My Heart is in the Highlands...
Funny, that now I should sit here in that long and dark Scottish winter night, in an area, where seven people live on the square kilometre and where the next door neighbour might be a good walk away. The wind is howling. I can’t see them, but I know that some sheep have found shelter behind our garden wall, which by the way is called "dyke" here (very much like the German "Deich"). The sun has been setting around four o’clock in the afternoon, and if you want to witness the sunrise it does not mean that you have to be very brave in getting up in the early morning. Just take your time! Have a good sleep-in! Get up, stretch thoroughly and after you had a shower and a cuppa, there will still be plenty of time to step out of the door and see that wonderfully soft winter sun rising not very high over the horizon at a point right beside Ben Damph.
How did it all happen? First I really must inform you that I am the most unmystical person you can imagine, and then I have to admit that somehow in a fairly magic way I always knew in my heart of hearts that Celtic landscapes where the thing for me, even before I ever set foot on any kind of afore said soil.
When I was thirteen I joined in a student exchange with a school in Brittany, which was the first celtic corner I ever saw. There were a few places where I found what I was looking for, but all in all I was a little bit disappointed. But still I knew, it had to be it ! So when I was offered the chance to spend a holiday together with seven other girl guides in Scotland when I was only fifteen - and in the mid sixties it seemed very, very far away - I happily went off into the adventure. And adventure it was!
I remember the day I got hooked as clearly as if it happened only yesterday. We came from Crianlarich and were on our way up to Fort William. We got a lift with a pick-up, where four of us could sit in the open back. It was a glorious summer day, when we went through the Glencoe and there it happened all of a sudden. It snapped! It took my breath away and I became very quiet for a very long time, while my heart was full of overwhelming joy. Something in me burst open on that day. That was it! I knew it! And ever since I spent my life telling myself and others that one day I will be having a place of my own up here in the Highlands.
Not that I did not try other places. I travelled a lot of countries and specially those with Celtic traditions. I have been to Ireland, I have been to Wales. I liked it. I would always say: I´ll come back. But somehow I didn’t. But I came back to Scotland.
Time passed on. Things happened. I fell in love and fell out of love again. And again. And again. And eventually I knew that I had found the right fellow to spend my life with. But of course he had no idea that I was hooked up on a few wonderful mountains, the wind and the sea, the green hills and the black and silvery water of the lochs. So I took him to the test. The first time the two of us literally surrounded Scotland with a car and a tent. That urgent need to see all and every corner! It seems to be a dreadful German habit, like throwing towels on the deckchairs besides the swimming pool. In the most remote place, where they have not seen a living soul for the last five years, a car from Munich will meet a car from Augsburg. It is true! I saw it myself! (Ours was the car from Munich.) After that holiday, however, I knew that I had chosen rightly, Mr. Wonderful liked it very much as well. He fully agreed to return to Scotland as soon as possible. Which we did. And again and again.
We came to Loch Torridon only by chance. The year before I visited Assynt on my own, youth-hostelling and with the rucksack. It is north of Ullapool and about as far away from it all as you can get. Very impressive mountains! Suilven which towers the whole area like a feature from another world. Wonderful sandy beaches!
For the following holiday I was looking for inexpensive accommodation for the two of us on the west coast as close as possible to that beautiful part of Scotland. The best bargain brought us to Loch Torridon, which was not all that near. So I was even a bit disappointed. And: the best bargain turned out to be a converted sheep shed! And even then the sheep could not have been very big! But the loch was breathtakingly beautiful and so we settled in and started to explore the area.
Loch Torridon
The Loch Torridon is part of the mainland opposite to the Isle of Skye. It is beyond the invisible border the majority of tourists hardly ever crosses. The border of course being the Caledonian Canal and the lochs which connect Inverness to Fort William and further (amongst them of course the notorious Loch Ness). But even for those tourists who travel further, somehow it lies in the wind-shadow of the way to the Isle of Skye in the south and the road to Gairloch and Ullapool in the north and is rather undiscovered and unexplored compared to better known holiday places.
When we came the first time, there where two bars, equally distant, and that meant quite, quite far away on either side of our dwelling. In one of them we made initial contacts with the natives. Actually none of these people we thought to be local would themselves consider to be so. There are not so many locals here. As Billy Connolly, our favourite Scottish comedian says: "THE PLACE IS EMPTY!" Well, not really empty, but the population is so scarce that it does make a difference whether one house more or less is inhabited. Sometimes the existence of a school, a post office, a shop or a petrol station depends on this. This might be the reason why, when we eventually decided to settle down here, we were made welcome and never felt rejected for the fact that after all we were aliens, even Germans!
That is many years ago now. In 1986 we bought our site in Wester Alligin. It was the first site we ever looked at. While we were still on the way for that first visit we were not even sure whether we wanted to buy something at all. It was more like a plan for a holiday pastime to drive around and look at other people’s houses.
We stopped the car, climbed down into what might have been a garden many years ago and turned around. What we saw was a typical cottage (10m x 5m) with two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs under the roof. It was a derelict and had eventually to be replaced by a new building. In the middle of the garden stood one of these ugly but practical caravans, which was ready to be used, so that we had a roof over our heads until the house was re-erected. But the most important thing was the place itself and the view.
The old house
