Mull...

Had another productive day, taking pix on Mull. The weather has been amazing the last few days, but, according to the BBC website, it's due to break tomorrow.

Ferry to Tobermory...

When leaving Skye, I didn’t take the bridge; I drove south, instead, to Armadale and took the ferry to Mallaig. Mallaig is a curious little town. Not really a destination, it’s more of a place you pass through on the way to somewhere else. Trains stop here but go not further; it’s the end of the line. Instead of taking a boat trip to Knoydart - I’ll leave that for another time - I drove along the serpentine coast road round the headland of Ardnamurchan (a place I’d only ever heard mentioned in the context of the shipping forecast), and took loads of pix. Lands End isn’t the most westerly point on the British mainland; that accolade goes to Ardnamurchan Point  

I waited for the ferry at Kilchoan with a couple of guys who were on a six-day jaunt around the inner isles, having driven all the way from Devon. That must have been two days driving, with two days to drive back… but they seemed cheerful enough. The sky grew ever darker as the ferry came into view, and Mull - our destination - disappeared behind a curtain of rain. It was one of CalMac’s smaller ferries, with room for only room for about eight cars, and we rocked and rolled our way to Tobermory in the gloom.

Tobermory is the biggest town on Mull, but not the biggest ferry port. So, unlike Mallaig, it feels like a place to visit in its own right. The pastel-coloured houses line the harbour - as seen on countless photographs (and now mine as well). I had a wander round the town last night, and watched the first half of Scotland v Denmark - just a friendly match, and a wee bit dull. Scotland won, and I pretended to care.

This morning I got some pix of the town, before another band of rain came over. I want to have a tour of the island - and maybe take a boat-trip to Iona while I’m here - before taking yet another ferry to Oban, and heading south. I’m mildly addicted to ferries, the smaller the better. The guys know what they’re doing, and, so far, the arrivals and departures have been bang on time. It’s just another day’s work for the guys who take the tickets, monitor the traffic flow and man the boats. But for visitors, like me, it’s a bit of excitement; there’s something special about arriving in a new place by sea…

Reflections...

On the mainland again… for a few hours. Busy taking pix…

The Cuillins...

Cuillins...

Most Scottish hotels have a bar, probably with a separate entrance and no direct access to the hotel itself. The bar will typically be cheerless and unwelcoming - by design it seems, more than accident. If you must drink, the room would be saying, then don’t expect comfortable surroundings; crap lager, pork scratchings and formica tables are good enough for the likes of you.

I walked into a bar in Dunvegan, which, even by Scottish standards, was spartan. A guy sat one side of the the bar, the barman - with most of his teeth missing - on the other “Where are you from?”, he asked. “Yorkshire”. “Where in Yorkshire?” “Leeds”. “I was living in Leeds when the police were hunting the Yorkshire Ripper”. “Me too!”. We shared anecdotes about those strange, paranoid times, though I got the feeling that the barman had a rather less judgemental opinion about Peter Sutcliffe’s activities than were common in Leeds at the time… or, in fact, anywhere, at any time. We could, at least, agree on the ineptitude of the police who, despite all the manpower available, only picked up Sutcliffe by chance: he was sitting with a woman (potentially victim number 14?) in a car whose number plates didn’t match the model.

I actually like downbeat drinking holes, where half a dozen guys sit at the bar and complain that everything used to be better in the good old days, but even that attraction can wear off after a while… 

The Cuillins at Sligachan, Isle of Skye...

Portree...

Portree is quite a bustling little town (at least in comparison with communities in the Western Isles), with pastel-coloured houses overlooking the harbour. Lots of Chinese and Japanese people about, taking pictures with their phones and selfie sticks. Boats leave from here, offering trips to see the sea eagles… but I think I saw one anyway…

I’ve had a wander round the island, getting a few pix in between the rain showers. Uig is where the CalMac ferries dock, on arriving from Tarbert on Harris; nearby is the Bakur Bar. I followed the sign around the back of the building; even when I got to the door it looked as if the place was closed for winter. Then I saw somebody move inside. The bar was open after all, with half a dozen guys - and one pugnacious woman - propping up the bar, drinking beer and whisky chasers and swearing extravagantly.

After a few minutes one guy pretended to see me for the first time and “apologised” for all the swearing. “No fucking problem on my account”, I said. I’m told I swear quite a lot, but at least I don’t pretend to apologise for it (then carry on swearing even more loudly)…

Over the sea to Skye...

Had a few day’s holiday, from the relentless grind of the nomadic life, on the Moray Firth. My birthday treat (thank you, Helen… and Michael) was having a morning’s tour of good bird sites, which gave us views of capercaille, crested tit, black throated diver and crossbill (the first three I’d never seen before, their range being limited to the Highlands; crossbills I hadn’t seen for, gulp, fifty years). I drove across the Skye bridge this afternoon: another first. The last time I was on Skye, you had no choice but to take the ferry. Drove to Portree in driving rain, and here I am, drying out…

The crested tit we saw (pic by Michael Crutch)...

Glencoe...

Spent the night in Tyndrum (a favourite haunt of Günter Grass, apparently), having found a petrol station… eventually. I’d ventured into the highlands with the petrol gauge on low, which wasn’t too bright. Drove through Glencoe this morning, mostly in thick mist. When the mist lifted - a bit - I stopped to take some pix. Jimmy Saville’s pied à terre is still boarded up, though someone has washed the grafitti off. It's a shame to see it empty. The views are fantastic; despite the unfortunate associations, I'm sure a children's charity could put the house to good use...

Jimmy Savile's rural retreat...

Glencoe...
                                                                     

Machrie Moor...

I’ve had a couple of days exploring the Isle of Arran; it’s fine… not weird like the Outer Hebrides. The road layout is very simple. A road goes around the coastline - you’re close to the water most of the way - and if, like me, you start and finish at Brodick, you’ll have covered about 55 miles. There’s another road that goes east-west across the middle, so the major roads form a figure of eight.

The weather has been fantastic - warm and sunny, with some photogenic cloud formations - and the light so bright that I’ve been shading my eyes. I was so taken with the standing stones and circles on Machrie Moor that I walked to see them twice. I’d seen them on my first trip to Arran, in the rain, so it was good to see them again in better light. The setting is a low plateau, and there isn’t just one stone circle, but half a dozen… as well as isolated standing stones and chambered cairns. Some of the stones are granite, others are red sandstone.

Why so many circles? To the untutored eye (mine) the site could have been where people learned how to erect stones. Or maybe an open-air showroom (“If you don’t like it in granite, and want something cheaper, we have this one in sandstone”)…

Skiff at Troon...

Old folks rowing a skiff at Troon. Apparently, they race competitively, and this was a practise session…

The spur of the moment...

On my way north I reached the coast at Troon, and took some pix of the marina and harbour (rather than the golf course). I drove up the coast to Ardrossan. On a whim, I checked the times - and prices - for the ferry to Arran; a return ticket was £30 and the ferry left 30 minutes later… with me on board. By 7pm I was parked up in Brodick…

Everything’s amazing and no-one is happy…

I was in a pub, a couple of nights ago, to watch the football: Liverpool v Manchester United. I’m nominally a Liverpool fan (though I can’t remember why the affiliation began, and, having never been to Anfield, my fan credentials are minimal. Plus I don't really care who wins). The guy sitting behind me, supporting Man United, cared very much indeed, and kept up a running commentary of complaints about the way his team was playing. He was determined to be miserable, simply because the action on the screen failed to follow the script he had written in his head. Liverpool won 2-0 - hooray! - and it could have been 5-0 or 6-0. Man United were awful.

But, hey, he’s watching his team playing, in real time, on a big screen, for free, even though the action is taking place a hundred miles away. It’s almost a miracle, if you spend a moment to think about it. In a YouTude video, Louis CK riffs on this idea… that everything’s amazing and no-one is happy. About flying, he says, wide-eyed: “You’re sitting in a chair… in the sky!”. Yes, our sense of wonder has been whittled away, and we need to get it back…

Arnside bore...

I called in at Arnside yesterday, where the River Kent meets Morecambe Bay. I overheard people saying that the famous Arnside Bore was due about mid-day, so I stayed around (having seen it on just one other occasion). Anyone who expects a thirty-foot tsunami - the kind you see in disaster films - will be disappointed. It’s not so much a ‘wall’ of water, as a ‘thin white line’ of water which extends across the width of the estuary. It’s moving quickly - local folklore suggesting it can outrun a galloping horse - and half a dozen canoists were coming in on the tide. They weren’t ‘riding the wave’, as a surfer might, but were just being pulled along by the tide

It may have been a minute between sighting the bore at distance to seeing it reach Arnside’s abbreviated pier, where I was standing. The estuary filled up very quickly, and the wading birds disappeared, with muddy water churning in the channels below. So even if the bore wasn’t spectacular, it was interesting to see the speed at which the Kent Estuary filled up with water. “Worth seeing”, as Samuel Johnson pronounced upon the Giant’s Causeway, “but not worth going to see”.

I had my camera, but didn’t use it; the results wouldn’t have been very impressive. I got a pic of two cyclists instead, and continued my tour… 

Wine or whisky...

I have the weekend to compile, drive and describe a couple of tours around the Lake District. Then I’m off to Scotland for a few days. Me and Scotland haven’t got on very well in recent years. I may have the name, the clan, a rather gloomy tartan, the badge (driftwood) and the battle cry (“Dun Uisdean”), but I feel very little affiliation with the land of haggis, whisky and shortbread. I may be one of the Andalucian Morrisons… or some other place where they drink wine rather than whisky…

Crook church, in Cumbria, and a sheep posing in the evening light...

Morecambe...

Morecambe still looks defeated. The restoration of the art deco Midland Hotel was supposed to revitalise the town’s fortunes, but the problems go deeper than that. Anyway the Midland Hotel doesn’t gleam whitely any more; like everything else in Morecambe it needs a new coat of paint.

While Blackpool has its iconic tower, Morecambe has a big tube of Polo mints. There’s a metal sculpture on the promenade which replicates - and names - all the Lakeland hills that can be seen across the bay, which only makes visitors wish they were there… rather than here. There are artworks all over the seafront - little bits of nonsense - but what everybody loves is the statue of Eric Morecambe. No-one leaves Morecambe without a photo of a family member posing with Eric. He wasn’t the only comedian to take his stage name from a Lancashire town; there was Jimmy Clitheroe and George Formby as well. Actually, I just googled Jimmy Clitheroe, only to find it was the ‘kid’s’ real name.

I have a soft spot for Morecambe… mostly on the basis of rooting for the underdog; there are certainly a lot of pet shops. So many other shops are boarded up; even the shops that are open look as though they could close any minute. Blackpool, a few miles to the south, hosts events, exhibitions, conferences, stag and hen nights; there isn’t much business left for Morecambe, except for bookies and pawnbrokers, pound shops and down-at-heel pubs.

A few years ago I went into a sea-front pub for a beer. The landlord waved his hand over the beer pumps, and announced that all the beer was gone and that all he had left were a few bottles of sweet cider. “The Hell’s Angels were here over the weekend”, he said by way of explanation…

John Eric Bartholomew, AKA Eric Morecambe…

Rupert 'n' Jerry...

Don't click this link if you're of a nervous disposition..

Performance enhancement...

Maria Sharapova has failed a drug test for meldonium, a medication which she has taken, on her doctor’s advice, for the last ten years… but which was added to the list of banned, ‘performance enhancing’ drugs in January. It must be difficult to keep up with the latest findings (especially as the drug she took had the brand name of ‘mildronate’). A drug that is acceptable today might be banned tomorrow, and the whole concept of ‘performance enhancement’ can seem a bit random. We don’t penalise athletes for choosing a healthy diet, for example, or training at high altitudes. The promises to “rid the sport of drug cheats” can sound a bit hollow when it’s routinely acknowledged that “winning is all that matters”…

Whalley...

Anglo-Saxon cross in the churchyard of the Parish church, Whalley...

The Peregrine...

The Peregrine, by J A Baker, is a strange book, like nothing else I have ever read. Robert Macfarlane wrote the introduction to this 2005 edition (the book was originally published in 1967). Macfarlane is a writer who puts himself centre stage; I find it a tiresome trait, though his books sell very well. He rifles through the thesaurus for new ways to describe the landscape, yet is curiously incapable of summoning up the spirit of place.

The determinedly unprolific Baker stays in the wings, and mentions people only when they are driving tractors or hunting with hounds or burning stubble in a distant field. They are like the figures who populate the background of a Pieter Breughel painting. He reveals nothing about himself, except his obsession with peregrine falcons. He mentions no place names, giving directions only as points of the compass - north, south, east, west - applied to the natural landforms of the flat East Anglian terrain: estuary, sand-bank, ridge, marsh, wood, pasture, river, sea.

The book, in diary format, covers a single winter, from October to April. Baker describes the natural world, with intense concentration, through the eyes of the peregrines. Even when he can’t see them, he monitors their presence by the behaviour of the other birds. His observations are acute, and he knows his birds (though I can’t help but wonder at swallows still being around during the last week of October!). The peregrine “dived, and the island birds were flung up like spray”. The peregrine’s wings “flicked the wind gingerly, like fingers lightly touching a hot iron”. “A moorhen walked stealthily across the frozen brook, with hushed, arthritic tread”.

He is an unsentimental witness to many kills. “The hawk lands on the softening bird, grips its neck in its bill. I hear the bone snap, like barbed wire cut by pliers”. And he identifies with the peregrines to a startling degree. “I found myself crouching over the kill, like a mantling hawk. My eyes turned quickly about, alert for the walking heads of men. Unconsciously I was imitating the movements of a hawk, as in some primitive ritual; the hunter becomes the thing he hunts”.

His style can be lyrical. “The beagles are going home along the small hill lanes, the huntsmen tired, the followers gone, the hare safe in its form. The valley sinks into mist, and the yellow orbital ring of the horizon closes over the glaring cornea of the sun. The eastern ridge blooms purple, then fades to inimical black. The earth exhales into the cold dusk. Frost forms in hollows shaded from the afterglow. Owls wake and call. The first stars hover and drift down. Like a roosting hawk, I listen to silence and gaze into the dark”.

His descriptions are necessarily repetitious, as he returns to familiar haunts. The repetition works, up to a point, emphasising the rhythms and cycles of the birds’ behaviour patterns (he shows little interest in other wildlife), and the changes in the seasons. Eventually, though, I found myself speed-reading, and skipping a page or two. There are only so many ways to describe a flock of lapwings, or the flight of a peregrine, especially as the book has no narrative progression. It’s not a long book, but it could have been shorter still.

Baker only wrote one other book, then ‘disappeared’. Macfarlane suggests he worked as a librarian; he may, instead, have taken wing, like the falcons with which he identified so closely.

Snow...

I drove east on the M62 yesterday, from Lancashire into West Yorkshire. In the Ryburne valley, near Ripponden, I saw someone dressed as a snowman, with a carrot for a nose. He (or she?) didn’t seem to be advertising anything… just trudging along the pavement as though this was a routine occurance. When I woke up this morning, in Sowerby Bridge, it was snowing heavily, and, to judge from the colour of the sky, there’s plenty more to come…

Rugger...

More than seventy doctors and academics are calling for a ban on tackling in rugby matches played in UK and Irish schools, focusing particularly on public schools where playing rugby is part of the curriculum, and boys can’t opt out. I remember the winter months at public school - having to turn out to play rugby, on frozen pitches, and hating every minute of it. My modus operandi was to run up and down the touchline, hoping that the people who were watching would think I was playing, and the people who were playing would think I was watching.

The ploy worked - fitfully - then someone on the pitch would throw me the ball. I’d start to run, with the ball clutched to my chest. After a couple of seconds I’d wonder if, despite my antipathy to the game, I might be spectacularly good at rugby. My reverie would be brutally interrupted, as a tackle sent me head-first into a pitch as hard as concrete.

One day, during a game, I hurt my wrist in a tackle, so I went to see the house matron. She took my hand, gave it a waggle, and pronounced me fit to carry on playing rugby. It took three weeks before anyone realised that my wrist was broken; for the rest of that term I was in a plaster cast…

Moon Marina, on the Lancaster Canal...

Paddy Power...

Gambling company, Paddy Power, has been taken to task for encouraging a ‘problem’ gambler to bet so much money that he lost his five jobs, his house and access to his children. A spokesman for the Association of British Bookmakers shed crocodile tears, predictably. He knows - as we know - that ‘problem’ gamblers are good customers for bookmakers… if by ‘problem’ we mean punters who lose more money than they win. Any punter who wins regularly - through good luck, skill or, more likely, inside knowledge - will quickly have his account terminated. Bookies don't gamble; almost every transaction is a 'sure thing'.

The bookies’ target customers are likely to be poor, luckless, desperate, lacking in self-control, with an addictive personality, who remember the occasional wins and forget their losses. The shops are in the poor parts of every town, alongside the pawnbrokers and fried chicken take-aways, and gambling adverts monopolise the ad breaks in every televised sporting occasion on Sky. The ads present gambling as a fun lifestyle choice for gregarious young men. Winning, according to the ads, is as simple as pressing the ‘cash out’ button on a smartphone. Persuading people to spend money they can ill afford to lose is what the bookies exist to do.

Paddy Power has been asked by the betting regulators to make a voluntary payment of £280,000 to a “socially responsible” cause. According to the Guardian, “Paddy Power has posted a record annual pre-tax profit of €167m (£130m) and the £9bn business is set to enter the FTSE 100 index of Britain’s biggest listed companies this week after increasing its size by merging with rival Betfair”…

Delivering beer in Wigan...

Skelmersdale...

I was going to stay in Skelmersdale last night, though I'm still not sure whether I found it. I parked up next to a health centre, assuming I was in town. But I couldn't find anything that resembled a town centre. So I decided to stay somewhere else. But leaving Skelmersdale wasn't as easy as it sounds. There were lots of roundabouts and no signs; worse, I had given the satnav lady the evening off. I passed the same place not twice but three times, and drove up one cul de sac after another. It was turning into a Kafkaesque nightmare when, more by luck than good judgement, I found the way out. I won't be in hurry to go back...

The Lancaster Canal at Garstang...