48 hours on Coll
Scottish Islands Explorer magazine.
'Camp behind the church', the lady in the hotel said, 'you'll get some shelter there'. Writers since Johnson and Boswell have mentioned the ferocity of the winds on Coll, but there seemed no danger that evening. I had decided at last to explore the island with the forbidding rockbound coast you see from the Tiree ferry. I was in the two-day midweek window permitted by the Tuesday boat, and as it was August camping seemed worth the risk. I'd been encouraged too because the Coll Hotel actively invites wild campers, offering them no facilities, but proximity to a hot shower and food and drink.
UP BEHIND THE HOTEL and next to the kirk a perfect cup-shaped nick of grass appeared among the rocks and heather, tent-sized and looking over the roofs of Arinagour. It turned out later, as folk strolled up for a blether with faraway places, to be one of Coll's few mobile-phone hotspots.
As for Arinagour, the shops were closed and the cafe was closed. I wandered along past the old pier, the middle pier, the garden sheds on the shorefront. A spring tide at its height swirled through the brilliant green of the saltings. It was very quiet: the loch like a mirror, the sky turning violet, and later, as I sat over a brew in the tent, a full moon sailing above the water. In the night, heavy rain.
Day 1: The southern circuit. It is time to admit that I had both a bike and a car in my entourage. And the car soon came in handy. On a warm, still morning, midges were making life hell, so I made a dash for it to find a midge hood and plan the day, which was to be a 10-mile or so bike circuit of the SW end of Coll. Past the airstrip came the first sighting of the great feature of the island's NW coast. The OS map shows them as dunes; they are no mere sandhills, but towering green waves of grass and marram. On their landward side is the machair sweetened by centuries of windblown shell sand. Boswell in 1773 noted the 'sandy desart' in this quarter, and islanders' complaints of sand covering their meadows.
The road ends at a neck of land between two spacious Hebridean bays, Crossapol and Feall. A sneaky breeze discouraged bathing. One family was on the beach; I wondered what the scene would have been before the 2010 bar on motorhomes (they're only allowed on the ferry if booked in somewhere). Apparently motorhome- and car-camping reached a peak in 2009 that was damaging the machair. It was nice to enjoy coastal views free from these behemoths but all the same, as I left the beach an SUV came trundling over, sparing its occupants a 400 yard walk.
North past the airstrip the road took me to the RSPB 'information bothy' on its 1200 ha Totronald reserve. A bikeable track wended through a great expanse of dunes to reach the public road again at Ballyhough and enable my circuit. Neat harled buildings here are the HQ of the Project Trust a gap year business which is run from Coll. The trust says it has sent almost 6000 young people to scores of countries, and that 'what they have had in common is the Hebridean experience... all have come to the Isle of Coll for a selection course.' No one was about that day and I clanked on round the coast and back over to the lights - well actually the public bar - of Arinagour and the Coll Hotel.
The bar was welcoming. So was the other community building open that afternoon. Midges still made themselves felt, so I took refuge in a space of calm and light. Coll's parish church has a tall net-curtained west window, wonderful views through its plain glass, and a remarkable timber roof, noted in The Buildings of Scotland as a 'triumph of joinery...a wholly unexpected delight'.
That evening in the hotel, one yacht-crew followed another in, dumped their life-vests and somehow were fitted into the by no means spacious bars for excellent meals. As well as food and the aforesaid free camping, the hotel offers packages including island painting tuitition, cooking demonstrations and 4x4 island tours.
Day 2: The outlook. At 6 am the midges had gone (where?), mist lay in the folds of the land and far hills, probably on Mull, showed grey against the dawn. To the south, the Paps of Jura lifted beyond the Treshnish, a foretaste of views in the day to come. Eleven hours were left.
I biked across to the NW side again and headed north. After the first rise in the road I had to stop to take it all in. The big farm of Gallanach lay across a field of the most vibrant grasses and flowers (this in late August). Over the green dunes beyond were the blue Cuillin of Rum, and Canna trailing west into the Minch. Everything throbbed with colour and life. At the next hill a white house was flying a gigantic flag: the red hand of Ulster floated free.
I was now where I wanted to be. W H Murray had written about the 'splendours of a humble kind' of the bay beneath the rocky knoll of A Chroic, his favourite on the island. The bay was as lovely as he said and the sea so calm that, wading in, I could see watch the warmed-up water swirling away from me! A Chroic itself can be a stroll or a scramble. It looks over the farms of Cornaig, where they were busy with hay or silage. In the optimistic days of the 50s and 60s it was considered that Coll might support a much larger working population by dairying on its excellent pastures.
For the last stop it was into the car for a visit to Coll's northeast tip. Sorisdale in the 1960s was down to one cottage. Murray thought 'it is not, one feels, a place to live'. Now, several old rubble buildings have been stabilised but the living is done in a very modern house. As so often that day it was the views out from Coll that took the breath away. Past two fields, from the island-guarded bay at the very tip, your horizon is suddenly filled by mountains. There is Rum of course, and the Sgurr of Eigg and a glimpse of Skye, probably the Broadford hills, between them. The barn-like roof way beyond Mallaig must be Ladhar Bheinn in Knoydart, and the perfect cone to its right might just be Sgurr na Ciche. It's better, I think, to consider islands as being at the centre of worlds rather than 'remote' - a relative term if ever there was.
The ferry back had come from Barra and happened to be carrying the musical talents of the Vatersay Boys to Oban. In the bar with accordions and pipes they were getting some practice in, or just playing for the love of it, to the great delight of us passengers and crew lucky enough to be on board. Quite a bonus to the 48 hours!