Coming to my Beloved Country

The train trip from London to Inverness was comfortable but we got little sleep. It was a milk-train that stopped at every station along the way, waking us up at every stop. (Yawn). Our friends Wilf and Wendy picked us up at the Inverness station and drove us across the rather desolate Dirrie Mor and down through the lovely glen leading to Ullapool. You come down through trees and masses of blooming rhododendrons to the sea, where the white houses and shops of the town line the quey and trawlers ride at anchor along the shore. It is a beautiful sight.

Then over the mountains on a one-lane winding road to Coigach and the tiny village of Polbain (about 30 full-time residents). We stayed with Wilf and Wendy in their sea-side Seaview Cottage. Here we were introduced to their 6 pet sheep, and fed over the course of our stay on lamb, haggis, fish, and home-made wine.

Polbain's white-washed houses are strung out mostly along the upper (northern) side of a single-track road that circles the Coigach peninsula, on the far northwest coast of Scotland. The country is wild and open - mostly heather and gorse with very few trees except around the houses and gardens. On the south side of the road croft fields sweep down to the sea where the Summer Isles lie just off shore. Across the sea loch are the snow-capped Dundonnel mountains, and to the west across the sea you can make out the blue outline of the outer Hebrides.
The mountains behind the village are like the mountains of the moon - each standing seperately with it's own particular shape and personality. Stac Polly crouches like a lion, its top a spiky, rocky mane. Suillven is a sugar loaf. The Coigach mountains offer some of the best hill walking in Britain. This is not the soft green beauty of the Borders country or the pastural beauty of the Black Isle on the east coast of Scotland. It is wild, Heathcliff-on-the- moor-type beauty that fills my heart with joy.