Marram

by Leonie Charlton

  ‘Imagine what it was like before the road was built,’ I said. ‘I suppose most settlements were reached from the sea.’

  We passed a steel-clad Nissan hut with BOAT BUILDER J. MacAulay in careful lettering above the rounded doors. I wondered if it was still in use. From the outside you’d think not, but inside, who knew what was hidden away from prying eyes and wrecking weather.

  We could now see the A859, the main road that linked Tarbert with Leverburgh down the West coast, cutting across the hillside ahead of us. We decided to park at a Hydro Electric station where there was plenty of turning room, and where hopefully the trailer wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. We locked the doors and set off down the main road heading back to Leverburgh, both of us putting out our thumbs when we heard a car coming. The first car that passed didn’t slow down for us, nor the next, nor the next. This continued for an hour and a half. There was very little traffic. It was well after seven o’clock now, but still I couldn’t believe that no one was stopping for two women, cleaner than we’d been for days and not at all scary-looking. My thoughts turned dark as I walked along the bright white line, loose chippings flying up every time a car sped past. Umber peat cuttings opened on each side of the road. I could feel tears surfacing with each hard tarmac footfall. I felt vulnerable, and ashamed, and was too embarrassed to share my feelings with Shuna.

  Finally, a little white car stopped and a man jumped out. Moving bags and books off the back seat he said, ‘I’m only going as far as Horgabost.’ We were delighted to get a lift however far, having realised by then that we might be walking all the way to Leverburgh. Peter asked us questions and was enthusiastic about our trip. He’d moved up from London a few years earlier, was a writer and journalist and on his way back from the swimming pool in Tarbert. When we told him we’d be camping at Horgabost the following night he invited us round for dinner. ‘See you tomorrow night then,’ we said cheerily as we got out.

  Peter had changed our luck. Within minutes a woman from Leverburgh picked us up. She was chatty and friendly, and told us how she and her husband had moved up years before, leaving behind a rock-music scene and a very different life in England. She dropped us outside the bunkhouse.

  We were hungry and ready for a drink. I felt subdued by how I’d faltered, how low I’d got walking along that road, but we were back now amongst friendly faces. A couple were talking about St Kilda, where they were heading next day, her sixtieth birthday present. Her excitement was infectious. There were spaces on the boat, why didn’t we go, it was the chance of a lifetime. We thought about it but decided to stay on course. St Kilda would remain the sudden thrill of that night on Vallay when we’d seen a cone of mauve crown the horizon. I started chopping onions, and by the time Shuna handed me a glass of extra dry Prosecco tears were pouring down my face.

  DAY SIXTEEN

  Leverburgh to Horgabost

  Ross and Chief watched us from where they were tied up at the wall. Tarpaulins, weighted down over the tidy peat stack between us, fussed in the wind. We set off towards Leverburgh, all of us glad to be on the move once again. Blackface ewes called throatily to their lambs as we passed. They watched, jaws stilled just long enough to make sure we weren’t a threat, before resuming their clockwise chewing. A plaque set off from the road said Site from which Harris Tweed was first marketed by the Paisley Sisters. The lettering below was eroded, I could only make out the word home and the date 1864. A fine rain had been falling all morning, but now there was a bite of blue overhead and everything glistened. It was the first time we’d seen full sun on Harris. Between the smattering of small islands mud flats were inscribed with silver water runnels, and Shelducks guddled, flashes of white and chestnut.

  As we arrived back at Leverburgh an ovation of purple irises halted us in our stride. We waited as a capped man passed by with his dog, two ewes and a lamb. Behind them a rainbow lifted over the tumbledown tin cottage on Ferry Road. We passed the Church of Scotland on our right, the Community Shop on our left, before stopping in front of the primary school where Kathryn worked. She’d asked us if we’d call in on our way past so the children could meet the ponies. The children came out in waves of high spirits and red sweatshirts. First the nursery children, then the Gaelic class, then the class that is taught in English. How fabulous to have the choice like that. Chief was delighted to meet the chattering children, extending his muzzle for rubs, but Ross didn’t feel quite right to me, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

  ‘I’m a bit worried about Ross,’ I said as we left. ‘He seems odd.’ We rode into the car park at the Church of Scotland and I hopped off. As I went to check his feet, he straddled his hind legs, and with a great sigh began to pee. The pee went on, and on, and on. In the midst of this seemingly never-ending stream the church door opened and the minister stepped out, his white collar flashing as he hurried to his car, his long coat wrapped around him against the wind. I lifted my hand in a giggle-ridden greeting. I think he nodded in our direction, but couldn’t be sure. And still the pee was coming, a veritable river was now running down the tarmac slope of the car park. The car reversed speedily then drove past, through the pee-torrent, and out onto the road. Finally, with another great sigh Ross brought his back legs back up underneath himself.

  ‘The timing! Oh my God,’ I said, looking up at Shuna. ‘I have never seen such a huge pee, it went on forever. I hope the minister didn’t take offence.’

  ‘Ross must have been desperate,’ Shuna said. ‘They hate peeing on concrete because of the splashes.’

  ‘Oh, Ross,’ I said, turning to him, ‘I bet you feel better now.’ Still laughing we unpacked our waterproofs. The sky had turned dark and it looked like heavy rain was on its way. Just retribution perhaps.

  We turned off the main road and headed north towards Loch na Moracha, and the point on the map where we’d drawn in pencil the route of the Hebridean Way. This was a new walking route from Vatersay to the Butt of Lewis. It wasn’t on our OS map but was a stretch of new pathway that would enable us to miss out a few miles of main road. The sun was shining again. Snipe snipped across the moor on either side of us and the wind whisked away our words. We left the road where a brand-new sign said Hebridean Way, Sgarasta/Scarista 7km/4.4m. The path cut across the low-lying land north of the loch to skirt the slopes of Ben Mùla, a small rounded hill 271 metres at the summit. From somewhere on its treeless slopes a Cuckoo was calling. We set off down the path which was made of some kind of membrane laid over the peat, and skimmed with a layer of gritty surface. I felt the magic of following a new path.

  ‘It’s amazing how much the ground is moving under Ross’s hooves,’ said Shuna from behind. ‘The ponies don’t seem to mind though.’

  The path meandered through stacks of peats, freshly cut and drying in the sun between shoals of Bog Cotton. Ahead was a brand-new, stainless steel foot-gate, easily wide enough for ponies where the path changed. Two ditches ran alongside a raised pathway. It looked like a machine had dug trenches and put the peat on top of the central strip. Leaving the ponies to graze we went for a look. We stepped on the foot-worn path down the middle, even without the ponies the whole thing wobbled softly. We walked on wondering if it would hold the ponies’ weight, some hopeful part of us believing that surely it had been made sound enough to take the weight of ponies.

  ‘It’s not very far before the path hits the harder hill,’ I said optimistically.

  ‘Yes, it’s not far,’ said Shuna. ‘Maybe we could take the saddles and gear off and carry that across ourselves.’ I looked down, imagining what would happen if the ponies stepped into the ditches, or jumped across to the peat bog beyond. Up close the water in the ditches was black as oil. I came to my senses with a jolt.

  ‘Shuna, if we’re worried enough to take the saddles off, why are we even considering it? There’s no need to take a risk here, we can get to Scarista along the road.’

  ‘Yup, let’s go back to the ponies, make a coffee and head back along the road.�
��

  Ross was standing still, snoozing, I thought, but when I got closer I saw that the whole saddle and all the bags had slipped round and was hanging almost under his belly. He stood with his body patiently rebalancing, with a look of such forbearance in his eyes that I blushed.

  ‘You are a star, Ross,’ I said, undoing the girth and with Shuna’s help lifting the saddle and packs back on. I physically didn’t have the strength on my own.

  ‘Why did they put the path right across the middle of a bog?’ I asked. ‘There must be so much local knowledge about path building. Why not ask people who know about these things? Look, the path could have circled round the low hill, avoiding the bog.’ Shuna took the stove out of its mesh bag, and placed each spidery leg with care. During the whole trip I didn’t set up the stove once.

  ‘Seems such a shame,’ she said, ‘to go to all this expense and not build a path to last. Some of the paths we’ve ridden the past few years, hundreds of years old and still in good condition. I hope the art isn’t being lost.’

  Buzzing with coffee we led the ponies back towards the road. The bronze in Ross’s coat glinted as sunshine spilt between clouds. A car was parked near the sign and two people were working at the peats. In their seventies, or maybe their eighties, the lady was working in a skirt. They didn’t raise their heads as we passed, not even when we said hello, but the woman’s hands paused in their stacking and I caught her eye for a fleeting second. She had the same look of forbearance and stalwartness as Ross. I felt insubstantial, unworthy, foolish. It was good to step back onto the tarmac road.

  ‘That was a close one,’ I said, as we both looked back at the quaking path, its glinting silver ditches. It was sobering to think we’d even momentarily entertained the thought of carrying on along that path. A strange mist can come down on a long ride which can make carrying on feel like a very good idea, when clearly it isn’t. We’d have to watch out for that mist. Then the morning’s weather met us head on. We tucked our chins, squinted our eyes, and trotted forwards into the wind and rain feeling chastened and chilled.

  Our waterproofs were dry again by the time we stepped onto the sand before Sgarasta on the West coast. Ross took long strides, happy to feel the soft give of sand after the plod of the road miles. We rode past salt marshes being grazed by sheep and red cattle. To the west, across amber-flecked tidal shallows, was the smooth bulge of Gob an Tobha, toe head. The lower slopes were bright green, above was a heather-brown crown run through with an arc of quartz. The clouds had bunched into blooms of white and the smell of the sea was getting stronger. Ross and Chief strode along side by side, manes spun to ringlets by the wind. We rode up onto a bank of dunes, a new sound reached us, waves, as they unravelled against the moon crescent of Sgarasta beach that swept three golden miles to the north east.

  ‘The colours!’ I gasped. The sun swept a spotlight of aquamarine across water that pulsed with bands of turquoise and teal. The horizon was a deep Prussian blue holding up the hills of North Harris. It was hard to take it all in, the gold of the sand where the sun lit it, the startlingly white seahorses surging in, the unfathomable sweep of colours through the sea. We stood and stared as our feet sank into the deep dry sand, and the Marram spun against our legs.

  Shuna sat down and Chief and Ross stood behind her, drifting into snooze mode, while I walked down the steeply sloping beach to the water’s edge. The waves were somersaults of sapphire breaking on the beach, leaving finely drawn lines on the sand. Then followed the sucking backwash, a storm of sand and white bubbles. I crouched down and watched as each new wave re-drew the line in the sand between wet and dry, foam-topped peaks coming a little higher all the time. I chose my bead, there was no question. I held it in my hand, a flame-lamped glass bead, which, like the sea in front of me, almost defied definition: colours within colours within colours, seams of blue-greens and green-blues. I wonder where you got this one from, Mum, it’s exquisite.

  I placed the bead a couple of feet above the bubbling tideline. Tiny Clams came into focus, smooth shells decorated with concentric circles of gradated colour: this one, all pinks; this one, almost pearlescent whites; that one, dove greys. There were tiny broken mussel shells too, fragments of electric and cobalt blue. As the sea sucked back with each wave my insides turned over. I watched the sun chase tracks of turquoise full-tilt across the sea and wanted to follow out west to Tir nan Og, to the place that Seton Gordon describes as the land set beneath the horizon of the Atlantic (…) where one may meet, in perpetual youth and in all the glory of their strength and beauty, many of those who are counted great and worthy of memory. I placed the bead gently and stood up. I didn’t want to be there in the moment that the sea took it away, I wanted to remember this bead on the cusp between worlds. I walked up the beach towards Shuna and the ponies, not looking back, hearing the boom of the surf and a Cow calling faraway.

  The ponies had woken up and were grazing on the Marram with a rhythmical soft tearing sound that made my mouth water. We ate smoked mussels, oatcakes speckled with sunflower seeds, dark chocolate. Shuna had the map out. ‘I think that’s where we’re going, we’ll be passing through those hills the day after tomorrow.’ The hills of North Harris were dark. I wished they were in sunshine, I think that would have reassured me. ‘See that steep-sided clip on the skyline, that’s Sròn Scourst, I think, and the track out to Kinloch Rèasort will pass below that.’

  Shuna lay back on the sand. I got out my notebook and turned to the back. Mum’s Playlist, I wrote at the top of the page. Where to start? The Highland pipes, she’d loved them, they give me goosebumps, she used to say, pure delight spreading across her face every time we heard them:

  1. Pibroch (which one?)

  2. ‘American Pie’ – Don MacLean

  The memories flooded in. Mum singing along, sunshine streaming through a window, her hair long and red. She was ironing, it must have been in Wales, I never remembered her ironing after Wales.

  3. ‘Perfect Day/Walk on the Wild Side’ – Lou Reed

  Mum singing aloud again, and the coloured girls go doo do doo do too do do doo, freewheeling in the vintage Rover 90 down a hill on Anglesey, the three of us shouting faster, faster, her telling us not to lean against the doors in case they opened, the smell of old leather and wood.

  4. ‘Escape is so Simple’ – Cowboy Junkies

  I could picture the cassette tape – The Caution Horses – sitting on the table in her workshop at Cairnholy, the gas fire gusting warm breath against our legs as we worked opposite each other, threading beads.

  5. ‘Into the Mystic’ – Van Morrison

  ‘Shall we think about moving?’ Shuna had sat up, was checking the time on her phone. ‘It’s getting on.’ I nodded, still writing.

  6. ‘Blowing in the Wind’ – Bob Dylan.

  ‘You having fun there?’ Shuna asked. I nodded again. ‘I’m writing a playlist for Mum, the music I remember her listening to. What’s the Dylan song that goes see for me that her hair’s hanging down?

  ‘“Girl from the North Country”, I think.’ Shuna replied. I wrote it down and put my notebook back in my pocket and we set off along the beach, song lyrics looping through my head. I made a mental note to add Édith Piaf’s ‘Je ne Regrette Rien’ to the list later.

  Two men and a dog were lying under the dunes. The dog, some kind of setter or pointer, bounded up to us. It turned out his owner worked for the North Harris Trust. ‘We’re waiting for the tide to go out a bit so we can surf,’ he explained to us. We chatted for a while. He was passionate about his job and passionate about this place, and his eyes lit up when we outlined the route we were planning to ride over the next few days.

  ‘Are there any locked gates? Do we need to contact anyone?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it’s all North Harris Trust land, but you’ll be spotted. You’ll definitely be spotted. There’s a watcher’s house out there, you know, for the poachers. Someone will see you, even if you don’t see them.’ We rode away, warmed by this
man’s enthusiasm and the sun that was now fully out on Sgarasta Bay.

  It was early evening when we arrived at Horgabost. ‘So where is the croft exactly?’ asked Shuna as we stopped in front of a sign that said Horgabost Township, the turn-off where Peter had dropped us the evening before.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, ‘but I’m guessing it’s up that road somewhere. I’ll ask at this house where Iain’s croft is.’ Iain was the father of my daughter’s friend, Corina, whom she shared a room with at Plockton. Iain lived on the mainland but still had a croft here on Harris. His instructions had been ‘just turn up and camp’.

  A lady came to the door, introducing herself as Mary, and yes, she knew Iain’s croft. ‘Up there, on the right, there’s a house off from the road, a wee black shed below it. That’s his croft there, his fields are on either side of the road, they’ll be glad of it,’ she said, nodding warmly towards the ponies.

  We opted for the field below the road. The grass was good, the fences were pony-proof and there were trees, a stand of beautiful Scots Pines. We set up the tent in record time and walked up the road looking for Peter’s ‘grey house on the right’. Over the next couple of hours he spoilt us with food and wine and kind company. The evening affirmed my growing sense of what a small world it was and how connected we all were. Peter had met Anna-Wendy at his poetry class on North Uist run by the poet Pauline Prior-Pitt. He also knew my daughter’s friend Corina through the music scene on Harris. He had moved up a few years earlier, and had clearly made a big effort to integrate, but as he said, ‘it’s hard here on your own.’

  I got the feeling that perhaps he was wondering if he was in the right place. As much as he loved it, it was very remote. He talked about his trips back to London, and the South American band he played in, a tribute band for Victor Jara, the Chilean poet, singer-songwriter and political activist. Peter himself was politically active and we left full of admiration for his involvement in the world, his deep humanitarian caring.