The Glencoe area, deep in the Scottish Highlands, is a brilliant place to stay a while. We’ve been there several times, campervan-ing AND B+B-ing, and this is one morning – among so many – that stays with us...
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(Ballachulish - Wed 1st June 1994)
It may be the first day of Summer, but it’s still best to do your own forecasting, by checking the morning’s weather out our first floor B+B window. We decide it’ll be clearer and drier today, and got to have at least a fifty-fifty chance of being close. And right on cue a young deer lopes across the front fields, stops every so often to sniff the air, looking SO “Wild Spirit of the Highlands” in this setting. HAS to be a good omen.
A Yorkshire family of four is with us at breakfast – great people, Mum and Dad in their mid-sixties, holidaying with their son and daughter-in-law. Mum is a bright spark but looks as though she has some bone/joint problem, and Dad is so Yorkshire you can hardly make out what he's saying. Son is ex Regular Army – tattoos, has done a couple of stints in Northern Ireland, his wife shy and pretty, a biggish country lass. Between them they take up a fair chunk of the table.
The six of us get into a decent chat over breakfast – weather, Euro politics, their holidays - but after a while we can’t ignore it any longer. It’s the elephant in the room.
We get onto cricket.
With Yorkeshiremen.
Who believe Yorkshire invented the game.
With two Yorkeshiremen in fact. Both large. One of them with tattoos.
Picture this...
- Only last summer Australia did an Ashes tour in England.
- In the One Day warmup series Australia won the 3-match series 3–zip.
- In the real thing Australia won the 6-match series 4–1 (+1 draw), two of them by more than an innings (having already successfully defended The Ashes back home in the 1990/91 season).
- The gulf in quality between the sides was vast. No less than nine of Australia's team played all six tests. But (coming off a recent mauling on the sub-continent) England tried no less than 24 players in the series, including seven debutantes! AND Graham Gooch resigned the captaincy after the Fourth Test.
It was not a happy English summer. For most Englishmen. For ALL Yorkshiremen.
But – the subject of cricket is now on the table. I, wisely, say very little and try not to smile, but instead make soothing noises, avoiding too much eye contact, and let them graciously acknowledge that Aus “did pretty well... this time.” But Herself can’t help herself.
“But we’re SO grateful that you taught us colonials how to play cricket though.”
There’s one godalmighty pregnant pause, but they all finally have a good laugh, deeply edged in irony, and we escape with our skins intact.
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We head in towards Glencoe’s small village, but on the way just have to stop and check out the Episcopalian Church of St John, in a sensational setting looking out over Loch Leven, with the brooding lumps of Sgorr Dhonuill and Sgorr Dhearg rearing up behind.
It’s a small stone building, a very plain and simple log shape, and sort of squat and tough, with a slate roof, a robust fireplace and chimney on one end wall, a door up the other end on the long face, with what looks like a filled-in window alongside. And if it wasn’t for the little (and slightly bent) wooden cross up on the gable at the opposite end to the chimney, you’d swear it was an old cottage.
He tells us that some time just before 1800 the local bishop decided this wilderness needed something better than having the local congregation all standing around in the rain for services. Tough as these Highlanders were, you’d have to think they would’ve been pleased with that little bit of news. So they built this little stone chapel, but going by the size of it you’d have to think it was mostly as an expression of the solidness of their faith, as you'd only squeeze about dozen of the faithful in it at any one time.
But he tells us the little chapel served the people well enough, and when the new church was eventually built nearby they couldn’t abide the waste, so they still kept the old one, and – great idea – they decided to use it for any just-married young couples who didn’t have a house, to help them get started.
Then he leads us over to the cemetery, and points out a fairly new headstone, and tells us that this is the very last couple to use it as their first home, and they died only recently in their 80s, not only that, but they were both born in it, and you find yourself walking away thinking - now THAT’S continuity.
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