Jonny Muir - Isles at the Edge of the Sea

Books and papers

ASKWITH, R. Feet in the Clouds, 2004

BEARHOP, D. Munros Tables, 1997

BLACK, R. (ed) To the Hebrides: Samuel Johnsons Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswells Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 2007

BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY, The Economic Impact of Wildlife Tourism in Scotland, 2010

BUSHBY, K. Giant Steps, 2006

CAMPBELL, R. The Arran Murder of 1889, 2001

DRESSLER, C. Eigg, The Story of an Island, 2007

FULLER, E. The Great Auk: The Extinction of the Original Penguin, 2003

GRIMBLE, I. Scottish Islands, 1988

HASWELL-SMITH, H. The Scottish Islands, 1996

ISLANDS BOOK TRUST, THE. The Decline and Fall of St Kilda, 2005

JANSON, K. Holy Isle, 2007

KRAKAUER, J. Into the Wild, 1998

MACDONALD, A and P. The Hebrides, an aerial view of a cultural landscape, 2010

MACFARLANE, R. The Wild Places, 2008

MACKENZIE, C. Whisky Galore, 1977

MACLEAN, C. Island on the Edge of the World, 2006

MCNEISH, C. The Munros, 2003

MARTIN, M. A Late Voyage to St Kilda, on www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk, 2010

MURRAY, W.H. The Companion Guide to the West Highlands of Scotland, 1969

PERROTT, D. The Western Islands Handbook, 1998

SCOTTISH MOUNTAINEERING CLUB. The Islands of Scotland, 1934

SCOTTISH MOUNTAINEERING CLUB. The Island of Skye, 1954

SCOTTISH MOUNTAINEERING CLUB. Skye Scrambles, 2000

SHACKLETON, E. South, 2007

STEEL, T. The Life and Death of St Kilda, 1994

STRIDE, P. The 1727 St Kilda epidemic: smallpox or chickenpox? 2009

THOMPSON, F. Uists and Barra, 1999

WADE MARTINS, S. Eigg, An Island Landscape, 1987

Media

BBC

Daily Record

Glasgow Herald

Guardian

Independent

London Evening Standard

Oban Times

Press and Journal

Scotsman

Stornoway Gazette

Sun

Times

Jonny Muir is an adventurer, runner, writer and proponent of UK-inspired travel. Born in Birmingham in 1981, he grew up and was educated in north Worcestershire, before studying history at the University of Exeter. Family holidays in south-west England, the Peak District, Wales and Scotland kindled a life-long love affair with his home nation.

Jonny visited the UKs 91 historic county tops in a continuous 5000-mile cycling and walking adventure over a three-month period in 2006. His first book, Heights of Madness, published in 2009, is an account of that unique journey. He is also the author of a guidebook, The UKs County Tops: Reaching the Top of 91 Historic Counties.

A journalist for six years at newspapers in Cheltenham, Peterborough and Inverness, he subsequently retrained as an English teacher, and now works at a secondary school in London.

By the same author

Heights of Madness

The UKs County Tops

First published in Great Britain by

Sandstone Press Ltd

PO Box 5725

One High Street

Dingwall

Ross-shire

IV15 9WJ

Scotland.

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Jonny Muir 2011

The moral right of Jonny Muir to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

Editor: Moira Forsyth

The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

ISBNe: 978-1-908737-61-8

Cover design by River Design, Edinburgh.

Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.

I would not be writing these words were it not for the faith placed in me by my publisher, Sandstone Press. Thank you to the publishing team, notably Moira Forsyth, my editor. The joy of travel is in the people one encounters: the crotchety bus drivers, the round-the-world cyclists, the roomful of snoring strangers, the walker who stood next to me on Conachair, the ceilidh crowd on Eigg, the marshals on the windy summits of the Paps of Jura, the whisky brothers, the Barra tourist who bought me a cup of tea, the English sailors who filled my glass. It is the littlest gestures that live longest in the memory.

I have, however, some specific thanks: to the volunteers at the Centre for World Peace and Health on Holy Island, for persuading me not to ceaselessly strive; to Fiona Hogg, for fixing my right knee; to Magnus Houston, for keeping his promise to get me up the Inaccessible Pinnacle; to George Broderick, for his expert insight on Gaelic and the Paps of Jura fell race; to Kenny Macleod, for welcoming me into his church and home; to Anna MacArthur, for educating me on the nuances of the Free Church of Scotland; to Dougie and Karen MacDonald, for rescuing me in my hour of need on Skye; to my parents, Lynda and Roger Muir, for their unshakeable support; and, of course, to Fi, for putting up with not only my prolonged absences, but the endless hours of writing. She cannot have minded too much; she agreed to be my wife.

Finally, to the Highlands and islands of Scotland: the most beautiful, challenging and extraordinary places on our planet. I may be hundreds of miles away in London, but to unashamedly borrow a pair of lines from the chorus of Caledonia: Let me tell you that I love you, that I think about you all the time.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,

Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,

Land of the mountain and the flood,

Land of my sires! what mortal hand

Can eer untie the filial band

That knits me to thy rugged strand!

Sir Walter Scott

Meteorologist Tomasz Schafernaker was partway through a live Saturday afternoon bulletin on BBC One when he casually waved a hand over the hundreds of wondrously-shaped islands pitched off the west coast of Scotland.

He pronounced rain. Nothing unusual in that. Except these were the words Schafernaker uttered thereafter: This lumpy stuff you can see here, these clouds have actually been producing a few showers, but its mainly in the Western Isles, mainly in nowheresville, and it looks as though the east of Scotland will keep the sunshine.

Nowheresville: a place void of identity, charmless and undistinguished.

It was an unfortunate choice of word.

Schafernaker did not forecast the subsequent cloudburst: a media storm, a tempestuous one of his own conjuring. Angus MacNeil, MP for the Western Isles, was unimpressed. Nor were his constituents enamoured; one islander branded the comment insulting, ignorant and self-satisfied. The BBC received a squall of complaints, the Times punned.