Lisa Drewe's book, 'Islandeering', is out now (16.99, Wild Things Publishing) It’s that kind of island: a place of neolithic shell middens, grey seals in limpid waters and brown cows ambling across beaches.įor more details on these islands and walks, visit. The second time I made the crossing, water up to my ankles, I was with a father searching for Irish Lady’s tresses white orchids, and his daughter, who was convinced she might find a mermaid. I remember mountain biking across the Strand, with a few centimetres of water fish sticking in my spokes, joyous at the exhilaration of it all. When I finally found the post office there was a little handwritten note with the tide times on it. The first time I tried to get to Oronsay from the Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay, someone told me that Keith the postman is the only person who knows exactly when low tide is, because he drives his salt-wrecked van across the sand to serve the eight residents. There’s a B&B at the bird observatory, where you can accompany RSPB wardens catching and ringing birds, but the most elegant stays are the two renovated lighthouse keeper’s cottages, and the mutton pie at the café is divine. On Orkney’s northernmost island, the locals are exceptional: such as Billy Muir, keeper of the huge lighthouse for 50 years, but also firefighter, air-traffic controller and handyman extraordinaire, who dances a mean eightsome reel and has a hundred tales of shipwrecks. I came during the summer sheep festival and was immediately employed building a wall to keep the sheep on the shore. But I fell hardest for North Ronaldsay, where life for the 40-odd islanders revolves around its curious seaweed-eating sheep. Papa Westray, Bill Bryson’s favourite, is an upbeat, community-driven place, where I was invited to a coffee morning straight off the ferry. That islomania.Įach of Orkney’s 20 inhabited islands feels different.
There was one view, overlooking the rocks and skerries near Althandu, that caused us to slam on the brakes. Just recently, my husband and I cycled around the Summer Isles, off the coast near Ullapool. I no longer tend to travel abroad, partly for environmental reasons but mainly because I don’t feel the need to. This is the land I come from, and yet it continually surprises me. Their often quirky identity is bound up in each other.įor me, though, the Britishness is part of the appeal. In the Hebrides, many don’t really see themselves as Scottish, let alone British. I also love island communities, where people have become reliant on one another. The foreshore is where we see a different world reveal itself at low tide perhaps the last true wilderness in the British Isles. The feeling of being surrounded by sea still brings me a certain kind of peace I think there’s something primal in us that longs to see the horizon and swim in wild water. When I come back to Wiltshire, I struggle with the fact that the land is so managed that the grass is fertiliser-green, as opposed to the wild sandy-green of Hebridean machair. I now live part-time on Skye, facing the little tidal island of Oronsay.
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