We stagger back to the car with a couple in our arms – they're a fair weight – with the idea of varnishing them to preserve the colour. They'll look handsome and ornamental somewhere. (But in the end we don't.)
On our way back to Comar Lodge, we stop at the cemetery at Fasnakyle. A tall, thin elderly man, slightly stooped, is brushing leaves from a grave under the trees. We think he's a gardener at first but it's Old Duncan tidying his wife's grave. He doffs his cap to Catherine and she's charmed by the courtesy.
38
Back to Cougie, where the Pococks live in cheerful isolation. Cougie, way out west, is seven miles or more from Tomich and several from the nearest habitation. It's an isolated clearing in the woods – a few flat fields with a river running through and a huddle of low buildings, mainly timber, reached by a hard-packed forestry road badly in need of repair after winter damage. It's an oasis of open ground in the midst of dark forest.
A white-painted stone cottage, the only one of its kind, used to be the keeper's house for the neighbouring landowner, the Dutchman, Kwint. Mr Kwint had bad luck after the keeper left – later tenants did a moonlight flit and then squatters trashed the place – and he decided to sell. In the sales pitch, it sounded idyllic, but though potential buyers came in numbers they didn't buy. In the end, the Pococks made an offer and it was theirs.
The Pococks, father, mother and a vanload of family, had arrived one day out of the blue and stayed on as tenants and then owner-occupiers. There they sat tight, resisting all subsequent offers to buy them out from interested parties including the Forestry Commission whose trees surround them like a green ocean.
What brought them from the Welsh valleys to settle in this outpost? Val's husband John, stocky, grey-haired, sunk deep in a battered sofa in the living room, tells the story, with the occasional comment from wife in the kitchen, where she has venison sizzling in the pan.
They'd fallen in love with Scotland. Every year the family would head north in a Bedford work bus converted to seat a growing squad of children, chugging along narrow Highland roads in a cloud of exhaust fumes on the lookout for a site for their two bell tents. Camping holidays were fine but John, fretting at his office desk in the Welsh coalfields, wanted more. An offer of promotion felt like the first nail in his coffin and he decided to quit before the lid closed. A wild goose chase in the Bedford took father, mother and children rattling over to the remote Applecross peninsula in the north-west where he'd heard there were crofts for sale. They arrived to find . . . no crofts for sale in Applecross.
On the off chance, John walked into the Forestry Commission office in Inverness. In those days, it was the commission's policy to take on men to work part-time as foresters, with the enticement of a smallholding to supplement their wages off-season – a few acres and a cow or a pig for pioneering families.
John enquired.
‘Nothing doing,’ said the man behind the desk. On second thoughts: ‘There's a place called Cougie but you wouldn't be interested in that.’
‘Tell me about it,’ says John.
‘You wouldn't want it.’
‘Try me,’ says John.
The forestry man listed all the drawbacks. It was isolated, there was no water, it was damp . . .
‘Fine,’ says John.
Reluctantly, he was handed the keys and off they set cross-country again, past Tomich and heading into the unknown. Val pipes up from the kitchen: ‘Halfway along the road, before we'd even seen the place, I said this is it. This feels like home.’
They got to the wooden house in Cougie to find it in darkness with the windows boarded up and the previous occupants’ belongings still scattered about. But it still felt good.
‘We took it on the spot,’ says John.
After a spell as a forestry trapper armed with shotgun and rifle, shooting animals harmful to growing trees like rabbits and deer, he joined a Forestry Commission tree-planting squad. There's a line of trees on the skyline above the house, the fringe of a great plantation. ‘I planted those,’ says John. ‘I planted a million trees with this –’ and he takes up an old spade propped against the wall, the blade worn wafer thin with use.
Now John's trees have reached harvesting size and will soon be cut down. He dug them in on the bare moorland 40 years ago and soon he'll see them felled.
39
Mr Kwint, whose land abuts the Pococks’ domain, is a little hard to locate. He's fishing, he's shooting or just not around. His home is in the Netherlands and he visits only half a dozen times in the year, living in the old manse at Fasnakyle, a house seen through the trees near the power station.
Really he'd like to be closer to his land at West Guisachan but his attempts to have a more convenient house built have failed to win planning approval. The bureaucrats, so it's said, consider it might disturb nesting ospreys. A victory for the local wildfowl? Or is there more to it than that? I suspect undercurrents.
Mr Kwint invites me in, stooping in the door frame (he's a lanky lad), and then sprawls at ease in armchair. There are books on the shelf and drinks on the table beside him.
His English is impeccable. It seems that his parents were enamoured of all things English and even spoke English in the home. By the age of seven he was fluent.
England is embedded in his name, Renynout Anthony Kornelious Gideon – Anthony after Anthony Eden, Churchill's foreign secretary and later prime minister, whom his mother admired. Like Eden, her boy turned out to be tall, slim and debonair.
There was music in the family home and he plays the violin and goes to concerts, which distinguishes him from most lairds in the Scottish Highlands, native or foreign. But he enjoys the traditional lairdly pursuits. His love of fishing began at the age of five when he met boys fishing in the canal and asked for a shot at their rod – which was simply a bamboo cane. He says he was fascinated by the sight of the float bobbing on the water. Next day, he was back at the canal with basic tackle acquired from the local shop and that was the start of a long devotion.
Shooting came later – mostly roe deer in Denmark, followed by several years stalking red deer on trips to various Scottish estates until West Guisachan came on the market in 1994. Now friends and relatives fill the house at Fasnakyle in the stalking season.
There's a photograph on the wall of an Argocat – the stalker's vehicle – capsized on the moor. The accident happened when he tried to reverse on a steep bank and he and his brother were toppled into the peat. ‘We landed face to face, never having been so intimate in 60 years.’
40
Next time in Cougie, I find the forest road much improved. That's to say the potholes are mostly filled in – it's still a rough ride. Every winter, the timber trucks tear it up and in spring it gets patched.
Cougie in sunshine is transformed. John, Val and I sit on the veranda under a fluttering Union Jack. It feels colonial. A stretch of green field lies before us with a cow or two at the far end and a couple of piglets romping. The pigs have reddish coats and curiously long snouts; they look a bit boarish. Of course they do. They're a cross between wild pig and a Tamworth, which is where the red comes from. The sow lies at her ease, a fat lady sunning herself. Through this bucolic scene, the river winds between heaped boulder banks where there are signs of engineering work – the family's handiwork, no doubt. (They're used to hard labour. Val says they had to dig six miles of trench for a cable in order to get online.) A blue boat swings midstream on its painter. It feels like Arcadia.
Returning on the forest road I stop by the Riabhach Burn and get out of the car. Down the slope, below my feet, there's a brown and peaty pool where the current cuts into the bank. I scramble down the grassy bank to the water's edge for a closer look at three alder trees on the far side, wizened and grey with lichen. (I watch trees a lot.) The burn's maybe three yards wide at this point.
There's a sudden movement at the water's edge. An otter, grey-sleek, swims out from the bank, busily nosing here and there, hump back glistening. Suddenly he (Is
it a he? I wouldn't know) torpedoes through the water, twisting and turning, then stops and lifts his whiskery head, a fish held in its jaws. He catches sight of me and we eye each other, both motionless, for long seconds. Then he's off, bounding through the shallows and over the humpy grass, loping and sinuous, towards the forest.
It's the first time I've seen an otter in the wild. On a wet day as the rain plasters my hair and drips off my nose. Such sightings are a benison. A joy.
41
The door swings open – bang! – and three jolly fishermen burst into the bar at the Tomich inn, laughing and joking: ‘Three degrees and snowing – it's chilly up there!’ Much rubbing of hands. And: ‘Osprey didn't stay long, did he? Five minutes and he was off.’
And this is May!
Two are dressed in plus-twos (breeches), fishing jackets and green socks. The third wears an olive green sweater with elbow patches and a hole in the back, deerstalker hat with a hedgehog of flies hooked around it, a red-and-white spotted kerchief round his neck and trousers with a big damp patch at the seat which steams gently when he takes his stance at the fire with his backside to the flames. He'll be the gillie.
‘The best gillie in Scotland,’ the burly one (an Englishman) shouts across to the landlord, tall, slim and bearded (another Englishman), and the gillie smiles modestly. Possibly he thinks so too. As fishermen do, they discuss their catch – it may have been cold on the Hill Lochs but they've landed 15 brown trout and seem satisfied with that.
Drinks come swiftly, drams all round and a whisky and green ginger for the burly Englishman – Crabbie's green ginger, fire in the belly, a favourite Ne'erday tipple but warming at any season.
The little bar at the Tomich inn is snug, with a fire in the grate blazing up the lum when days are chill. There are pictures round the walls – half a dozen photographs above the bar of grinning fishermen with their trophy catches flopping over their arms or dangling at their side (who caught what and where and the weight of it) and one or two dreamy watercolour sketches of fish, one with a sinuous twist in the mottled back and a languid eye, with a hint of loch shore and an island with a castle on it in the background. In the ingle neuk, incongruously, are two prints of old-time Maidstone. Maidstone? Odd for Tomich, I say, but it seems that's where the landlord lived before quitting the rat race. (He worked in advertising.) Before buying the hotel, the nearest he'd been to the Highlands was Glasgow.
‘I'm off for my tea,’ says the gillie, finishing his dram.
Later, passing the open dining-room door on my way out, I see, seated at table, washed, changed, brushed, combed and tidied, the burly fisherman and his companion, napkins tucked in at their necks. There's white napery on the table, flowers in a vase, cutlery before them and wine in their glasses. A fine way to round off a fresh spring day in the open.
42
The gillie is called Dennis. He lives at the end of a lane above the road at Tomich.
There are wellies and fishing tackle in the porch. In the tiny living room, his mother brings me a cup of tea. Dennis is a single parent and he and his daughter live with her.
Surely I've seen him before? In Glen Strathfarrar, glimpsed through a screen of alder and birch trees, two people side by side on a shingle bank where the broad river sweeps round noisily. They stood with their backs to me some distance away, a picture of concentration. Dennis – it must have been Dennis – with a net over his shoulder, bent his head to speak to the little old lady beside him. Puffs of white hair fringed the pork-pie hat she wore. She'd a rod in her hand, gave a cast and the line made an arc over the water. I watched for some minutes till they moved on, she teetering over the loose stones of the gravel bed while he laid a supporting hand on her elbow to steady her steps – a respectful rather than intimate gesture.
‘Mrs Dunbar,’ says Dennis. She's 87, he says, and an enthusiast. He remembers she caught two salmon that time on the Farrar. ‘She heard that the Queen Mum caught her last salmon at the age of 89 and she reckons to equal that. Or more.’
‘I can't remember when I wasn't fishing,’ he says. ‘In primary school, if there was a spate, I'd be down at the river right away. I caught my first salmon when I was 11.’ His grandfather and great-grandfather were both keen fishermen and the tradition continues. ‘My daughter Katy's seven and she started when she was four. She's keen as mustard.’ One day she caught 20 trout.
What's the attraction of fishing? ‘It's all about the take,’ he replies – the split second when the fish takes the fly – ‘and suddenly you get this huge surge of adrenaline.’ On the other hand, for others, the best sport is when the fish is on the line and they're fighting to reel it in. ‘Mrs Dunbar, for one – for her, it's all in the play.’
When Dennis was young, his mentors were the Blue Charm and Willie the Fish (real name Fraser) on the rivers Glass and Farrar. When the Charm advised him to concentrate on one or the other, getting to know every pool and riff and where the salmon lay, he chose the Farrar, concentrating on the lower stretch at Culligran. That's in the latter part of the season. In spring, he's on the Hill Lochs for trout.
‘You could put a dozen fish down on this carpet and I could tell you which loch they came from,’ he asserts without the hint of a boast, mere matter-of-fact. Well, I'll believe him. Tonight, there are no trout on the carpet, only a box of flies by the hearth. He ties them himself, delicate wispy things, multicoloured, some of them iridescent and glittery. The largest by far, a carroty looking affair, is for catching pike. Among the smaller flies is the one he calls Juliet, named after the wife of Frank Spencer-Nairn who owns the Culligran Estate in Glen Strathfarrar: ‘She's very pretty but she doesn't catch a lot.’ (He's joking.) In fact, he says, it's one of his favourite flies and, as for the lady Juliet, she's a fine fly-fisher.
Dennis says ospreys often frequent the Hill Lochs. ‘Most days you'll see one or maybe two feeding. They've marvellous eyesight. In the last two or three years, there have been sea eagles. There's a good phone signal up there [there's none on lower ground] and, if I see a sea eagle, I text Dan and he comes rushing up.’ Dan is the RSPB man who took over from Dave at Corrimony.
Usually, he takes his guests on the loch from nine to five (office hours!) but occasionally they'll go out again at eight, in the gloaming. ‘Often you get bigger trout at night,’ he says – maybe even five- to eight-pounders, which are weighty fish. These are likely to escape the pot – most of the big ones are dropped back into the water.
Midges can be a torment in late summer. ‘I've seen guests with paper bags over their heads and holes cut for their eyes. I've seen guests get out of the car and run to the edge of the loch and push out like mad for the middle. It's usually better out there. But if the wind drops, they'll find you.’ He's not affected as much as some but, at the worst, he'll pull a net over his head. He reckons that children are less susceptible than adults – or so it seems with Katy. Loch or river fishing can be equally affected. On the River Farrar, he calculates on losing about four days’ fishing a season to midges.
Dennis says that some clients like to be left to fish a river on their own and he'll leave them for an hour or so, returning now and again to check progress. Others prefer his company – his advice and his chat. He's a great talker, is Dennis.
He says that once in late September a stag came down the hill in Glen Strathfarrar looking for hinds.
‘I love your Highlands,’ said his woman client, an American. ‘I've seen a stag and now I can hear a piper.’
‘My God,’ said Dennis, ‘it's my mobile.’ (It had a pipe tune as ring-tone.) He grabbed it from his vest pocket, it shot out of his grasp and splashed into the pool and, silenced, no doubt lies there still.
43
Every spring six pals come to Tomich from all quarters for a week's fishing on the Hill Lochs. It's the only time they meet.
Forbes, at 80, is the oldest, broad in the shoulder, stocky, slightly stooped, with a quizzical eye. A doctor from Manchester, he has fished in the Highlands
for more than half a century. His son played with Dennis at Knockfin when they were boys.
Mark, 40-ish, is the youngest – a detective sergeant in the Met who lectures at Hendon Police College. Like all of them, he came to the sport early. An uncle in Dingwall took him out in a boat, handed him a rod and hey! – he had a bite. In time, he guessed that the fish was already on the line when his uncle put the rod in his hands but he never asked: ‘Let me live with my illusion.’
Mike, an engineer, is the heavyweight of the party. The boat settles when he steps aboard. The legs in his breeches are like young tree trunks. He lives in Carlisle where his father was a haaf-netter – wading out into the Solway Firth with a net draped from a yoke on his shoulders like an aquatic Angel of the North. His face is framed by a short grizzly beard.
David's grandfather had a boat on Loch Leven in Fife. David lives in Manchester and travels the world as a consultant in ‘enterprise architecture’ (I don't know what that means but it sounds impressive). A man for the great outdoors, when young he was a climbing instructor at Glenmore Lodge outdoor centre at Aviemore. He's about to become an alpha-Munroist, having set out to climb every major peak in the Highlands not just once but once in each season. He's on the last lap: ‘Eight in summer and seven in winter still to do.’
Howard, a pathologist in Edinburgh, has known this area since boyhood. (He caught his first fish, a perch, in the city's Duddingston Loch.) He spent school holidays with his family in a cottage in Cannich.
Richard, the newcomer to the party, is in business in Suffolk selling kitchens and bathrooms. A chance meeting six years ago led to his adoption by the group.
The catalyst for some of them was Kyle, the man who organises fishing parties on the lochs. ‘I wandered into Tomich, was introduced to Kyle and the rest is history,’ says Howard. Kyle's eccentricities are legendary. Mike came to Tomich after a planned fishing trip to Ireland fell through. He wrote for information and Kyle's reply was ‘so off the wall that I thought, that sounds like my sort of thing’. Mark agrees. Twenty years ago he received a sheaf of glossy bumf about the area, amongst which was a scrap of paper torn from a notebook bearing a badly typed message – the letter e was missing and a heavy hand on the keys had punched holes in the paper. It was signed by Kyle and the significant phrase was ‘I liv· and br·ath· fishing’. Mark was hooked.
Season in Strathglass Page 8