John was a guest at Little Gruinard that summer, he’d been hitchhiking around the coast of Scotland, picking up the odd job and pitching a tent wherever the whisky took him. John was from Northern Ireland, just north of Belfast on the Crumlin Road. He was taking a year out to stretch his legs and experience a different life, a life away from the UDA. At the time the…
As the sun was setting across Loch Ewe you could clearly see Mackay cantering alongside a deer and her fawn, caught perfectly in silhouette on the skyline. In the village of Aultbea next to the Drumchork Lodge Hotel lived old Mr Bennett, he lived in a small farmstead with a courtyard of barns in a permanent state of disrepair. Later in life he had become a part-time Ghillie for the…
There he is, sat on the Hippo rock in the middle of Little Gruinard River, just above the bridge. There’s no wind although there’s a faint draft from the rushing river. Looking downstream he can see the garden pool before the river turns a sharp corner into the nut pool. There’s the wood to his right, the home of the fairy hide-away, the lone oak and the…
Strathpeffer is a village and spa town in Ross and Cromarty (Easter Ross) in the Highlands of Scotland, nestled on the road between Dingwall and Contin, north west of the Black Isle. It’s a very bonnie part of the world with a great outlook down the valley towards the Cromarty Firth. Every year in the middle Saturday of August, Strathpeffer plays host to the Scottish Highland Games Association in…
There were hundreds of beautifully polished green and clear translucent pebbles all along the shoreline. When the sun hit them it created a blinding light, dazzling to the point of otherworldly. Geordie and Suzie (his girlfriend) were amazed by it. When you live and work on a farm way up in the wilds of highland Scotland pre 1970 there were some roadside bins and a community dump but no sign…