The Road to Restoration

The Scotsman, Aug 2022

To reach the shores of Wolf Island, off the western edge of the isle of Mull, one must first negotiate the Sound of Ulva: a narrow, rock-and-islet-strewn strait, linking the sea lochs of na Keal and Tuath. To do this, would-be passengers summon the ferry by turning a hand-painted red wooden sign, located high on the pier – and waiting. The craft, when it arrives, is perhaps the smallest ferry, making the briefest Atlantic crossing in all of Scotland. And if there’s a better way to spend six pounds, I’ve yet to find it.

Of course, despite the fact that Wolf Island is incalculably cooler, few have called the place by its Viking name for a thousand years. Today it’s known as Ulva, a corruption of the Norse. A remote, compact, and heartstoppingly beautiful island, 20 winding miles and 40 waterborne seconds from Tobermory.

From the head of the slipway, the Boathouse restaurant commands spectacular views of the water. Promising fine local seafood, home baking, and, as my travel companion is excited to point out, the tantalising prospect of ‘A wee coffee’, it alone looks worth the trip. But we’ll be back to sample their fare in a few hours. First, with the sun glittering off the loch, and the breeze, with luck, whipping away the midges, we’ve an island to explore.

Of the several well marked routes, we choose the Ormaig and Kilvekewen walk. Eight miles, all told, or about a four-hour round trip. Making for the southern coast, the path first coils past the old boathouse, then Sheila’s cottage, a restored thatch and stone croft house. We pass a little industry just back from the water’s edge. Amphibious all-terrain vehicles and site huts, evidence of the housing renovation programme. Just one of the ways the community – which bought the island in 2018 – is trying to bring people, and with them social and economic security, back to the island. As we head deeper inland from the coast, a hush descends. A heavy silence broken only by the trickling of the burn, and the sibilant whisper of a waterfall.

It still strikes me as strange, and rather wonderful, stumbling upon these pockets of mature native woodland in the Hebrides, particularly broadleaf trees. The low, exposed islands of nearby Coll, Tiree, Rùm, and Eigg – places I love dearly – have spectacular beaches, but next to no trees. Here there are venerable old oaks, laburnum, cherry, sycamore and walnut. Even the occasional elm defying the odds. Though much of the island is exposed moorland, bracken and machair, these magical green enclaves lend the place an ancient, fairytale atmosphere. As if at any moment a malevolent kelpie might peer out from behind a moss-covered boulder.

Out in the open it’s warm, thirsty work. The track continues to climb as the trees fall away. In places it’s boggy and treacherous. Once, 600 people made their homes here. 16 villages spread out over 12 rocky kilometres, mostly kelp farmers. Decimated by famine, and the ravages of the clearances, by the beginning of the twentieth century their numbers had dwindled drastically. Today the population stands at just 11. After an hour or so of rough going, during which we are entirely alone, the coast appears below us. The small isles of Little Colonsay, Staffa, and Inch Kenneth rising like the backs of great emerald monsters. In the distance, the outstretched arm of southern Mull, Iona, and beyond that – if one could see so far – clear water to Malin Head: the uppermost tip of Ireland.

Three hours later, footsore and famished, back at the Boathouse, it’s time for lunch. We find a wooden table perched on its own, on a little grassy rise. With the island to our backs, it looks out over Loch na Keal and the mountains beyond. Two yachts ease their way up the channel. It’s too hot for coffee, so instead we (by which I mean I) partake of two ice cold beers, in quick, glorious succession.

Mark Elliot and Brendan Tyreman took over the restaurant’s lease a little over a year ago, relocating to the island from Edinburgh and fulfilling a rural dream that many might envy, but few would so impressively embrace. Their menu is short and flexible, responsive to the availability of the freshest produce, and all the better for it. Locally sourced seafood, Mull cheeses, homemade seaweed chutney and slowly fermented home baked bread. Seasonal ingredients, imaginatively prepared. It’s refreshing, frankly, with views like these – and a literally captive audience – to find such obvious care on the plate. We opted for the Tobermory smoked trout, with capers, red onion and mayonnaise, and creel caught Ulva crab, served with salad and homemade pickles. The trout is subtle, smoky, luxuriant (and plentiful), pairing well with the punchy citrus tang of the capers, and the crisp sweet onions; the potted crab, smothered onto thick, soft bread, is rich and mouthwateringly buttery. In fact, I’d say the food, like the view, is restorative.

Ferries to Ulva run Mon-Fri, 9-5:30 + Sundays in June, July, Aug. No ferries on Saturdays. The Boathouse is open 9-5 Mon-Fri + 11-5 on Sundays. Closed Saturdays.

Charging: E-Biking the Isle of Mull

The Scotsman, Aug 2021

The road from Calgary - a hamlet so comely it inspired Colonel James Macleod to name Canada’s fourth biggest city after it - to the village of Salen, on the north-western edge of the isle of Mull, encompasses perhaps the most improbably rich slice of scenery in the Hebrides. Towering basalt cliffs, glittering aquamarine waters and bone white sands; vertiginous drops, priapic baronial piles and luxuriant, almost wanton jungle greenery. And that’s not even to mention the locals. Stags, seals, sea otters, soaring eagles, suicidal sheep, shaggy horny ginger cows big as barn doors and hurtling battered builders’ vans risking it all on the turn of a blind corner. But from where I’m standing now, things are rather less colourful.

Topping out a shade under two hundred metres, this lonely gravel turnout is a passing and a viewing place, four snaking uphill miles along the B8073 from the wide sweep of Calgary Bay. The air up here is noticeably chillier and the wind snaps and worries at my jacket. Rubble litters the close-cropped scrub and heather. No trees grow. Behind me, hunkered down and near invisible through the haze, the isles of Coll and Tiree lurk on the horizon. To my right, a clouds’ great shadow slithers over the Treshnish archipelago, its scattered skerries like so many uncut emeralds on a silken bedspread. Dead ahead, below and to the south, the olive mounds of Ulva and Gometra are skeined about the temples with a thin white mist, like smoke trickling from the corner of Clint Eastwood’s mouth.

Hunkering into my collar I peer down, ensuring there are no other vehicles labouring up the undulating singletrack. Satisfied I won’t be interrupted, I swing back into the saddle. Pedal once, twice, feeling first the surging push of the motor and then, with exhilarating urgency, the tingling rush of acceleration.

Forget what you think you know about electric bikes. Ignore those Italian waiter you’ve just asked for ketchup reactions from seasoned cyclists and stow your notions of sit up and beg commuting or, heaven forfend, cheating. In seriously hilly country, and few places do serious or hilly with more panache than the isle of Mull, what these machines really represent is freedom and wondrous accessibility. Ideal vehicles for the ninety nine percent of us not blessed with Chris Hoy thighs and a penchant for the gruelling, but who’d as soon not drag two tons of belching metal and engine along for the ride. To e-bike (I’m determined to coin a better name for it) is, from the very first turn of the pedals, to recapture those giggling childhood hours spent rocketing along on two wheels, at liberty to go wherever your fancy (rather than your fitness) may take you.

A sweeping S-bend with good visibility of oncoming traffic approaches. I’ve discovered I can hit even the steepest of these at full tilt which for me, given the collective weight of bulk and bike, is as close to forty miles per hour as makes no difference. Forefingers coiled around the brakes, I stand out of the saddle, start out wide and lean rather than steer. Wind roars in my ears, close and thrilling. Oiled bearings sing with the soft machine gun staccato of a fishing reel unspooling, gravel crunches under the tyres. And I am flying.

From somewhere deep inside, a whoop of joy involuntarily breaks for freedom through the massive grin I am wearing. It may be the first time I have ever done something so indecorous, so…American. The sheep in the verge seem to know it, shaking their heads and glaring, unimpressed, down long black noses.

Approaching Tostarie, the road rises and the motor hums gently with the turning cranks. I can feel my legs working, but it’s more bracing stroll than uphill grind, and at a stately fifteen miles an hour I have time to look about me at last. Jutting cliffs lend scale to the crumbling inlets fringing the headland. Cobalt water melds to Caribbean blue, then clear as cut glass at its edges. Day boats bob at their moorings and, in the distance, the cloud wreathed peak of Ben More, the highest in the Scottish isles, smoulders with deserved insouciance. In fact, I’m so preoccupied that I almost miss the hand-painted sign and have to brake suddenly before the world falls away again like a tailor’s tape unravelling. Rummaging in my panniers, I find some loose change and exchange it for a feathery half dozen eggs.

Vegetation thickens as I continue to descend. Grand trees droop, almost over the road in places, and lush fern blankets quiver in the languid breeze. The air here is much warmer. It envelops then washes past in balmy pockets, a feeling like swimming through sun dappled water.

Beside the grey harled box of Kilninian church I sit, gazing at Loch Tuath frothing at the hems of Gometra. Somewhere down there on the low threadbare outcrop, millionaire landowner and environmentalist Roc Sandford - named for Saint Roc, patron of mad dogs, sea storms and the falsely accused - is striving to save the world’s oceans, alone and unwashed, from the inside of a shed.

The road at Torloisk splits, heading in one direction towards Dervaig. Two cars’ standoff beside a smattering of stone cottages, a Land Rover with a dented stock trailer and a farmer straight from a porridge ad. He sits astride a sun-bleached quad, whistling up a squad of writhing collies. Some already cling to the back, in an old fish box, others sniff around my wheels until, at a word from the farmer, they swarm back to his side. He nods as I zoom off, amidst the sweet grassy perfume of petrol and lanolin and island industry.

Until now I have been profligate with my battery. Top speed is, of course, the most entertaining, but with the long climbs at Acharonich and the return leg still to come, I reluctantly drop a gear, (they’re quite unrideable with no juice). The greater effort warms my back, such that I stop and remove my windcheater at the Henhouse Cafe: clifftop purveyor of scones, sausage rolls and staggering scenery.

At Ballygown, a mile and a face-aching downhill section further, another sign draws me in. BREAD FOR SALE is picked out in painted letters on a hinged, hutch-like box. A fishing boat waits patiently on a trailer in the layby, rods sticking out of the sides like an insect’s legs, but I squeeze past it to discover a cache of sourdough still warm from the oven. Steam rises as I open the lid. My stomach growls.

A little further on, passing a mighty elm that’s probably watched over this road for two hundred years, I hear the thundering base note well before I come upon it. It carries like music above the hills, over the tinkling burble of peat-brown water on smooth rock and the chatter of birds and the hum of wasps and dragonflies. And soon the tumbling, seething long drop of Eas Fors waterfall lays its soporific white noise too, over the hiss of the camp stove and the crack and sizzle of fried bread and eggs in the pan.

Five men. Six oars. 3000 miles

The Scotsman, July 2021

It speaks volumes about the British obsession with a particular brand of humour that, despite the vast stretches of open sea, muscular thirty-foot Atlantic swells, sunburn, sores, sleep-deprivation, seasickness and suffering (lots and lots of suffering) that awaits the strapping lads showing us around their shiny new boat, what most people seem really, forensically interested in is not the buttock-clenchingly gruelling thought of propelling a fiberglass capsule no larger than a transit van one-and-a-half million oar strokes across an inhospitable ocean. It is the facilities. Or rather, the distinct lack thereof. So let’s get this out of the way early shall we.

It’s yellow and it’s plastic and it has, for my money, the easiest gig on the boat.

The Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge is billed as the world’s toughest row. In early December, crew members from around thirty global teams will cast off from San Sebastián de La Gomera on the coast of Spain’s Canary Islands, sculling for two hours then sleeping for two, on constant twenty-four-hour rotation, for between forty and one hundred days, until they reach Nelson’s Dockyard English Harbour in Antigua some three thousand miles West. Hopefully, in first place. They will carry (or desalinate) everything they need to sustain them on their journey, sleep and wait out bad weather folded into one of the boat’s two cramped cabins (cabins that, for buoyancy reasons, must be sealed shut whenever they are in use) and will, on occasion, be bobbing around atop a body of water that is over five miles deep. And I know that sounds like a lot of fun, but as I discovered when I visited the only Scottish crew in this year’s race (Five in a Row) at North Berwick harbour this bright morning, for them there is a deeper and far more personal reason behind this particularly flagellant pleasure cruise.

Rett Syndrome is a rare post-natal neurological disorder that affects brain development in children, resulting in severe and destructive mental and physical disabilities. Speaking, walking, eating, even breathing is impacted, whilst the parts of the brain that control consciousness and awareness remain largely undamaged, often locking young minds into young bodies they cannot control. In a particularly ugly twist, Rett is disproportionately fond of little girls. It is, and I choose this word carefully: heartbreaking. There is no known cure, at least not yet, but what can be managed is the health and wellbeing of the children and the families who suffer, as treatments, therapies, and hopefully a cure are developed. Ross McKinney, one of the five crew members putting the juniors of the North Berwick rowing club through their paces on the rowing machine, has a young daughter, Eliza, who suffers from Rett. Reverse Rett is the charity for whom the team are raising both money and awareness.

‘If it looks like a mid-life crisis and sounds like a mid-life crisis…’ Duncan Hughes is a head and shoulder taller than the rest of the crew; tanned, team-spirited, and terminally optimistic (and half a lifetime ago we went to school together). He doesn’t get a chance to finish his thought though, as one of his three young boys bounds up, tugging impatiently at his shorts. ‘We know you have money for ice cream!’

His ‘nope’ is accompanied by warm laughter and punctuated with a kick to the rear that sends the boy skittering and giggling away onto the beach. (They will try again three times in the next thirty minutes, using a variety of tactics, and eventually, sorry Hannah, they will wear him down.)

When the two of us were boys ourselves, some twenty-five years ago, Duncan was a vegetarian, as he still is today. This was a rare thing for a thirteen-year-old rugby player in East Lothian, and something he decided for himself was important — a fact I did not know until this moment.

‘Imagine a rugby club dinner where you are the only vegetarian. A lukewarm Linda McCartney lasagne being slow clapped in on a silver platter in front of the entire bar, and then a bill for forty quid!’ And yet it is a feature of the man that this, for him, is a fond and entertaining memory. I suspect this stands him, and his associates, in good stead for dealing philosophically with two months of his cacophonous dehydrated mung bean emissions. Which brings us smoothly to food. How, on earth, to feed five calorifically deficient rowers for ten ravenous weeks, with no fridge, cooker, sink, utensils, or support?

‘Freeze dried…it’s pretty good actually’ says Ian Baird, another of the crew, as he throws me a crinkled foil brick. A good thing too, as they’re going to have to eat a hell of a lot of it. Each man will need to consume approximately ten thousand calories, and around ten litres of water per day (which, if the solar powered desalinator fails, will need to be hand pumped; an agonising and laborious process). The hold will be packed — literally, to the gunwales — with vacuum sealed silver sachets of the stuff: protein, carbohydrate, sugar…and noisome arguments in waiting.

‘You eat the first thing you grab, and to begin with it’ll be jammed into the cabins too. We’ll have to squeeze in there with it until we’ve chomped our way through it!’ Adds Ian, gleefully.

The trip itself does not weigh anchor for some two hundred days, but already the crew are pushing themselves with punishing, and of course often socially distanced training, including brutal sets of two hours on - one hour off - two hours on (and if you’ve ever used a rowing machine I defy you not to wince at the very idea of that) as well as regular sponsorship rallying; glad-handing with everyone from sea scouts to venture capitalists. And no wonder, because it’s an expensive business. The boat itself costs in the mid five-figures, and that doesn’t begin to account for the entry fees, food, equipment, or the logistics of actually transporting crew and craft to the Canaries.

In an effort to broach the sensitive subject of finance, I ask Duncan how they found the boat. Surely, I thought, there must be no shortage of jaded, tattered-bottomed adventurers just desperate to get shot of the bloody things? But apparently not.

‘Hen’s teeth. We hunted and hunted, then one day I recognised three guys on the beach eating fish suppers. The Maclean brothers: Scottish ocean rowers, record-breakers. I ran over, got to talking with them and offered to buy their boat…they said yes, and we’ve had three offers for it already.’

So, the boat is expensive, and the accommodations cramped (and stifling, and windowless). The physical challenge is unrelentingly arduous, and the food is a little samey. You make the water yourself, puke yourself blind (did I mention that?) torture your bottom and relieve the monotony by jamming it into a bucket. Nonetheless, the lot of them look energised, elated, primed…near giddy with the thought of testing themselves, of doing something outside of the normal sphere of existence. But perhaps that is because there is more at stake here than just adventure, machismo, and a near palpable competitive spirit.

Perhaps that is because of Eliza.

Follow thier progress or support the team here: https://www.fiveinarow.co.uk/personal