cliff at my back chased by a barelegged little girl of four or five in a faded blue-green frock. She had a celandine in her hand and came running straight towards me holding it out without the least fear or shyness. Climbing up on the seat beside me she handed it to me.
“Is this for me?” I asked. But she only smiled and nodded without speaking. It was then that I began to suspect that I had to do with a fairy. I put several questions to her, to all of which she smiled and nodded and whispered “Ay.”
“Are you a fairy?” I asked at last.
“Ay,” with a radiant smile.

I could go on quoting Hutchison at you for some time yet, but now is probably the time to stop. Better just to leave you with that image of the unselfconscious little girl and the serenely enchanted Isobel, sharing a bench in the cool sunlight of a long-ago Hebridean evening.


* This last volume was republished as The Aleutian Islands: America’s Back Door in 1942—presumably in response to the Japanese invasion of these islands at the start of the War in the Pacific.

Irene & Dorothy Topping: Legacy

Cover of Legacy by Irene & Dorothy Topping

The feeling of the entire group was that, we might be stranded in the middle of nowhere, but it certainly wasn’t the end of the world, after all, most of us had endured worse hardships during the war and overcome. So, we made up our minds to make the most of our un-scheduled break from travelling, and just enjoy ourselves. I think most of us were relieved to have a couple of days off from bouncing around in the trucks, and after dinner we held an impromptu dance and sing song to get us all into the holiday mood. Having set the tone for our stay in Tamanrasset, our time there turned out to be quite eventful.

Syd Topping was demobilized from the army in 1946, and returned home to Blackpool to find that jobs and housing were in short supply, and food and petrol were still rationed. So he and his wife Dorothy decided to drive to Durban, South Africa, with a group of like-minded individuals that had been gathered together by a friend of the family. And of course their three-year-old daughter Irene would need to come along.

The group bought a pair of four-wheel-drive army surplus trucks, which Dorothy describes as “‘Chev’ Radio trucks”. From photographs in the book, the good people over at Britmodeller have identified these as being the Canadian Military PatternTruck 30-cwt Wireless”, manufactured by Chevrolet, which performed faultlessly throughout the 9000-mile journey. They also bought a caravan, to be towed by one of the trucks—an optimistic purchase, given they were planning to cross the Sahara Desert, and it would soon end up being shipped back to England from Algiers.

Dorothy kept a diary of her journey, assembled a photo album, and sent frequent letters home. Dorothy’s mother retained all the letters, and collected relevant newspaper clippings. Eventually, this trove of material was discovered by the grown-up Irene, who felt that the story of her mother’s epic journey needed to be properly told. And finally, after a bit more delay, Irene assembled her mother’s words into Legacy: Overland Trekkers—Blackpool To Durban 1947. This was published in South Africa in 2005, but I haven’t been able to track down any details of that edition, so my link takes you to the 2012 paperback edition, independently published through Amazon’s CreateSpace.

Now, frequent readers of this blog will be only too aware of my tendency to moan about proof-reading and punctuation. And this one certainly contains some eccentric bits of punctuation, as well as Inappropriate Capital letters and “surprising” quotation marks, but it gets a free pass—it’s the diary and reminiscences of a straightforward and stalwart lady from Blackpool having an extraordinary adventure, and the awareness that it has been set down just as she wrote it very much enhances the narrative.

Their journey took our travellers down the length of England, then across France and the Mediterranean to North Africa, landing at Algiers. From there, they crossed the Atlas Mountains into the Sahara, where they followed what is now the Trans-Sahara Highway, which at the time was little more than a series of white-painted cairns marking the way.

Arriving in remote Tamanrasset, they discovered that a previous party had bought up all the available petrol, and so they had to hang about for several days awaiting the next shipment. That’s the occasion for my quotation at the head of this post, which illustrates the spirit in which the entire journey was undertaken.

After arriving at Kano in British Nigeria, they turned left, crossed the neck of French Cameroon just south of Lake Chad, and headed across French Equatorial Africa into the Belgian Congo. From Stanleyville (now Kisangani) on the Congo River, their plan was to head due south to Livingstone on the Zambezi. But a rather mysterious event, involving the accidental discharge of a firearm, meant that they were obliged by the Belgian police to leave the country by the shortest route—east into Uganda. So a long detour ensued, taking in the Ituri Forest, the Mountains of The Moon, Lake Victoria and the Rift Valley before sweeping back into Northern Rhodesia to eventually reach Livingstone. Along the way, the party had gradually begun to shed members—some had had jobs waiting for them in East Africa, and some were offered posts. One was pregnant. Things finally came to a head in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, when most of the remaining few announced that they wanted to take up jobs, or stop and seek employment, at that point. Only the Toppings wanted to go on to Durban. So they completed the last stage of their epic journey by train, leaving the two trucks to be sold off for funds by those staying behind. They got off the train 97 days after their departure from a very snowy Blackpool:

So here we were, the Topping Trio, all alone on the Durban station late at night, undercapitalised according to the powers that be, yet enriched with wonderful memories, with about £30 in cash between us, and ready to start our new lives together.
On the whole I think we were reasonably successful, but that’s an even longer story.

I’ve put together a little map of their full journey through Colonial Africa, for reference:

Map of 1947 trans-Africa route travelled by Dorothy Topping
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Source of base map. Edited from original by Milenioscuro and used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence

Topping is not big into describing the scenery, but chattily enthusiastic about the minutiae of her experiences—her first encounter with a bidet, in the bathroom of a hotel in the Sahara, which she not unreasonably decides must be intended for washing dusty feet; the mysteriously textured “pears” offered for lunch, which turn out to be avocado pears; the generous hospitality of missionaries and expat Brits encountered along the way; perilous river crossings on rickety ferries … and geckos falling into the soup.

Young Irene romps through the whole journey undaunted—there’s just one tantrum, and a couple of episodes in which she seems a bit under the weather, but on each occasion is sorted out by a single injection administered by a local doctor. (I’d love to know what they used—I could do with some of that.)

And there are interesting glimpses of the post-war world of 1947—parking the trucks overnight on “flattened bomb sites” in England and France; the residual hostility of Vichy French sympathizers to the arrival of English travellers; Topping’s astonishment at the ready availability of food and clothing in Africa, compared to the strict rationing still in force in the UK; and the lavish lifestyle of the expat Brits encountered in their colonial mansions along the way.

And then there’s this, as new recruits are arriving to join the group in Blackpool:

I particularly remember one instance when my sister May and I, were watching Harry Burnett re-tiling the fireplace in the living room, and the doorbell rang. I went to answer the door, and stood there was a young man of about 20, unshaven, peering through “bottle bottom” thick lenses, set in horn-rimmed frames, and wearing an oversized army great coat down to his ankles. I asked if I could help him, he replied, “I, I, I, wa, wa, wa, want to, to ap, ap, apply” (I of course finished the sentence for him by saying) “to come on the trek with us.” He nodded.

The young man was Desmond Bagley, who would go on to become a famous thriller writer—I’ve reviewed some of his work here. And lest you get the impression that Topping was merely mocking Bagley’s stutter, she goes on to explain that Harry Burnett (the fireplace re-tiler who so mysteriously opened this passage) also developed a stutter when excited, and had initially taken against Bagley because he thought Bagley was imitating him. Once it was explained to him that Bagley was a fellow sufferer, Harry judiciously advised:

Dorothy, if you take the lad on, make damn sure you don’t put us on guard duty together in the jungle. You’d all be bloody eaten before we could let you know lions were coming

If all this makes you want to hear more from Dot Topping (and why wouldn’t it?), there’s a very reasonably priced Kindle edition available, in addition to the CreateSpace paperback. I can’t vouch for how well the e-book will reproduce some of the photographs and newspaper clippings that enhance the print edition, though.

Côte d’Azur (2022)

Plage des Fourmis and Villa Kerylos, Cap Ferrat
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

The Boon Companion and I finally got around to a bit of international travel recently. Airports and aeroplanes proved to be just as ghastly as we remembered them, but it was nice to get away from a very damp Scotland for a blink of October sun in the south of France. The Côte d’Azur has featured before on this blog, back in 2016 and 2018, but I thought I’d wheel it out again because of its post-Covid landmark status, and because I can probably find a few new things to say about it.

Our hotel (seen on the sky-line in the photo below) sits at the narrow neck of Cap Ferrat, roughly in the middle of a triangle formed by the towns of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, Beaulieu-Sur-Mer and Villefranche-Sur-Mer. All were within easy walking distance, so we idled away our days getting up late, eating breakfast on the terrace, ambling into some town or other for lunch, and then drifting back for a snooze before dinner.

Plage des Fourmis, Cap Ferrat
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

Right outside the hotel is the beginning of the Promenade Maurice-Rouvier, which weaves its way past some stonking great villas and some rather dilapidated little one-boat harbours.

Promenade Maurice-Rouvier, Cap Ferrat
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

The jetties are always littered with a (to me) very odd-looking organic detritus, completely unlike the bladderwrack that characterizes the strandline back home in Scotland.

Posidonia on old harbour, Cap Ferrat
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This turns out to be the leaves of Neptune Grass, Posidonia oceanica, which is entirely confined to the Mediterranean. It can form up into large drifts, locally called banquettes, which are reputedly why the inlet to the east of Cap Ferrat is called the Plage des Fourmis (“Beach of Ants”)—the banquettes occasionally gather into well-defined mounds, like ant-hills. (Or so the story goes, though it seems odd that inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast would be unable to tell their anthills from their banquettes.) Posidonia leaves also occasionally roll up into spherical objects commonly known as “Neptune Balls”, which we recently learned are good at gathering up plastic debris. (Scientifically, they’re called aegagropilae, which is a horrendous Greek/Latin mash-up meaning “hair-ball”.)

The three towns all have their own character. Saint-Jean has a busy marina crammed with yachts and yachty people, and is probably my least favourite, despite having been a filming location for that British televisual classic, The Persuaders! (1971).

Beaulieu has a Belle Époque thing going on in its architecture, harking back to its time as a winter watering-hole for the wealthy, during the nineteenth century.

Belle Époque architecture, Beaulieu-sur-Mer
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© The Boon Companion, 2022
Beaulieu-sur-Mer
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

And below is the pretty little Chapel of Sancta Maria de Olivo, which has a name that is neither Italian (Santa Maria dell’Olivo) or French (Sainte-Marie de l’Olivier), but somewhere in between—I suspect it’s the name of Our Lady of the Olive Tree as rendered in Provençal, though it doesn’t quite conform to the vocabulary in my Petit Dictionnaire Provençal-Français.

Chapel of Sancta Maria de Olivo, Beaulieu-sur-Mer
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

On our way back from Beaulieu, we ran into a notably elegant trio, who turned out to be on their way to a seriously out-of-season Christmas party taking place on the Plage des Fourmis right next to our hotel. (Note the antlers on the party-goers, and the Christmas tree among the tables, below.)

Partygoers in Beaulieu-sur-Mer
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© The Boon Companion, 2022
Christmas party (in October) on Plage des Fourmis, Cap Ferrat
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

So our afternoon peace was somewhat marred by a barrage of French techno remixes of 1980s pop classics for the next few hours. Odd.

Meanwhile, on the western side of Cap Ferrat, the long arc of the Plage des Marinières was still cluttered with late-season sunbathers.

Plage des Marinières, Villefranche-sur-Mer
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

We poked around in the narrow mediaeval streets of the old town, where the Provençal language is preserved on some of the street signs, and then we headed for an open-air restaurant that overlooks the chapel of Saint-Pierre des Pecheurs, decorated by Jean Cocteau during the 1950s.

Narrow street, Villefranche-sur-Mer
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© The Boon Companion, 2022
Provençal street sign, Villefranche-sur-Mer
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Jean Cocteau façade on chapel, Villefrance-sur-Mer
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

This sits on the Avenue Sadi Carnot, which I like to think is named after Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, who pretty much invented the science of thermodynamics; but I fear that it actually honours his nephew, Marie François Sadi Carnot, who has the comparatively trivial distinction of having been President of France for a while.

If you’re ever in the vicinity, turn your back on Cocteau’s chapel and looking upwards. You can pick out some rather nice trompe l’œil paintwork on the buildings opposite—some additional shuttered windows on the right, and a fake corner just below the roof-line on the left, which creates an appearance of symmetry where none actually exists.

Trompe l'œil building façades, Villefranche-sur-Mer
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

And we made our usual trip to the gardens of the Villa Ephrussi, where fountains perform choreographed evolutions to classical music every 20 minutes.

Gardens of Villa Ephrussi, Cap Ferrat
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© The Boon Companion, 2022
Rainbow in fountains at Villa Ephrussi, Cap Ferrat
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

This time around, there seemed to be something wrong with their speaker system, but you can get some idea of the effect from this short, silent video shot by the Boon Companion.

Photographing the fountains at Villa Ephrussi, Cap Ferrat
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The carp in the ponds seem to be used to visitors—simply by breaking their sky-line you can receive a deputation of three or four of them, probably hopeful for food.

Carp in fountains at Villa Ephrussi, Cap Ferrat
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We usually round off our visit with a bite of lunch in the Villa’s ornate restaurant, where the service has always been amusingly snooty—but this time, as we waited for the serving staff to even acknowledge our existence, it became evident that the snootiness had overshot into just plain annoying, so we wandered off back into Beaulieu and ate a baguette in the sunshine instead.

And that was that—a brief, but pleasant, return to foreign travel.

Hotel Royal Riviera, Cap Ferrat
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© The Boon Companion, 2022

Durness

Air travel still being something of a tedious lottery in the UK at present, the Boon Companion and I have not entered an airport since our return from Morocco during the very early days of Covid. We’ve contented ourselves by knocking around Scotland, and I haven’t posted much about those travels, since they’ve either been very short visits, or longer stays in places I’ve written about before.

This time, we made a return visit to the north coast of Scotland, which I’ve previously written about, but we stayed for a week in a place that we shot through very quickly during our last visit—Durness.

Durness sits at a corner in the road, where the main drag from John o’ Groats, which has faithfully followed the north coast westwards up to that point, abruptly turns southwest, cutting across the northwest corner of mainland Scotland to reach the west coast near Kinlochbervie. It’s one of those Scottish villages that seems to be smeared thinly over a disproportionately large area—coming in from the east you encounter the “Welcome to Durness” sign in the middle of open moorland sparsely dotted with houses.

You drive for about a mile before running into the little patch of mixed vehicular/pedestrian madness around the start of the short path to the Smoo Cave. Then it all thins out again for another mile before you arrive at a petrol station, hotel/bunkhouse, public toilet, and the inevitable Spar shop. And then you’re pretty quickly out the far end.

We got to the north coast by driving the long, scenic single-track road that runs from Lairg to Tongue, passing Ben Klibreck and Ben Loyal—I’ve previously written about the ascent of both these hills. We stopped on a corner of the road above Tongue to admire the view back towards the cliffs of Ben Loyal’s Sgor Chaonasaid, with the turret of An Caisteal peeping over its shoulder:

Ben Loyal from Braetongue
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

Our accommodation featured a long picture window and patio overlooking Loch Eriboll.

Hill Cottage, Croft 103, Loch Eriboll
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© 2022, The Boon Companion
Loch Eriboll from Hill Cottage
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

It really did feature all mod cons, including an outdoor bathing option:

Rainbow over Loch Eriboll
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

And in a storeroom I discovered the back-up hairdryer, which enjoyed the most tin-eared product name I’ve seen in a while:

Apollo 1 hairdryer
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What can we call our new hairdryer? I know, let’s name it after the space capsule that suffered a catastrophic electrical fire, killing three astronauts!

We’d somewhat mistimed our visit—we’d waited until the end of the Scottish school holidays, but soon discovered that the English and German schools were still out, leading to a bit of camper-van clutter on the narrow roads and in the small car-parks. Many of these were being driven by frazzled-looking people with white knuckles who seemed absolutely amazed to discover that driving the North Coast 500 involved travelling many miles on single-track roads, and many of whom had apparently bought vehicles without a reverse gear—this being the only explanation I can think of for their inability to roll backwards a few yards to allow oncoming traffic to ease past at the nearest passing place.

So we skipped the walk to Smoo Cave, the path to which was mobbed every time we passed; and we also never seemed to get around to the John Lennon Memorial Garden. Instead, we wandered around the paths of the Durness Walking Network, which seemed to be largely deserted apart from local dog-walkers, and visited the many lovely beaches in the area, which were similar quiet—apart from what seems to be commonly known as Ceannabeinne Beach*, which sports a cluttered car-park and what Peter Irvine, in his Scotland The Best guide of 2019, eloquently calls “that fecking unsightly zipline”.

Rispond zipline, Durness
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

Just along the road, the beach at Sango Bay was a lot quieter, despite being right next to Durness, perhaps because it’s not readily visible from the main road:

Sango Bay, Durness
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

And then there are the mile-long sands at Balnakeil Bay:

Banakeil Bay, Durness
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

There’s a pleasant walk along the peninsula here, overlooking the beach, which passed through some beautiful wild flower meadows—I think the purple flowers below may be devil’s-bit scabious:

Scabious meadow, Balnakeil Bay, Durness
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

I know that sounds like a skin disease, but the various scabious plants were so-called because they were supposed to be good for treating skin diseases. (The “devil’s bit” refers to the appearance of the root, which reportedly comes to an apparently chopped-off end, as if something underground had bitten it.)

At the head of Balnakeil Bay sits the improbable Durness Golf Club, as well as a fine old ruined church and graveyard which the Boon Companion has rendered marvellously gothic:

Balnakeil church, Durness
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

And just up the road is the Balnakeil Craft Village—originally built during the Cold War as some sort of Distant Early Warning installation, then abandoned by the military and taken over by a growing community of artists, and now perhaps falling into a bit of a decline as the founding population ages.

It’s easy to discern the military origins of the barracks-like buildings, many of which have characteristic towers containing water storage tanks:

Balnakeil Craft Village 1
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

But the style of decoration is anything but military:

Balnakeil Craft Village 2
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

There’s an absolutely fascinating article about the history of the community here. Please go and read it. I’ll wait here.

There’s another lovely beach at Oldshoremore, near Kinlochbervie, but it was hosting what seemed to be some sort of beach sports day for a school outing when we were there, so I’ll show you the view inland from the Kinlochbervie road instead:

Loch Inchard from Badcall, near Kinlochbervie
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

The water is Loch Inchard, and the hills on the skyline are, from left to right, Foinaven, Arkle and Ben Stack. (I’ve written about climbing Ben Stack previously.) The photograph was taken from the tiny settlement of Badcall, a name that amuses much more than is strictly reasonable.

At a time when many parts of the UK were stricken by the worst drought in decades, it was good to see that good old Scottish weather was managing to keep the local reservoirs full. Here’s the spillway of the dam at Loch Meadaidh, in the moorland above Durness, on a gloomily overcast day:

Spillway of Loch Meadaidh dam, Durness
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

Back at base, the endlessly changing light and weather meant that we had a new view every few minutes. Here are two views of Ben Hope seen across Loch Eriboll, for example:

Ben Hope at sunset across Loch Eriboll
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© 2022, The Boon Companion
Ben Hope under orographic cloud across Loch Eriboll
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

Wildlife encounters were largely confined to the binoculars. We had a little pod of dolphins go by as we stood on the cliff at Aodann Mhor. And a few sporadic whoops from the loch sent me out in front of the house to discover what looked at first to be an improbable assembly of two adult and four juvenile divers, but which (at the limit of my binoculars) I eventually decided were early-arriving Great Northern Divers, two in their summer breeding plumage and four non-breeding—my reference books tell me that they start to pitch up to overwinter around the Scottish coast in mid-August. The following day, I could see only three. Then I never saw them again. Presumably Eriboll was merely a stopping-off point on their way farther south.

So the only wildlife photograph I can offer you is this one, taken at the edge of our patio:

Northern Oak Eggar caterpillar
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(I was going to accompany the photograph with a laboured pun about wildlife being “thin, on the ground”, but I decided against it.)

Anyway, this valiant little fellow, an impressive 7 or 8 centimetres long, is (I believe) the second-year caterpillar of a northern Oak Eggar moth.

So, that was that. By way of variety we returned south down the “Hope Road”—a narrow and overgrown ribbon of tarmac, thirty kilometres in length, that is supposedly so-named because it runs between Loch Hope and Ben Hope, but everyone knows the name is actually because you’d better just hope you don’t meet anything coming in the opposite direction. Here’s a typical section at the north end:

Farther south, the sight-lines get a little longer and there are some more formal passing places, but it’s still an interesting drive. I was keen to revisit the Hope Road because I wanted to visit the Dun Dornaigil broch. (On my previous visit to the area, I’d been unable to persuade my hillwalking buddies to stop off on our way to climb Ben Hope.)

Dun Dornaigil broch
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

From the broch, we took one last look northwards toward Ben Hope, and then started the long drive home.

Ben Hope from Dun Dornaigil
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© 2022, The Boon Companion

* Ceannabeinne is actually the name of a nearby hill. The Ordnance Survey calls the beach itself Tràigh Allt Chàilgeag.

Kylerhea, Skye

Descent to Kylerhea, Skye
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Descent to Kylerhea, © 2021, The Boon Companion

With Covid lockdown lifted (at least for now) but international travel still looking like a Very Bad Idea for the rest of the year, the Boon Companion and I are back to travelling around Scotland. Our most recent trip was to Kylerhea, at the eastern end of the Isle of Skye.

It’s not a particularly easy place to get to. From the rest of Skye, it’s reached by a scenic, tortuous, single-track road, the last section of which you can see in the image above.

From the mainland, in summer, it can be reached from the palindromic village of Glenelg, via the little six-car ferry that plies back and forth across the Kyle Rhea narrows. The tide rips through this narrow strait at a rate of knots, such that the ferry occasionally has to travel almost sideways between its two piers.

Kylerhea ferry
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Kylerhea ferry, © 2021, The Boon Companion

But Glenelg is connected to the rest of Scotland by another scenic, tortuous, single-track road.

Road to Glenelg
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Road to Glenelg, © 2021, The Boon Companion

So it’s an interesting place to get to. But once there, we were comfortably installed in a self-catering “cottage” with a fine view over the narrows to the mainland.

Kyn, Kylerhea
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Kyn, Kylerhea, © 2021, The Boon Companion
Interior of Kyn, Kylerhea
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Interior of Kyn, Kylerhea, © 2021, The Boon Companion

The weather was … well … Skye in May. So a bit of mixed bag, but we had a period of sunshine every day, as you’ll glean from the photographs.

We did our usual thing of driving somewhere and then spending a few hours walking through the scenery, but we did also need to keep pulling over to admire the views along the way, too.

Head of Loch Duich from Ratagan pass
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Head of Loch Duich from Ratagan pass, © 2021, The Boon Companion
Blabheinn from Torrin
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Blabheinn from Torrin, © 2021, The Boon Companion
Beinn na Chaillich from Loch Cill Chriosd, Skye
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Beinn na Chaillich from Loch Cill Chriosd, © 2021, The Boon Companion

From the little village of Plockton we walked along the coast through an honest-to-god rhododendron forest, to the baronial pile of Duncraig Castle, which, like Dunrobin Castle, has its own little railway station, complete with an octagonal wooden waiting room (first-class only, I imagine).

Plockton
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Plockton, © 2021, The Boon Companion
Rhododendron forest, Plockton
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Rhodondendron forest, Plockton, © 2021, The Boon Companion
Duncraig Castle, Plockton
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Duncraig Castle, © 2021, The Boon Companion
Duncraig railway station
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Duncraig railway station, © 2021, The Boon Companion

On another day we wended our way past the Talisker Distillery to reach the lovely little Talisker Bay.

Track to Talisker Bay, Skye
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Track to Talisker Bay, © 2021, The Boon Companion

The sand at Talisker is a slightly surreal mix of volcanic black and cockleshell white, which sorts itself continuously into new patterns as the tide ebbs and flows.

Talisker Bay, Skye
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Talisker Bay, © 2021, The Boon Companion

And we drove past the striking war memorial at Glenelg to reach the brochs of Gleannbeag.

War Memorial, Glenelg
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War Memorial, Glenelg, © 2021, The Boon Companion
Dun Telve Broch, Glenelg
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Dun Telve Broch, Glenelg, © 2021, The Boon Companion
Dun Troddan Broch, Glenelg
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Dun Troddan Broch, Glenelg, © 2021, The Boon Companion

I’ve written about Scottish brochs before, when I made my Three Brochs Tour during lockdown, but now I can give you an impression of what the original structures must have looked like. The view of Dun Troddan, above, shows the complex structure of the walls, which contained internal stairs and what seems to have been a passive ventilation system so that rainwater which penetrated the outer drystone wall did not make the interior space damp.

On the wildlife front, we had a few distant deer, a white-tailed eagle above the Talisker road, and this little fellow, who clonked off the picture window one evening:

Willow Warbler or Chiffchaff?
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© 2021, The Boon Companion

It might be a Willow Warbler, it might be a Chiffchaff. Their song is reportedly the best way to tell them apart, but it was understandably not in the mood for singing. But after a while it had a little experimental hop around (straightening those alarmingly bent toes), gave me a reproachful look, and flew off.

So. Our first trip of 2021, after a lockdown cancellation earlier in the year. There are more planned—we’ll see how that turns out.

Rainbow at sunset, Kylerhea
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Rainbow at sunset, Kylerhea, © 2021, The Oikofuge

Ullapool

Ullapool
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© 2020, The Boon Companion

With foreign travel currently falling into the “More Trouble Than It’s Worth” category, The Boon Companion and I have been using the brief periods between travel bans to enjoy what are nowadays called staycations, but when we were growing up were called “proper holidays”—that is, leaving home and staying in another part of the country for a few days.

Ullapool was the venue for the first “proper holiday” I can remember—a week in a caravan at Rhue Point*, enlivened by the fact that my father’s car blew a cylinder-head gasket on the way north, and it took the entire duration of the holiday for a replacement part to arrive. And it rained every day. I contentedly read through a vast stockpile of espionage thrillers, blissfully assuming that this was what a “proper holiday” involved, while my parents went quietly stir-crazy.

No caravan, this time. We stayed in a spacious self-catering place above the town, and largely avoided the rain despite the lateness of the season.

Curved Stone House, Ullapool
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© 2020, The Boon Companion

From Ullapool, we made short drives north, south or west and then got out of the car, wandered around, and looked at stuff. Very much the way a “proper holiday” was supposed to be, back in the day.

To the north is the mad landscape of Coigach and Assynt. We made a little circuit of the Coigach peninsula, lurching frequently off the single-track road at random flat bits as each new photographic opportunity arose.

Stac Pollaidh and Loch Lurgainn
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Stac Pollaidh and Loch Lurgainn, © 2020, The Boon Companion
Summer Isles from Altandhu
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The Summer Isles from Altandhu, © 2020, The Boon Companion

And we wandered around the path network on Knockan Crag, which is full of interpretive signboards explaining the geology, interesting geology-themed sculpture, and really jaw-dropping views of the surrounding mountains.

Stone sphere, Knockan Crag
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Stone sphere, Knockan Crag, © 2020, The Boon Companion
Cul Beag and Stac Pollaidh from Knockan Crag
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Cul Beag and Stac Pollaidh from Knockan Crag, © 2020, The Boon Companion
Coigach panorama from Knockan Crags
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Coigach panorama from Knockan Crag, © 2020, The Oikofuge

South lies Leal Forest and the Corrieshalloch Gorge. Leal is a “forest garden”, deliberately planted in groves of native and foreign trees during the nineteenth century, so there’s plenty of mature timber to gawp at. Corrieshalloch is a surprisingly spectacular slot, carved by the Abhainn Droma, hidden away right next to the A835. In the past, its presence was heralded by busloads of tourists wandering obliviously back and forth across the trunk road from a conveniently placed lay-by, but that access has now been shut down, and a proper car park constructed on the opposite side of the gorge, off the A832, which doesn’t involve death-defying mass road crossings.

Red cedars, Lael Forest Garden
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Red cedars, Lael Forest Garden, © 2020, The Boon Companion
Poplars, Lael Forest Garden
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Poplars, Lael Forest Garden, © 2020, The Boon Companion
Old wall, Lael Forest Garden, Ullapool
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© 2020, The Boon Companion
Falls of Measach, Corrieshalloch Gorge
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Falls of Measach, Corrieshalloch Gorge (note footbridge for scale), © 2020, The Boon Companion

West took us to the beaches of (successively) Gruinard Bay, Loch Ewe and the tautologous Loch Gairloch. I can never get these three inlets straight in my head, in part because each of them contains its own right-of-centre island—Gruinard Island, Isle of Ewe and Longa Island. The first-named is the notorious site of a British bio-weapon test in 1942, which left it uninhabitable for fifty years. The old warning signs along its beaches used to be easily discernible with binoculars from the mainland. Since the alleged decontamination of the site, they seem to have been removed—but I saw one behind the bar of a local hotel a few years, which was disconcerting.

Gruinard Bay
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Gruinard Bay, © 2020, The Boon Companion
Torridon and Flowerdale hills across Loch Ewe
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Torridon and Flowerdale hills across Loch Ewe, © 2020, The Boon Companion

On the wildlife front, we were regularly visited by a couple of young red deer, one of whom I managed to catch teetering across our patio at dead of night, investigating (and then rejecting) some sliced apple I’d left out as bait. (Calum the Stag at Torridon is very partial to a bit of sliced apple.)

Red deer calf, Ullapool
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© 2020, The Boon Companion
Red deer calf by night, Ullapool
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And that was that. Home just in time for another travel ban. Oh well.


* A bilingual tautology, Rhue being derived from Gaelic rubha, “promontory”.