Do you have somewhere baked into your subconscious, a place you go when you’re alone in your head?
Early summer, Arisaig calls me.
Three hours north of Glasgow on Scotland’s north-west coast, Arisaig overlooks the Small Isles of Rhum, Eigg and Muck. The Isle of Skye’s round the corner. Crossing the Clyde and going left means I’m on my way, as right is a curry in Ashton Lane’s Ashoka.
There’s Balloch and Luss and the length of Loch Lomond as we aim for Crianlarich, gateway to the Highlands. We stop at Tyndrum for breakfast and a stretch. Soon Glencoe’s valley will haunt us, maybe with a piper’s lament. The Ballachuilish Bridge saves us half an hour round Loch Leven- it replaced the charismatic ferry crossing in 1975- then it’s Fort William in the shadow of Ben Nevis and on to Harry Potter’s viaduct. Silversands Caravan and Camping is close when we see Bonnie Prince Charlie’s cave.
I’ve visited every year of my life, give or take. You can fly to Glasgow Airport, grab some wheels and take my route or leave Queen Street by train and chug over Glenfinnan Viaduct, as it was known for a century before JKR worked her magic.
Go between May and September. Take a brolly and Avon Skin So Soft, for the midgies.
The annual family holiday forever ago was a fortnight and there have been many long weekends, but now visits are dusted in a day or two. As when I was a kid, all is anticipation; and in the run up I take the journey with loved ones alive and dead.
We won’t leave until seven, but I am up at five and raring to go. It’s already light and quiet. I slide the big door, for the birdsong. Now I’m in the Green Welly Stop at Tyndrum, deciding between a chewy roll with scrambled egg or the full Scottish, thinking if we run late there will be Cullen Skink and buttered bread. The big blue flask catches my eye and I ponder toasted egg sandwiches in tinfoil, two pints of strong coffee, Tunnocks caramel wafers and the Loch Linnhe Picnic Area (Plan B, I put the flask next to the kettle).
Mum and dad would throw three kids into a dark green minibus and we’d stop in a layby, ravenous for egg pieces with butter and salad cream, Jammy Dodgers and Tupperware-scented Kia Ora. We left at six in pyjamas to miss the traffic on what was then a five-hour trek due to single track roads and the hell of Fort William’s Main Street.
I have memories with my kids but my childhood ones are clearer. Silversands was owned by mum’s cousin, Cathy MacDonald, and is still in the family. Sometimes we berthed in a big static with two bedrooms and a chemical toilet. At the Formica table we’d play dominoes by gaslight, with Cadubry’s hot chocolate at our elbows, until the islands were purple silhouettes. It never got proper dark so sleep was elusive in the tiny bunk. Seagulls bounced on the caravan roof at five in the morning.
Lunch was Heinz Tomato Soup and one hundred slices of buttered bread at that table, which flipped into a double bed for mum and dad. One day we’d go to Mallaig for fish and chips on the pier and watch the ferry leave for Skye. I’d cast my rod from that pier and the rocks at Silversands when a teenager but never caught much. Our Highland cousins would have us for mince and tatties and doughballs with HP sauce, Arctic Roll and hot custard one night.
We’d pick berries if it was late August, swim with T shirts on, catch and release from the rockpools and read comics from the Arisaig shop. The Daily Record came a day late, milk was straight from the udder and Dad made haystacks with a pitchfork.
We’d hear tales of mum’s Aunt Mary in service at the Shaw Stewarts in the big house and brothers Angus, Alan and Jonny spear-fishing from a rowing boat with a broom handle. A fish box with a glass bottom let them see the flounders against the silver sand.
They came to Glasgow for work and lived on the south side, but were forever highlanders. Mary and husband Jimmy, a gem of a man from Letterkenny, had a caravan in Ardlui on Loch Lomond they could reach by train before lunchtime.
Traigh Beach is the neighbour of Silversands and the sight of the Small Isles, the green-blue-grey water of the shallow bay, the herons and oyster-catchers, the arc of the beach, and the incongruous Traigh Golf course will stop you. You’ll get out and be there a while: walking, clambering but mostly staring.
I played on that quirky nine-hole track with my dear uncle Gus, dad’s best friend. Gus, Margaret and the weans sometimes took a caravan on the same site. He taught me golf and football and a bit of politics- Gus was leftish, dad was rightish- probably because he had two girls. Like my mum and their dad, he was a storyteller.
Angus McEachen was clever, but stayed a baggage handler at Glasgow Airport all his life. Dead at 52 from leukemia, Margaret gave him a long-wanted son just four years before he passed. Memories zip in and out on every visit, but especially at Traigh Beach. Good to go and with my back to the Small Isles, I see Gus and me on the first tee and wonder why dad got 30 more years.
Thirty years!
As I tramp back to the car, looking over my shoulder on a landscape unchanged in a million years, I’ve come to this conclusion: there is no reason.
It’s just your Donald Duck.