The Ocean’s Edge: Finding Everyday Stories in Scotland’s Slate Isles
It was pure clarity, not even a trace of seaweed, just fast and fresh and filling. The smell of the sea off Easdale (56.2918° N, 5.6582° W, Western Scotland).
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Late September on Scotland's wild west coast. We are up before the sun, before the dawn, for the morning's prayers. In these early hours the sky is full of promises, a mixture of ruthless rain and brief interludes of brightness. But the itinerary is by no means empty and it is the last day of our trip. So, muffled in cagoules, three resident chickens having come over to investigate and possibly say goodbye, we pack the car despite the contribution of the clouds and set off from the Ben Nevis Holiday Park, just outside Fort William on the shores of Loch Eil (a large, tastefully landscaped caravan park with lodges, tent pitching sites and spots for motor-homes, complete with a suite of services for all it's users from grey-water drops to washing machines, from a children's play park to a shaded riverside path). It's a good option for a spontaneous decision to get away, with generous availability, and a reasonable price coming in at £134.50 a night for a six-person lodge [1].
On our way, by a blessing of timing we catch The Jacobite on the beginning of it's journey past Corpach Station at 10:31 am. A few minutes lingering in the threat of showers, trying to squint at an electrical schedule notice-board over the platform that's too far to tell us when the train is due, we begin to think we might have missed it. And we may well have done anyway had the giveaway crowds of hopefuls hovering by the railways crossing barrier, phones in hands, waiting for their Potter snaps, not drawn our attention as we arrived. Even then it's a close-run thing, and we're on the point of walking away when, as we turn our backs, somebody beckons frantically, gives an indistinct cry. It's coming, the motion seems to say, wait wait, look!
Sure enough, a moment later the whistle sounds somewhere out of sight in the trees lining the track. It's voice is brassy and impossible to miss, like something fresh out of a different age; and the effect, predictably, is instant. A ripple of excitement, a burst of irrational, novel anticipation rising from the pit of the stomach that only the near-extinct species of a steam train can induce. And there it is, preceded by the heralding sound of its wheels pulsing on pistons over the sleepers.
It is black on white: black metal head, the sign proudly reading The Jacobite in small but easily distinguishable blue-backed tawny letters; white steam billowing from it's chimney like a souvenir to it's audience in great, solid-looking heaps. The rest, of course, is not difficult to imagine, you've seen it leave Platform 9 and 3/4, you've seen it sailing over Glenfinnan. In real life the colour is no duller, a perfect Hogwarts mauve, and bringing Scotland substantial bragging rights.
Standing there in the cold, you can just about see in through the condensation-clouded windows at faces, at the little frill-shaded white table lamps, at the inside lining of curtains softening the contours of the panes. We're waving to the charmed circle of its passengers, some still at their breakfast. Perhaps they do not see us, out-of-the-way as are we are in the car park by the Caledonian canal, but depressingly few wave back. Every now and again the classic scarlet and mustard (what can I say, it's not easy to make wool look gold) of a Gryffindor scarf within, faithfully round someone's neck, acts as a reminder of half of the reason we have spent time idling here to watch.
Notoriously difficult to secure a space on, the locomotive runs it's 84 mile there-and-back again route along the West Highland Line from Fort William to Mallaig twice a day, with fares ranging from a respectable £57 adult standard class ticket to £385 for a six-seater private compartment. Though of course, if you're feeling a little risky you could always take your chances at bagging one of the on-the-day spots, first come first serve and selling like hot cakes, but for the safe bet be prepared to book well in advance [2].
She's soon gone, it's only a fleeting encounter, and she was not the reason we came this way nor the eventual destination of our day, but The Jacobite was a welcome visitor nonetheless. And a faultless example, even early on in today's trip, of a very human craving indeed: to find the fantastical, to fit stories into everyday life so that we might somehow feel that they are near.
We take the road into Fort William, that little town in the elbow bend between watery limbs of Loch Linhe and Loch Eil. Signs direct us to the A82 and it's a clear run through the glen to the Ballachullish Bridge. Wisps of cloud crown Ben Nevis and, in the sun that has recently won it's tussle against the impending precipitation, Loch Linhe is navy below the bare heathered slopes, facing off against the line of B&Bs on the shoreside, relentlessly insisting their lack of vacancies. At the end of the valley lies the bridge itself, a dark slash in the hazy light, and passing through it's open fretwork of beams is like driving down a metal ribcage and out the other side. A roundabout drops us down and around, back beneath the crossing on the A85 towards Oban, the next landmark on our route, just as the blue skies begin to make an appearance. The air is scentless and perfect, and in these stretches it is not be unsurprising to see little boats pulled up into driveways, comfortable alongside their sibling land-vehicles, the cars. The path will lead you through a string of signposted towns: Kent Allen, Duror, past Castle Stalker (overlooking it), Port Appin, Creagan, Benderloch and across the Connel Bridge over the restless Falls of Lora with their incredible current like a fast lane through the loch, that seem to forget they are inland and not part of the open ocean. Familiar acquaintances, some of them. And Oban at last, its high street and pier as charming as ever, even on a Sunday when many shops sit dark and shut.
Beyond Killmare the sign-posts begin to read the name we have been waiting for: Easdale. Weaving and slaloming around the peninsula through hilly grassland, you must first concede and take the turning advertising the Sealife Safari. But it's a choice soon rewarded, as the last lazy curve of the carriageway emerges before one, final bridge. It's a strange and unexpected sight perhaps, stony brick, urbanely walled on either side, politely trimmed with a tiny border of pavement wide enough to walk single file, and elegantly arched to an incline so perilously steep that as we rumble over it, for a dangerous moment right before the apex of the curve we are completely and utterly treacherously blind. There is no world in front of us, only the lip of the path. It's fitting somehow, giving the whole thing the feeling of a threshold, and a new step. Why? Because this is the Clachan Bridge, none other than the Bridge over the Atlantic itself, and that little vein of water that funnels from a rope of river on one side into a little boat-adorned bay on the other is the stuff of oceans. We watch a snail make its achingly slow pilgrimage over the rock wall. How many times has it made a trans-Atlantic trip of its own? As if to prove the point, long, terribly graceful locks of leathery kelp the colour of molasses extend just under the surface. You would never otherwise know, not just from looking at it, but here you can occupy yourself a blissful moment wondering if it's the only place in Scotland where you can cross a sea in under a minute on foot. It turns the land on the other side, Seil, into an island too. A fact that the sign nailed to the very first tree to be found at the far end of the bridge makes no bones about pointing out.
Almost immediately, this is a place ready to tell it's tales. The Tigh Na Truish, or the Inn of the Trousers, greets you as well as any host the moment you step foot on it's patch. It is the first building you hit on Seil itself. A tiny hut on the far side of it's car park is entitled "Real-Souvenirs-Photos" on a faded wooden board. Currently, it's empty windows are the only staff on duty, letting us know via a sello-taped sheet of paper on the inside that hooded jumpers can be purchased for £30, mugs at £8, and postcards are a steal at £2. Black totes come at £3 but for a white canvas bag you must pay a 20. As if standing in too for a tour guide, the shamrock green sign beside the door helpfully informs us that the Inn was a local haunt post the 1745 Jacobean Rebellion, a safe place for returning islanders to don their traditional dress, the prohibited kilt, in lieu of Sassenach trousers. It is just one glimpse, a shutter left half-open into a Highland past of bitter sentiment, fiercely individual identity, and the cultural diversity of two countries often joined at the hip (or border) in no sense except a topographical one. Not one to waste a captive audience, the last line of the information board is sneaked on to remind us not to picnic in the car park.
Even here, the stories follow, and what else we experience of Seil is no exception: a young ginger-haired woman sits on a wall with only her notebook for company, overlooking a field of black cows and writing; a successive series of signs pushed into the ground beside the road bear one or two words each to announce the proximity of Seil's cinema (too tempting a display not to read till the end to see the purpose of the broken roadside message); a line of plastic-wrapped circular hay bales have been cheekily painted to resemble a great segmented caterpillar like something out of a cartoon; a stuffed-doll life size scarecrow in fisherman's togs props itself up headless between the boulders of a rocky shoreline as if trying to watch the boats at sea; white spray spits at the rugged outcrops; a single yacht on the water pitches in relish at the wind further out to sea. Little things that make a rich picture. And of course, the story that concerns us most, flat-skirted Easdale with a blocky central hill for a heart, and a star of white houses on its Seil-side. One of the cluster of islands between Jura and Mull known as the Slate Islands. The others are Seil, Luing, Shuna, Torsa and Belnahua. Their names, stiff and awkward on our modern tongues, exciting archaic sounds, conceal a mixed etymology as historically fertile as many place-names, tracing the tidal movement of peoples across the land. Gaelic (Belnahuna or Beul nah-Uamh, "the mouth of the cave") and Scandinavian (Shuna or Siùna, "sea island" and Torsa or Thorir's Island; both potentially Old Norse) overlap with 'pre-gaelic nominations (Seil or Saoil and Luing or Luinn) [3] to form a colourful picture of the lasting impressions the islands made on the various societies that encountered them. As to Easdale, it seems to exemplify the point, marrying the Gaelic eas, or "waterfall" with an Old Norse term for valley, "dal" [4]. Of course given the absence of either of these features, the reasoning is now obscure [5].
Technically, these speckles of land rising above sea level sit in the Firth of Lorne, a Marine Special Area of Conservation. "Underwater forests and creature-covered reefs- the weird and wonderful world hidden below the turbulent tides"- is the summary given by the grubby noticeboard on Seil. It teaches us that the local reefs are home to "a multitude of colours that sleep beneath a blue veil", including jewel anemones, hydroids, plumose anemones and feather stars. Alongside more mobile residents like cuckoo wrasse and scorpion fish, conger eel, lobster, crawfish and the impressive harbour porpoise and bottlenose dolphin who catch with fish by making clever use of tidal races like the Grey Dogs, generated when strong currents are compressed by the presence of islands like Easdale in this strait [6].
The ferry to this slate-isle leaves every fifteen minutes or so from the tiny sheltered bay at the little town of Ellenabeich on Seil. We manage to arrive during lunch break, but it's not a bad place to wait, spreading a picnic mat to offer our afternoon prayers right on the margin of the land, then legs dangling as we sit on the lip of the slope that leads to the water, and listen to the casual conversation of other passengers until our turn comes at approximately two o clock. I say ferry, to stay politely true to the name written behind its seats, but it is a small boat equipped to carry ten passengers and two sailors, making a two minute crossing to the sloped pier of Easdale for the modest cost of £2.50 (adult return) or £1.40 (child return).
Neither Google Maps (well needs must), nor a mark on the Island itself, can tell me the name of the village we disembark into. Doubtless it has one, a title bestowed by those who stay here and hereabouts, but that is a part of the narrative hidden to passers-through. All I can say is that even before we are off the landing steps we are among slate, a tease of what is to come. Grey plates of it lie piled up one over another in the spaces between the tarmacked paths. It is the second earth of this place.
It is the wrong day to visit for commerciality, and both the sleek wood-beam and glass-fronted community hall, and the restaurant known as The Puffer are closed, across from an empty play park. All so far is quiet and serene, but a mysterious sign a few feet ahead at the near corner of the village green reads 'Museum' nonetheless, and another encourages us to find the art gallery down one edge of the grassy, football-strewn square. The Island Folk Museum as it is called, we do not see, but for £4 a person it's still offering its exhibits to the public at this time of year. One of the reasons is that the Gift Shop ensnares us first and I choose to spend my precious time talking with it's welcoming proprietor, who calls a greeting down the stairs when she hears us trooping inside, into a small shelved room equipped with a one-person desk and a collection of little hand-painted houses with slate roofs, resin necklaces encasing pressed flowers and bundles of Treasures scooped out from the beach and sea (shells, sea glass and the like).
"I can tell you the island is 64 acres of land", the shop's owner tells me when she sees I'm taking notes. "With about 65 to 70 residents." But it's what she says next that really sticks.
"I call it the dragon, it takes you into a different world. Imagine a gate round the back of the island, it's like going into Narnia world, into fairyland."
She's talking of the hill. The one I could see from Seil. The other half of the island and the path that leads to it.
"When you come back down that hill," she says, a conspirational whisper, performing for us to cast her spell, 'about halfway, you'll be able to see the dragon. You can see the wing going down into the earth. I like to imagine it flying into the sky."
It's with thoughts of something huge and reptilian that we leave her, and go in search of a view, and a mythical creature.
The back of Easdale is accessible via a choice of roads through the houses, we take the one that bears right, passing a blue shack selling soap (sadly shut) and emerging from the realm of the houses, trading them for great hummocked heaps of slate. They're alarmingly precarious, a mobile, responsive thing to have underfoot, and a tactile testament to the island's past and it's namesake.
The Slate Islands, quite understandably, were so called for the impressive quantities of that resource that they yielded, being, as the Slate Islands Heritage Trust puts it, "the islands that roofed the world". Boasting a fairly august tradition, '[f]rom the earliest recorded history' the Trust goes on to say, 'slate was taken from the shores of Easdale Island.' This being the suitably antiquated circa. 1554 reports of a Dean Munro.
In Scotland, the mineral was heavily mined in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a major commercial avenue, moved across the country for use in construction, as headstones and in fireplaces with with Easdale being something of a particular star in the industry. So much so that it stamped its reputation on the geology itself, dubbing any reservoirs of the raw material found in a horizontal band across upland Scotland as none other than 'Easdale Slate'. As part and so product of the Breadalbane Estate, the island's hardy harvest internationalised onto Canadian soil, to the roofs of that family's foreign properties. Even the lovely, lonely Castle Stalker wore an ascot hat of Easdale Slate (once the process of cleaving the rock into wafer-like plates had come into greater use). At one point supporting seven distinct quarries in its own right, and a workforce 500 strong, some of the descendants of the earlier mining families continue to reside in their generational home even after the decline of the island's primary trade [all 7].
To the present day visitor, it all certainly shows. I do not take note of it at the time, but an industrial apparatus built of the slate it was made to store (before the precious cargo's transportation beyond these shores), remains to this day exactly where it once sat on the island's harbour [7]. And the rear of the isle is left punched with unnaturally symmetrical quarry pits bounded by cloaks of loose slate and a deliberate palisade of upright tablets like a rim of standing stones bordering each depression, meant to keep back the sea's advance. All that man might reach things beneath the surface of the land. We meet our first very hollow soon enough, now relatively undisturbed, long since filled with water treacherously deep, but strikingly beautiful by the contrast of its stillness on the backdrop of its cousin, the ocean held at bay. The two bodies of water so different side by side. And not to no end, either. It's this sheltered-lagoon tranquility that holds the key to the current day repurposing of the mining holes; as a site for World Skimming Championship in pools of the ideal condition, no small claim to fame for the island at large. Your route will steer you between them, like great bathtubs with water too blue; but not before we reach a rent in the slate, a gorge-like gap in a wall layered up from the stuff: the promised gateway. Beyond, must lie another land entirely, where wilder things live and the imagination comes loose more freely.
It breaks you in gently, taking you round behind the hill's sharp ridge to inclines formed of columns of rock that give way and dissolve into a confetti of blue-grey slate. These are the outcasts, the unnecessary waste rock from the load of the quarries disposed instead in scatterings over unworked ground [7]; another tribute to a vibrant industrial antecedent whose hold is still literally tangible. Our chosen march is a narrow set of steps further along to the left of the road that will take us up to the top, overgrown to either side by heather with sparse purple blossoms. The constant sound of waves, and a passing bi-plane's whine reaches us almost 124ft up, and here near its peak the demarcations are nowhere clearer. Face one way for a landscape overrun by slabs of metamorphic slate, pitted with watery cavities and thin passages between, peppered with iron stubs and stumps as all that remains of the various forms of mechanical equipment once installed there in an attempt to turn technology against the tide and keep the digging sites pumped clear [7]. Face the other for the town, for the more recognisably human. There is a stony pillar sharing your solitude, topped with a flat plaque, and engraved with the shape of a compass. It makes you feel as though you are part of something bigger, reminding you of the distances in miles to places both near and further away; a network of bits of rock somewhere out there in the sea. 25 miles to Colonsay, 30 to Iona and Islay. 4.5 miles and you hit the Black Isle; 12.5 miles back for Lismore Lighthouse. As the crows flies. Or the dragon. It hits you then how very much you stand at the edge of a cross-continental ocean.
We take the same way down past a few pulled-tooth boulders. Just because, like a rite of passage, there is one last thing to do. You cannot come here to Easdale, and not take the chance to skim at the very least one stone.
A ruined cottage-sized building on the way back has been swallowed by a mound of slate, as if it is being slowly digested by the earth's offerings. We pick a pool near the far end of the island, where a concrete ledge of two tiers has been constructed along one of its banks, a reinforcement relic left by the companies that sought to prolong the life of the quarry it protected [7]. Three perilous steps have been cut down to it but it is the far side where the best skimming ground lies.
Splash. There are more than a few choices of ammunition and more than a few failures, but the water accepts these too and makes them beautiful. It's impossible to see further than three metres under the surface, so every stone that loses momentum drops into the depths, zigzagging, for only one precious moment visible before it sinks, silvered. With practice, we carry on custom and skip slate frisbees across the surface, competing against one another to send them the furthest, to find the perfect stone. And when we are done the seagulls are crying and we plan to beat the the 4:45 ferry to the island. It means we will have to walk fast onwards, completing the circuit round the hill at last till we reach houses again. Back through another gateway, maybe.
I look back before we leave, I can't not. And I think I see it: the spinal ridge, the stack of an ear, the slumbering dragon. A sleeping beast shedding scales made of slate. Only if you go up and down it the right way is it there, only from the one side. Just the way a story need be told before it's true image can be seen. Pockets of fantasy grafted onto our banal, we find places to squeeze them in, be they physical or just in our heads. The same way we paint scenes on stones. Like the row of them sitting back at Easdale's small jetty, priced up and for sale, pointing buyers to a nearby honesty box. The history of Easdale is a very real one, it's after-effects are far from done, a constant interplay of water and rock that continue to contour those pieces of the island that outlived it. But I wonder, at some point or another, did the mining families of the island's past look over their shoulders too at the hill that guards the quarries, and also see a sleeping creature in the shape of the world. Or did they have other ideas, some fanciful, some not, about the place in which they lived and worked, day in and out. I am certain they did, and that their own stories of their island homes, like those of it's present-day residents, lay claim over the Easdale that they know best.
We are a big group and there are a few others waiting to travel, so we take two trips to make it back to Seil again. But once there, bound for the mainland and eventually, Glasgow, one last tang of salt and seaweed caught in the open car window wishes us fond farewell from the Atlantic as we leave Easdale behind, and the few hours we spent playing on a dragon's back.
