How many of them actually do? No idea. But for our part, we’ve been quite serious about it. Since finishing our backpacking session almost a year ago, we’ve made a point of taking four or five trips to Places We’ve Never Been Before in the UK. As I’ve been freelance/unemployed for almost two years now, naturally I've tried to build in work to as many of those frivolous little excursions as often as possible, thereby making the journeys affordable or free.
I’ve not had the chance to write about them here, or not had the will; I'm not sure which is truer. Perhaps – especially with Scotland – part of me didn’t want to skip around spitting expletives at the locals, damning the poor logic of their way of living or taking long, curling shits on their politics.
But because that can’t go on forever, and partly because of late I’ve had a number of my Paying Stories edited into monstrosities I didn’t recognise as my own, I have decided to buck that trend and tell you what happened when we visited the Outer Hebrides.
Unfortunately with this trip, the tourist board refused to help, citing something about not having the time or budget, but really meaning: “We didn’t like the PR we got from you last time, so go away.” As I begin to tire of how difficult it is to separate travel writing and copywriting, their complaints that my supposed journalism didn’t match their brochure could hardly have come at a worse time.
Anyway, part of me was happy to try and organise the whole thing without having to spend a quarter of my word count thanking corporate bodies for sponsoring the trip. Or at least I would have been if the Hebrideans had the first idea about tourism, promotion and urgency.
The Lonely Planet rehashes some old joke about a Spaniard and Western Islander talking about language: “Do you have an expression for ‘mañana, mañana’?” Ask the siesta-lover. “No, we have nothing that conveys such a sense of urgency,” och-aye-the-noos the Scot.
Having tried to organise an 8-day press trip in just two days, I can now heartily confirm this stereotype. In the 24 hours following a panicked flurry of emails from me, I failed to receive a single response, positive or otherwise. Nothing. To put that in context: a couple of weeks previously, I had an Icelandic hotel comping us two nights in Reykjavik within half an hour of asking.
Another couple of days later and one Hebridean guest house wrote back to say they were full. As late as 48 hours before the start of the trip, I had nothing but a vague idea of a route and a 16-year-old VW Polo to try and follow it. We decided to pack our camping gear. Crucially, though, I did have the help of Calmac Ferries, the company whose iron-clad monopoly services the transport between several dozen of Scotland’s islands.
Thankfully things started to improve until last minute we had a couple of people willing to meet us, and two hotels covering four of the seven nights we planned to spend off-shore. We decided just to camp the rest.
None of that matters, though, now that we’re sailing through the Sound of Mull, on a fat ferry they call the Clansman. After weeks of calamitous weather, when we set out everything is calm and the sun is shining. Having been around a bit, I’m still not sure there’s anywhere I’d rather be than Argyll and the west of Scotland when conditions are as nice as this.
As we edge out into the Atlantic, small schools of porpoise flee from our enormous boat, simultaneously trying to avoid the dive-bombing gannets that perforate the sea in search of fish. Nothing seems to bother the comparatively sedate, slack-jawed basking sharks which feed heartily in the good weather.
The boat makes two quick stops at barren Coll and neighbouring Tiree, the sunniest place in the entire UK, before continuing out for another two and a half hours to reach Barra, our first island.
Having had no time to research this trip, and with no help from any locals initially, we head to the Tourist Information office in Castlebay with the rest of the schmucks. This being a miniscule community (Barra has a total population of less than 1200) they have heard that Malcolm Macsomething* is selling the little gas canisters we need to cook on our little camping stove. You can find him down by the co-op, they say, oh and here’s a map of the island for 60p.
*Absolutely everyone is a Macsomething, including a few Macneils, the clan who historically owned the thousand-year-old Castle Kisimul, the ruins of which lie in the bay and give this town its name.
Surely enough, old Malky is down there. As the first genuine islander we meet, he’s a real stoater. With everyone knowing everyone else’s business and there being so many Macsomethings and this being and island and so many of them having the same furrowed brows and brown hair, it’d be a little facile to suggest Barra is apparently a little incestuous.
But as Malky says hello, one eye looking at me, the other looking beyond Wee Mo, it’s quite hard to keep a straight face – especially when he offers an empty, wet smile when ushering us into the shop. But, God-love-him, he’s got what we need and once he’s finished fiddling with the calculator to work out what 3 x £1.50 equals, we’ve got our change and are out in the sunshine to let our laughs out like air from full balloons.
Next we pop into the Co-Op to buy some food, squeezing past one woman in the doorway who says she’s hiding in the breeze to hide from “this terrible heat”. It’s 16C.
We leave for Vatersay, another island tethered onto Barra’s arse by a little causeway. In this weather, it’s no exaggeration to say the beaches down here are far superior to the disgusting Ko-Phi-Phi in Thailand, which we visited a couple of years ago. It was covered in litter and drunk teenagers who, when they weren’t trying to fuck each other, were fretting over magic mushrooms. Pure shores? Barra wins every time.
It’s wild and it’s beautiful. Here at the end of all things, everything is rather dramatic. The day slides away as we drive around the wee islands, frequently ducking into the ubiquitous passing places to let on-coming traffic pass on the narrow single-track road.
We take dinner in Castlebay, at the strange Café Kisimul, part Indian, part Italian, part chippy. Whatever it is, the scallop pakora is fantastic, if a little overpriced. Instead of heading straight back to the car, we take a stroll around to the bay and to take some pictures of the castle. That’s the plan, anyway, until we see a sailboat and a motorised dinghy seemingly racing each other. In fact, they’re shepherding a huge bottlenose dolphin, that’s been playing with them for an hour or so and – we hear later – spends a good deal of its time in and around the town.
As I said, the hotels which bothered to get back to me on Barra were all full, so we have to find somewhere to camp. Until just a couple of years ago, everyone was forced to wild-camp here, as no-one had the foresight to open a dedicated space. That’s changed now, with Visit Scotland even endorsing a couple of small areas on the island. We opt for one on the west, in the hopes of seeing a decent sunset, but by the time we get there, it’s almost completely full.
Thankfully a farmer next door has opened an otherwise useless field. A small sign at the gate says: “ALL CAMPERS WELCOME, CALL: 555 123456”. We’re the only people to take the absentee host up on their offer, smugly setting up our tent in perfect silence, while the others on the Visit Scotland site fight for elbow room.
The problem with our little home is that there doesn’t seem to be any running water. So we decide to head to the official site, and it’s there we meet one of the worst human beings we’ve come across anywhere in the world.
It’s understandable that this red-faced, furrow-browed, yellow-toothed, stereotype-enforcing, hideous cretin would grudge us going for a shower on his pitch. He’d definitely have a point if we tried to sneak a night on his property for free. But his vitriol at us requesting drinking water is genuinely astonishing.
I don’t know if I’ve come across another civilisation – I use the term lightly – on this planet that would refuse a traveller drinking water. Recently I was in Tajikistan, far out in the third-world GBAO region. The people there get water from wells, their electricity from rank diesel generators. When one of the villagers saw us coming he invited us into his house for tea and gave us bread from his pantry. When we tried to pay, he was insulted by the suggestion. He had virtually nothing, but he was still willing to share.
Compare that to what we’re faced with now, this barely decipherable miser-bastard, outraged that we want 500ml of water from his fucking hose. I’ve been to 61 countries now, and I can barely remember being left so outraged and depressed – and in Scotland of all places.
Eventually, the miser calms down enough to tell us we can have some of his shitey, plastic-tasting water, but the damage is already done. Worse, when we get back to our wee camp site and call the number, the woman tells us she has a hose hidden up by the shed near the entrance.
“OK, what about payment?” I ask. “Well, are you getting the wee ferry tomorrow?” She asks. We are, I say, heading north to the Uists. “Well just ask for Ronald, he’s my husband – he works the boat and you can give it to him. It’s £3.”
“OK, what about payment?” I ask. “Well, are you getting the wee ferry tomorrow?” She asks. We are, I say, heading north to the Uists. “Well just ask for Ronald, he’s my husband – he works the boat and you can give it to him. It’s £3.”
Though she’ll never know it, in that instant, by showing such a small kindness, such trust, the nameless wumman on the other end of the phone saves her island – perhaps the entire Hebrides – from certain destruction… Or at least me putting them on a private shit list. But she’s nice and then this happens and, for a while at least, the bad things don’t matter.
