Travel – Scottish Highlands: Dream land

The doubt that comes to mind in the Highlands when faced with such wonders as Glenfinnan — is this for real? — always arises when recalling the enchanted coastal village Glenelg. ‘Does Glenelg exist?’ seems an almost reasonable thought when away from the place. ‘Did I ever see those colours, that light, the Sound of Sleat and the distant islands? Was that golden eagle a dream?’

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Harry Mount

The Odyssey is more real than we thought

Part of the reason is that Glenelg is removed, beyond, even otherworldly in location. As close as the Scottish mainland gets to the Isle of Skye, Glenelg can only be reached (from April to October) via the island (and the world’s last sea-going, hand-operated turntable ferry which takes six cars) or by the road over Ratagan which still follows the path taken by Boswell and Johnson in 1773. Johnson had his scariest moment of the trip on Ratagan, when his horse staggered going up the 1:4 incline, and the travellers then had their worst falling-out, when Boswell rode on ahead. Johnson reported hopefully, ‘There is now a design of making another way round the bottom’, but the design is unfulfilled. Travellers by land to Glenelg must brave the mountain and take the consequences: The Rocks Remain.

Thus the title of the second book in the Ring of Bright Water trilogy by Glenelg’s other literary boast, Gavin Maxwell, whose short-lived paradise was staged down the coast at Sandaig. He came to escape the fever and the fret but they followed him: taxes and cancer, oblivious to the fairyland aspect, make their demands regardless. Glenelg is after all connected.

It could even claim to have been, twice in history, near the centre of things. The Pictish brochs in Gleann Beag above the village, built at some point between the 4th century bc and the 1st ad, remain mighty impressive, smooth, curved, double-skinned structures, with one of them, Dun Telve, boasting 10-metre walls.