Sometimes, when there’s a lot of people around and they’re making a lot of noise, I feel uneasy. I become calmer if I can escape to a quiet café. There, I can unwind, and watch a few folk come and go. I may gaze out of a window at an old church or at trees happily displaying green leaves as if they are decorations crafted to celebrate summer. I can be thoughtful, in a drifting from one thought to another kind of way. Then, my words are no longer silenced by too much noise. I can hear myself think. I can read or write.
The only times when I’m even calmer is when I’m exploring Scotland with Isobel. We did a lot of that this year. Cycling, walking, driving along winding roads in a small blue car. On our travels, I gather a lot of memory-treasure, so I can remember places later. Banff, Aberfoyle, Doune, a big forest named after some queen, Blairgowrie, Kellie Castle, Pittenweem. I don’t usually write much when I’m in those places. I just look around and listen, breathe in the different air, and store impressions in my head. I write when I’m back in a quiet cafe or when I’m sitting at my desk, often with the cat purring somewhere behind me.
On the first of our explorations this year, I was not fully there to start with. I was worrying about the usual things I worry about. Green fields flashed by as we drove north, but mostly I saw only the anxious faces of people I’d helped in my role as a support worker. And I worried about the latest chapter of a book I’m writing. Had I described a snowstorm as well as I could? And I was thinking about bills I had to pay. Meanwhile, our car zapped along twisting roads towards Banff. Isobel watched the Satnav and the road ahead. As she steered the car, she looked puzzled, because the Satnav was bamboozled by small roads which were not on maps.
The place we were searching for – Shepherd’s Loch glamping site – is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, at least as far as Satnavs are concerned. Eventually, we decided we must be close to the site, but we were too early to check-in. We had time to visit somewhere else first – a place Isobel read about in a magazine: Gamrie Bay. Our Satnav claimed the bay was nearby, but we were not so sure.
“I don’t think we’re going the right way”, said Isobel.
“Maybe not”, I replied, unhelpfully. Isobel sighed.
I looked out the green fields in every direction. There was a very definite lack of seashore. Over each new hill, there were just more hills and more fields.
“Maybe we should go back”, Isobel said.
“No, no, don’t worry, it’ll appear”, I said, with no firm reason.
Then, we drove over yet another small hill, and there ahead was the broad blue sea, stretching out to a far but crisp horizon. A feeling of utter relief swept away all our tension. We drove down a small, curving road, towards a few rows of fishing cottages and a narrow, empty beach, nestling at the foot of green covered cliffs. There was also a small harbour, with half a dozen tiny, brightly painted fishing boats. The still water in the harbour was peacefully reflecting the boats and a few, low flying seagulls.
After a quiet walk along the beach, picking up sea-smoothed pebbles, I could feel my worries drifting away, like seagulls on a gentle wind. After an hour or so, we got back in the car, and we drove up the hill and then along the narrow winding roads, which seemed friendlier now. And, despite the Satnavs’ ongoing befuddlement, we soon found the glamping site. It was made up of ten or so Hobbit-like homes, scattered around a field, each hut tucked into its own shelter of a few trees. And there was an artificial loch (think: large pond). We took our bags into our hut, which was just big enough for a bed, a couple of chairs, and a wood burning stove. Perfect. The stove was black metal, with a long, narrow chimney, giving the place the look of a scene from Little House on the Prairie. I appointed myself Wood Burner and got a fire going. As warmth spread through the small place, and orange flames glowed through a tiny square of glass in the stove, we realised we weren’t in the real world anymore.
When it is very quiet, and the only sound is wood crackling as it burns and faint bird songs from outside your hut, and the occasional ‘hoo hoo hoo’ of wood pigeons, normal worries do not belong. Instead of worrying about anything, I watched the fire, and we planned our exploring, and I thought about that first sight of Gamrie Bay. The eternal blueness of the sea, the crispness of the horizon, the high glowing white of seagulls.
On our trips, I found several other special moments of deep calmness. Climbing a steep hill above Queen Elizabeth Forest Park and looking out over miles of pine trees. Smelling something which, if it could be bottled, might be called Green Distance. And walking through that same forest and finding a bronze statue of a ‘land girl’, commemorating women, not girls, who went to work on farms during the Second World War. Our perfect mood was briefly upset when we pressed a button by the statue and heard an old BBC recording with a posh voice speaking about “the weaker sex”. But laughing at the words of that ancient troll restored our calmness instantly.
On another day, we drove to Kellie Castle. We waited outside for a guide, with a dozen others, in front of the castle, gazing up at nests where swallows swooped into and away from the corners of high windows. Then, a guide appeared, and launched into a long, entertaining spiel. He told us how the castle originally had no stairs at its base. Access to the first floor was via a ladder, which could be pulled up on a rope in the event of an attack. The stairs we would climb were a recent addition to the castle, built just a few a few centuries ago. We all followed the guide, as he led us up narrow stone steps, into rooms with long, faded tapestries and big paintings of very self-important white and pink faces, mostly men. One long-gone laird had himself painted in a kind of nude suit, to make him look like a mighty warrior. In another painting, which we were told he hated, there was a more accurate representation of himself. He was a drooping, flabby sort of man. More of a wart than a warrior.
Most of the clutter in the big castle rooms had little hold over my attention. Yet, I was interested in an artist who once lived there: John Henry Lorimer, the son of a wealthy architect who rented the castle from its owners. The painting by Lorimer which most fascinated me is called Sunlight in a Scottish room. It shows one of the rooms we visited in the castle, a tall window, and sunlight making the walls, ceiling and floor appear at once timeless, and enchanted, very similar to the sunlight I could see there today, although the painting itself was made around a century ago. I have always loved the way a painting can become a time machine, and it seems to work best when the painting is displayed where it was painted and then viewed many years later.
On another day of exploring, which was a very sunny, blue-sky day, we walked along the coast at Banff and up a hill to a large building which was once a distillery. A small plaque on the wall explained that the building had served as a temporary barracks for English soldiers on the way to the battle of Culloden, where around 2000 Jacobites were killed or wounded in 1746. The small, unexpected reminder of an ancient slaughter made my steps feel heavier for a while. I was lucky because the blue of another coastal sky, and other explorations, soon restored my calmness.
I don’t know when I will next have the time to write about wandering and wondering, although I’m sure the exploring will continue.
HARVEY DUKE 