Always Mull

29 Dec 06 @ 10:10 AM  category » travel

Mull is beautiful, even when it is drizzling. I always forget that there is no cell phone reception in our part of the island, and we have no internet so it really is getting away from it all. Though if you are willing to climb Craig Ben the mobile kicks in about half an hour up the hill.

We tried to make it to the top this year (two hours up, one and a half down) but the mist closed in and we found ourselves in total whiteout about 1/2 way up. Since coming down is so slippery and treacherous anyway and there are plenty of small cliffs it is very easy to miss, trying to do that in a whiteout is sheer madness. With just ten minutes of whiteout or so we still came down too far right and had to scrabble a bit. Always the way on Craig Ben.

But god I love it there. So many old memories - I learned to swim in Loch Uisg (at the bottom of the garden) when my grandpa took off my water wings and told me to swim to him - and then proceeded to keep swimming away from me into the middle of the loch as I, realising I was further out than in, tried to reach him in panic. He just laughed, but it worked. He taught me to fish there too. But because I wasn't prepared to gut the fish, I wasn't allowed to eat my first catch and had to watch in grim lipped resentment as everyone else at dinner ate delicious trout that was MINE! Damn, I was stubborn, but I had principles. And ahhh, the days when a bunch of us - Nicky and Sarah and Toby and Alex and Sally and me - would be lying on the roofrack of the Land Rover, holding on for dear life as we screamed at Richard to "drive faster, drive faster!" on the winding roads along Kinlochspelve. And we actually asked him to go faster over the humpbacked bridge...I can almost feel the bruises now. The fabulous fun of folly. And Richard stealing oysters from the loch bed for New Year's Eve...I realised this trip, as I saw Sarah and Sal and Toby, all sprogged up now, that I have some of my oldest and best memories with these people, whom I hardly ever see any more.

Now I live abroad it is brought more sharply into focus. This place is my family home. And god how I love it, even in the rain.

Craig Ben, Mull - pix