My grin spread from
one ear to the other when the housekeeper on the other end of the line said,
“Leave your car on the strand. Duncan’ll come and pick you up in the Landrover.”
Those of you who are familiar with Monarch of the Glen will know why. So I was
half expecting a young Scot bouncing around in a kilt and leather jacket to
carry me over the strand to Oronsay. You see Oronsay is a tidal island and can
only be crossed by 4WD at low tide, sometimes.
Anyway, it turns
out it’s all here - the Scottish ‘island dream’ I’ve been wondering about. The
perfect beach - one long curving expanse of white sand and turquoise sea -
backed by wild flower studded emerald machair and, behind that, billowing swells
of pink heather. There’s even a tiny white bothy on the beach edge with otter
footprints beside it. Peeping over all of this are the motherly paps of Jura.
It’s nice to see them.
It’s astonishing
how different all these islands are when you consider how near they are to one
another, sometimes even touching. Iona couldn’t differ more from Mull. Jura’s utterly different from Colonsay and Oronsay is it’s own again.
Oronsay belongs to
the family I’m cooking for, but the RSPB manage the farm and they run it for
the birds. There are butterflies fluttering everywhere. It’s just magic. And
for culture, well, St Columba woz ere first – before he got to Iona I mean.
And there’s a Priory to prove it.
The one thing I was
missing after three weeks on the isles of Argyll was a flowery garden
with a lawn. Well they’ve got one right here and it was designed by Penelope
Hobhouse. There’s a vegetable garden with espalier fruit trees. And a peacock.
 |
| Scottish sporting estate meets Malibu |
I’m taken aback
just how much there is to do on such a tiny island (it’s just over two square
miles), and this family seriously maxes it out. It’s lovely to see the intimate
knowledge they have of it. Nature abounds, so there’s a dawn outing to otter
spot. There’re choughs and corncrakes and pippits and gannets and skewers (the
bird list is so long so I’ll stop listing). Wildlife in the water is not
to be missed either; yesterday the gardener spotted 12 basking sharks in one
go. There’s snorkelling and underwater filming and a great spot you can jump off
rocks into deep sea and ride a strong rip around the coast line until you're spat out onto a little shell
beach.
In one of the vids
below you can just about see me snorkeling along in the background. Sadly, it
cuts out just as I dive down to retrieve a King scallop for our tea. (!). Not really-
I made that last bit up, sadly.
There's nothing particularly grabbing in the other film either (unless you're an algologist). It's not really one for anyone to watch who wasn't there. It's just that for me the novelty of filming underwater hasn't yet worn off.
One day I went
snorkelling on my own in the rain (without the GoPro). I saw a baby cuttlefish who sneezed ink at my
curious finger and huge shrimps, a little flat fish - maybe a Brill but I’m not
sure, and plenty of hermit crabs scuttling covertly about. It was peaceful being in the sea with the
rain plip-plopping around my head and absorbing just to be in it and part of
it; letting the watery ridge and furrow do what they would with me, like a
resigned jellyfish. Watching how things work under there was engrossing; noticing
how the seaweed lives rather than the lifeless form it takes when beached. Goggle gazing at the inner shoreline and
seeing for the first time the little souls whose ways ought to be more familiar to
us all. It felt rather like being five and investigating a hedgerow for the
first time.
The way
this little-altered and tiny island positively heaves with history is eerie. There's everything
from Mesolithic shell mounds to an Iron Age fort. Viking raids to ‘kelping’ and
the celebrated sixteenth century stone carvings of the Iona/Oronsay School. So
much has happened on this small space for so long (since 7000 BC to be precise) and you can actually SEE the
evidence of it all, everywhere, all the time.
These days embroidery
happens here in the evenings, and pebble painting. You can go beachcombing for
the blue and white porcelain pieces that still get washed up from a shipwreck
last century. There’s windsurfing and sandsurfing and water skiing and boating
and fishing and picnics on hidden beaches and naked swimming, if you dare. Walter
wants to sail to Jura and climb a Pap. One day a girl appeared at low tide with
her boyfriend who carried her cello on his back. She sat amongst the ruins and
sounded its strings hauntingly for an hour before wondering back over the
strand. Oronsay just rocks.
If all that wasn't enough, there’s a man who
lives on the strand between Colonsay and Oronsay who makes a living selling oysters
and honey. Just imagine getting fat on those two things. The result must be Midas-like. Your blubber would be gold!
Once, I made a
special Colonsay honeycomb icecream. The crunchy type of honeycomb that you
make with heated honey and bicarb (like in Maltesers). I smashed it into little
pieces and stirred it into homemade vanilla icecream. The oysters we saved for the
last night. Unadulterated. I’ve never ever eaten oysters like them. Fat and creamy
and sweet and sublime.
The sunset is
pretty tonight. The fading blue sky is smeared with creamy clouds and those
hovering above the Paps are like fluffy balls of palest pink salmon soufflé. The
heather’s blooming like mad. And I’m leaving for England in the morn.