My week on Colonsay

I just spent the last week (Wednesday to Wednesday) on the island of Colonsay, in the Inner Hebrides. For those of you without a clue where that is, find the UK on a map. Scotland is the top part of that. The Hebrides are the islands to the left. I mean west.

The reason I chose Colonsay is that a long long time ago (13th to 17th Centuries to be more precise than George Lucas) it was the home of Clan MacFie. And Mum's family name before she married Dad was McPhee. Same clan, different spelling - Mac or Mc, plus one of the following: Fie, Fee, Phie, Phee, Affie, Duffie, Duffy...

So I thought I'd go check out the old ancestral home. It turns out I'm the first in my branch of the family to visit Colonsay.

Essential equipment for hiking:
Ordnance Survey Explorer 354 Colonsay & Oronsay map (1:25000, or 4cm=1km)
Islay, Jura and Colonsay: A Historical Guide by David H. Caldwell

DAY ONE
WED 22 JUNE 05
Left the apartment in Edinburgh around 9. Caught a 9:45 bus from the bus station to Glasgow, arriving there around 11. The next bus to Oban left at 12, and got in to Oban at 3pm, just in time to catch the 3.30 ferry across to Colonsay. So by 6pm I was on the island.

I stayed in the Colonsay Backpackers Lodge, which is in the old gamekeeper's lodgings out the back of Colonsay House, up the northern end of the island. It's about three miles north of the pier at Scalasaig, the island's main village - it has the pier, the pub, the Church of Scotland, the post office, the shop and the payphone. There's another "village" over on the western side, with a Baptist church, a bookshop, some houses, and the island's primary school. We were met at the ferry by Angus MacPhee, the pipe-smoking van-driver/jock-of-all-trades of the lodge. He's been on the island for 10 years now.

Wednesday is Quiz Night at the island's only pub The Colonsay, which has recently re-opened after being bought by a group of businessmen including the son of the laird. Together with another hostel guest, Neil, I formed a team called the Boxing Kangaroos. We got 29 out of 50, so not too bad. Can you name the next independent country to the west of Australia?

DAY TWO
THU 23 JUNE 05
This day I hiked up around the northern end of the island.

First I walked through the woodland garden behind Colonsay House. There are some great wildflowers there, and some plants that I think might even be tropical. Some huge leafy things overgrowing one of the paths, they looked like coco-yam leaves, but I have no idea what they were. The leaves were about 4 or 5 feet square.

There are some great views around Kiloran Bay, so I sat down and painted a postcard. Then I walked across the beach while the tide was out, and then followed a sheep-trail along a stream through the dunes to join back up with the main track to Balnahard Farm. I hiked up around Beinn Bheag and on past Balnahard Farm, looking for the remains of Cill Chaitriona (St Catherine's Church), a medieval chapel. I had no luck finding the chapel, but I did cross the grassy dunes (avoiding thousands upon thousands of rabbit-holes) and saw the white beach at Tràigh Bàn (Ban is Gaelic for white).

DAY THREE
FRI 24 JUNE 05
I walked up to Colonsay House, to the office of the Backpacker Lodge. I went to pay for my week's accommodation (10 pounds a night) with my debit card, but it got rejected, and I had to pay the 70 quid in cash. This left me with 10 pounds for the rest of the week, and I wanted to rent a bike, and buy groceries... Thankfully since I had to pay cash they let me have a mountain bike (usually 5 pounds/day) for free for as long as I wanted to explore the island. :)

I cycled along the old road round the back of Colonsay House to reach the main sealed road round the island. This road wasn't sealed, and was quite muddy in parts. I made it to the bitumen, and rode down the hill to town, and posted my postcards and Alastair's birthday card (he turned 22 on July 1st). I found out the tide times for the Strand at the southern end of the island, and rode off that way.

The Strand is the long stretch of sand between Colonsay and its neighbouring island, Oronsay. For a couple hours either side of low tide, it's possible to walk across to Oronsay. Or if you live on Oronsay farm, to drive across in your tractor or Land Rover. I left the bike at the end of the road and walked over to Oronsay.

Oronsay Priory is the main attraction on Oronsay. The remains of a medieval monastic house, the ruins are quite substantial. The roof has long gone, but about 80 per cent of the walls still stand. There are some quite remarkable 15th and 16th Century graveslabs on display in what was the prior's house.

On the way back to Scalasaig, I went up a side-road to find Carragh Mhic a'Phi (MacPhie's Stone). This is the stone against which Malcolm MacDuffie, last chief of the clan, was murdered in 1623 by a rogue MacDonald. A few years after that incident, the Campbells took over the island, and sold it to Clan McNeill. In 1904 Lord Strathcona bought it off the McNeills, and the current Lord Strathcona owns about 60 per cent of the island's land. But I digress. The stone itself is quite badly worn away (it apparently used to be cruciform, but no arms remain), and consists of two broken slabs bolted together. A fence surrounds the monument and Clan MacFie plaque.

On Friday I also went to the shop and did some shopping. For food for the next few days, I spent exactly 5 pounds. My total food bill for the week ended up at £7.71.

Food:
2 2-litre bottles of cloudy lemonade
3 small packets of crisps
2 tins of 8 hot dogs
4 small tubs of fruit yoghurt
3 apples
1 box of cup-a-soup (4 sachets)
1 loaf of bread
1 500mL bottle of Irn Bru

That was it for the next five days, thanks also to some donations from other guests who at times had too much food.

DAY FOUR
SAT 25 JUNE 05
I took the bike and hiked up the old road to Scalasaig, to the lookout on Beinn nan Gudairean, where I had just about a 360-degree view of the entire island. On the way down to the hotel, I saw the remains of a cairn off to the side of a track. I took a photo which looks just like the photo in my book of historical sites. Once I'd made it back to the sealed road, I cycled around and up the western side of the island back to the hostel.

DAY FIVE
SUN 26 JUNE 05
I did absolutely nothing all day. Slept in. Ate. Read a book.

DAY SIX
MON 27 JUNE 05

A mist came in off the sea to the west, and visibility was almost nil everywhere on the island, although there was a bit of sunshine and blue sky over Scalasaig when Angus gave me a lift down to the shop to pick up a couple extra things.

Back at the lodge, I got on my bike and cycled back down the road to the bottom of the island. Just before the crossing to Oronsay, i turned off a side-road to a nearby farm. Cutting through the farm, the track continued (although very grown-over with grass and flowers) over the dunes, across a beach (only crossable at low tide) to another peninsula, Ardskenish. Here I tracked down the remains of a dun (fort) from pre-medieval times.

There being no real sun out, I didn't see any seals sunning themselves on the low tide rocks as the brochures had mentioned... :(

I walked the bike through some very boggy areas, and even rode it along the semi-sealed track through the island's one golf course. There were quite a few sheep grazing, and as I left, one person started a round of golf in the mist.

DAY SEVEN
TUE 28 JUNE 05

I cycled up to Balnahard Farm, and armed with some info from a backpacker who had found Cill Chaitriona, this time I did find the remains of the chapel. Quite an interesting site, up near the northern end of the island. There's isn't a great deal of remaining walls, but the altar slabs are there, and the outlines of the main chapel, and a weather-worn cruciform slab in one corner of the outer enclosure.

Then off the farm track I tried finding Dunan nan Nighean, or "fort of the maidens". Apparently the best-preserved fort on the island. Best-preserved because it's tucked away near the coast, at the end of a long, remote, boggy valley. I hiked for a couple hours across marshy ground, shoes sucked down into mud, scratched by heather up on the hillsides, sliding on rock... and I DIDN'T FIND IT.

Looking at my surroundings at the end of the valley I went down, I came to the conclusion I had gone down the wrong long, remote, boggy valley. So I gave up and went back to the hostel for a nice relaxing warm shower.

DAY EIGHT
WED 29 JUNE 05
Angus turned up with the van at 9am and took people's bags down to the ferry. At about 10am I rode the bike around the west coast and in to Scalasaig, which took me around half an hour. The ferry left at 1130, and arrived in Oban around 1400. I was able to get a train ticket using my debit card (remember I only had about 3 pounds and change in cash by this stage), so I would definitely end up back in Edinburgh. Then I found an ATM and got out a little bit more cash. Whew, that felt better.

The train didn't leave until 1819, so I bought a newspaper and some lunch, and wrote some postcards home and posted them at the local post office. I also bought a couple sandwiches and a drink in Tesco, for dinner on the train. I had to change trains in Glasgow, and got in to Waverley Station at 1030 or so.

I got to Amanda's apartment, and the lower door was open, so I walked up to the top floor and rang the doorbell. No answer. Knocked on the door, rang the doorbell again. No answer. Maybe she's at the pub. So I laid my bags down in the corner, leaning my big pack up with my coat over it, and then sat down and leant up against it. Felt much like a seat on a bus. Comfortable enough, I dropped off to sleep. I woke up at 3am, as it began to get light outside. From then on I couldn't get back to sleep, and kept changing position and stretching, etc. At 6am I started reading my copy of Beowulf. At 7am there was stirring inside, and I rang the doorbell. Amanda had crashed out at around 10 the night before, and had slept right through the other doorbells. So while she went to work, I was able to grab a few hours rest on the sofa.

Thus ended my Colonsay expedition.


Oh, and the answer is Mauritius.