Eilean Nan Ron

With thanks to Gail Burton, Friends of Eilean nan Ron, Facebook

I’m sitting on the beach reading the pebbles. The beach is the floor of a deep narrow inlet. It is something of a chasm even when the late afternoon sun is on it. The precipitous side walls are a conglomerate as rich and varied as my man Colin’s famous Christmas pudding mix. At the head of the beach is a steep spongy green slope, which, I hope, will afford me a way up. Later.

Mol na Coinnle, Eilean nan Roan. Photo by Pen

But for now I am sitting by my trusty boat Ethel, tent up, sleeping bag laid out, reading the pebbles. They are all colours: silvery limestone, black and grey quartzites and blood red jasper. That makes sense. It’s Col’s cake mix washed clean of sandstone and worn down to pocket size, polished by the waves.

Conglomerate stack, Eilean nan Ron. Photo with thanks to Miner Willy

But there is something else, something quite unexpected: china. Creamy glaze on warm kitchen earthenware, the dull white stoneware of agricultural pots, a scrap of blue and white stripes, a blurred memory of flowers on a favourite plate and, something I would never have expected: white porcelain, quite a lot of it. There’s sea glass, so much of it, worn down fragments of long ago nights on the beer. I haven’t seen such ghosts of an ordered, comfortable domestic life on any other island beach this year. Eilean Nan Ron, the Island of Seals, hadn’t felt much like a domesticated island whilst circumnavigating it in my kayak.

A feeling of the massy coastline. Photo thanks to Gail Burton

The island is only 30 metres wide at one point and doesn't take up much space on the OS map yet it feels mighty. There are few landing places. It was aptly described in 1882 as "mostly engirt with high precipitous rocks". Unlike Rabbit Island and Neave there are no easy-going, welcoming pillowy beaches. It's a giant of a kind. There's nothing easy about it.

I had approached the island cautiously, crossing over from the mainland coast as fog cover lifted in mid-afternoon. All morning my world had been wrapped in soft grey. Puffins had bobbed beside me, and young Razorbills, insouciant in their new floating world. I have noticed that birds aren’t much bothered by my kayak in fog. They see me but I don’t represent a threat. Fog completely disorientates me.

I had crept along, hugging the mainland coast, stopping every ten minutes to check the map and renew my compass bearing. You go slower in fog, or so it seems. Time stops making sense. And then the fog had frizzled away and island was just where it oughter be, less than a kilometre away on my left.

It is disturbing that fog hadn’t been on any of the forecasts I had checked. It had rolled down like a fuzzy curtain, like a bad joke some hours ago. So would it come back? Was it ok to cross? It’s less than a k, that's ten minutes paddling. Some swell, no wind. Turning Ethel, checking my compass bearing I hopped over and started to pick my way round.

Fancy landing there? Thanks to Gail Burton for photo

The  island, viewed from a sea kayak, is a massy fortress, almost hostile. Impenetrable huge rocky slabs slide into the sea. Today, although the conditions within the shelter of Tongue Bay are benign the northern sides of the islands are exposed. The swell heaves and sluices powerfully over the slabs. It is beautiful, but menacing. I’m not going in close, not even when I see the most enticing cave entrance.

Thanks to Miner Willy for this photo. Shows how enticing the caves are. More later.

There are in fact three islands: the biggest and first is Eilean nan Roan, then Eilean Iosal and Meall Thoan. Tentatively, I ring them all. I make the gully between Eilean nan Ron and Eilean Iosal carefully, sitting awhile at the entrance watching how the water is moving. I’m on my own and I don’t want to make an idiot of myself. As I slither back up the east coast Eilean Neave is just 2k away, 20 minutes.  Emboldened by my own caution I hop across.

Meall Thalim. Photo thanks to Gail Burton

Eilean Neave is looking gorgeous. In the late afternoon sun she is the colour and texture of one big pinky-brown sugar lump dipped in honey. She is delicious. Eilean na Naoimh in Gaelic, Island of the Saint in English. There are the ruins of a chapel to St Columbus up there somewhere.  As I amble down the sheltered water of Caol Beag I’m watching a stack up above that looks just like a Henry Moore statue, maybe called “Seated Woman #5”. It’d be fun to explore. I have food, water and time to camp on just one of the islands.

The beach on the south eastern corner is so beautiful it's glamorous. It's the Bridget Bardot of beaches. There’s a grassy platform at the head of the beach studded with custard coloured vetch, perfect for my tent. I’d like to stay here but I want to find the tiny harbour on Eilean nan Ron. Despite the pleasures of Neave I feel a pulled from the fortress island. My decision is made when I see a cabin cruiser, looking a bit worse for wear, moored in the bay. It looks spooky. A Highland Marie Celeste. And so, more arches, more caves on the Neave's northern flank and I’m heading back to Eilean nan Ron.

Eilean Neave, looking quite rugged too. But what a beach. Photo thanks to John Humpries.

For the first time, paddling back to the Eilean nan Ron, I see buildings. Two storeys some of them, two chimneys, fine windows that let you see straight through the house to the sea on the other side. How can I have paddled twice round the island without seeing them? As I get closer I see steps with a rusty Victorian iron handrail running up from a harbour wall that is clearly man made. I paddled past it, right next to it, without even noticing, twice. I was probably sizing up the natural arch beyond.

Photo thanks to Stephen Moran, Highland Naturalist.

The harbour is a little engineering miracle. They knew their stuff, whoever they made it. I'd love to know who's genius was at work here. At high water you can paddle over a natural stone lip into a clear, natural pool. At low water you can come in through a natural tunnel lined with Dead Man's Finger coral. It’s Enid Blyton “Island of Adventure” exciting.

There are strong, wide steps up to the top that must have taken skill and determination to build. The deep inlet, Mol na Counnle, to the south is the best place for me to land and camp. There’ll be no sunset view but there’s room above the tide line for my tent. It’ll work. I’m tired. Without thinking about it I've done plenty of distance today. Time to stop.

And so here I am. My boat Ethel safe above the high water mark, my camp made and a collection of pebbles and china and sea glass in my hat and I’m sifting them and they’re just making no sense. I know I should eat next but instead I’m set on exploring.

What I call pudding mix conglomerate. Others call it "coarse grey-brown conglomerate with clasts which include abundant Cambrian quartzites and Durness limestone" Photo by Pen

Climbing the green bank at the back of the beach is not all that easy. A stream bed gives the illusion of a path. The last twenty feet are steep and overhung. The ground is quakey and slidey. I know I am vulnerable and I'm being pretty stupid. I haven’t got my mobile phone. It’s on the blink, the battery is short-lived and unpredictable. I only turn it on when I need to use it. Right now it’s plugged into a power bank in the tent.

In my buoyancy aid, now drying out on a rock, I have a dumb phone, fully charged and reliable, a personal locator beacon and a VHF radio. I wouldn’t dream of paddling without them. So sensible. I have a trip plan known to two people that I have to contact when I get off water. If I didn't call by a certain time they'd contact the coat guard. I contacted them as soon as I got off the water. But here I am on a flaky-breaky slope, with my venerable lumix camera but with no means of communication.

There’s a dead sheep to negotiate on the steep slope. It’s slipped and lay there till it died. It was stupid. So am I. Note to self: next time take a phone. Also: you’re an idiot. Also: why haven’t you eaten or drunk all day?

I carry all sorts of rubbish in my small "larder" hold. Some of it is useful. Most of it isn't. I actually annoy myself. Photo by Pen

As I negotiate my way onto the flat top I am confronted by sheep wire on elderly commercial wooden posts. The kind we have at home in N. Wales. So is the island still inhabited? Is someone going to come and tell me off? Here are the sheep. They are frisky and shy, Hebridean and a couple of black face and plenty in between. They look feral and they’re described as feral but someone put that fencing up and not all that long ago.

Photo by Pen

As I step over the sheep wire I see the ruins. They stop my breath. Like the china, they are so unexpected. More than a dozen: beautiful solid houses, many two storey, all of a very similar design. Two rooms below, a big, handsome fireplace at each end. You can almost smell the peat smoke. Fine dressed stone lintels, and in some of the houses, plain, elegant dressed stone corbels. Fine craftsmen have been at work here.

Photo thanks to Miner Willy

Photo by Pen

These house have generously proportioned windows. The people who lived here looked out with confidence at the elements. In contrast think of the few tiny windows of a classic croft house, peering out just below the thatch because warmth and survival was the priority.

Many of the houses have a wide garden bed in front, bordered by neat stone at the front edge and protected from sheep and wind by a wall. It's not as big as an alotment but my guess is that it was the kitchen garden and would have produced plenty. I would have brought up seaweed to feed the veg patch. The grass in the fields suggests managed fertility in contrast to the peaty heath rising to each side. I can imagine these people. They were doing ok. It makes sense of the good china on the beach. But I feel uncomfortable nosing around. This belongs to someone who hasn’t quite let go. They’re still here.

Someone said: "that's my Granny's house" when Miner Willy posted this on Facebook.

At the centre of the island is an area of clean water that appears to have been managed. The flat land is divided into a few fields with well-built stone walls. There are a couple of smaller sheds similar to those my Welsh neighbour Delwyn uses. Outside these fields is a wide commonly held area. Or so it looks to me, reading the landscape.

Bit of a mix, this I'd think. Photo by Miner Willy

The field layout reminds me of Emrys, our first neighbour in Wales. When Emrys and Deli moved sheep he often asked us to help. He taught us how to herd them, to move gently among them. Later Deli taught us how to lamb. We were doing our best to stand in for a long gone community. “Well,” Emrys would say. “You’re doing your best Bach but in the old days no one farmer worked alone. We all came out for the sheering say, and moved from one farm to the next. Well you do your best but in the old days it was all communal and we knew from childhood what to do.”

Looking back at the softer world of Rabbit Islands, where people did not thrive. Photo by Pen

I sat on a wall in the evening sun and could feel that this too had been a community where people worked together, where flocks and fields and water and fishing had been managed together. I felt a very strong sense of presence. John Ord, poet, says “Scotland is a place where every stone has its history inlaid.” I’m sure he’s right.

I feel uncomfortable, unwelcome by the island spirits. I don’t nip into my neighbour’s house for a bit of a snoop the minute they’ve popped out for a minute. So why is this ok? I’m not too suggestible but it did feel as if I shouldn’t really be here, that this place is still owned.  

A landscape rough with stacks and geos. Photo by Pen

It's a powerful place. The coast line is excessive, chasmic. I walk beyond the ordered, walled fields. It feels less than secure. There are places where cave rooves below have fallen in and taken the land with it. It must have been terrifying when that happened. There is one distinct line where the land has just dropped. It punches above its weight for such a small island.

Photo by Miner Willy

I turn back from the exciting but scary edge of the island world and walk back through the community. These ruins are not like the ruins of the crofts ubiquitous in the Highlands and Islands. Sad little tumbles of stone that speak of a hard life that had not been sustainable. These houses speak of hard working life where a community of strong, talented people had created comfort and pleasure, where people worked together and were investing in a future. These were the houses of people who were confident of their future. They had been built, with skill and ingenuity, with enormous hard work and determination, by people who intended to stay. So who were they? And why did they leave?

Photo thanks to Miner Willy

A shadow of a path still leads to the great stone steps down to the harbour. This must have been a much walked path when the houses were lived in. Heavy cargo, good news and bad would have been brought up these steps. The steps are made of giant slabs of the the conglomerate rock which must have offered good solid tread on wet days. From above the harbour is again a thrilling, ingenious piece of engineering. It is a little miracle. The water is so clean that a marine naturalist would have a field day.

The magnificent pocket-sized harbour. Photo by Miner Willy

With twenty foot left to go the steps have collapsed and the railings hang suspended in thin air. I knew that the lower steps had gone but I'd thought it might be possible to scramble down. It's not. Having seen the landslips on the island I'd like to avoid going down the same way I had come up. Another dead sheep is wedged a few feet below me below the harbour steps. It probably just wanted a bit of a seaweed for supper. Hungry and stupid, just like me. I start back up so carefully, on hands and knees. I’m almost crying at my own rash stupidity.

Photos by Pen

To get back to the tent there’s no choice but the overhung bank and the stream bed. It’s always harder going down as any childhood tree climber knows. I bribe myself to go slowly, to think each move through. The bribe is supper. I haven’t eaten since breakfast. No wonder I feel uneasy and discombobulated.

Eilean Neave in show off sunset glory. Photo by Pen

After the silvery sunset light on top my camp spot in Mol na Coinnle is a gloomy and foreboding tunnel. Or maybe that's just my mood. I eat my supper in reverse order, pudding first to get enough energy to use the stove. Eating’s good. Should’ve thought of it sooner. Idiot again. Turn on my dodgy smart phone to check the forecasts (not great). The battery is sinking despite using the power pack. Turn off the phone to preserve what life it has in it for the morning forecast check.

As I wriggle my way into my sleeping bag a low whirring and chattering started. Faint at first, becoming an enveloping chorus of voices, men's and women's voices wailing and gossiping and chattering. There are no ghosts. Are there? “And,” I tell myself as I snuggle in “if these are ghosts then they are good souls that just need to come home.”

In the morning the gas for my stove had run out. No breakfast. No sunrise light. Tide is in so launch and go. The narrow bay was flat but outside the bay there were too many white horses. Straight across to the mainland would have been the plan but the wind was knocking and colliding waves onto the rocks.

The crossing to Rabbit Island and then Tantine seemed a good idea. It felt less so when the waves got big and lungy between the islands where the outflowing river met the wind. A great flock of gulls, maybe fulmar, yo-yoed up and down around me. The waves were kicking up something they were catching but I felt as if I might be being sized up for their seconds.

Once in the lee of Rabbit Island it was comfortable and familiar, a different world. Something was carving sharky moves in the shallows over the sandbar. Porpoise? Good luck to it. Everyone needs their breakfast.

I rounded Tantine Island in an enveloping tumult of Arctic Terns. They don’t fly, they float in the air. It’s like being in the biggest corps de ballet in the whole world. My heart leaps to be among them. It's such a privilege.

Ruined croft and ghost fishing boat on Tantine beach. Photo by Pen

In less than an hour I was off the water. Ethel was unloaded but still on the shore. A postman from Stoke on Trent helped me up with her. “We’re doing the NC500” his wife told me. “Gavin likes his birds but there aren’t any here. None at all.” He had big binoculars. “ Try walking down the beach and look out at Tantine Island?” I suggested. After all, Gav had helped me, lots.

First stop was a hotel serving breakfast. It was good. Life started to feel less desparate. Over breakfast and my second coffee I plug in my laptop and start research. The island has left a powerful memories and a million unanswered questions.

Beautiful handrawn map by Iain Sutherland, Gaelic. Photo from the High Life Archive

Those ghostly calls the night before? Almost certainly Stormy Petrels returning to their homes. Turns out there’s a sizeable colony of them on the island. They nest in rocky ledges and crevices. Maybe they are the current inhabitants of those 16 handsome houses or maybe they were coming in to nests on the cliff face.

And in English

A hand drawn map by Iain Sutherland of Wick names the harbour as “The Port of The Candlelit Sea” and my beach as Candlelit Beach. That is the translation from the pure form of Gaelic, Gaelic Chaoidheach that the islanders used. I wonder how those evocative names were derived. How many candles would it take to light my bay, to reflect in the sea.

Kitty sitting outside her old home. BBC Alba

The last person to have lived on the island died just a few years ago. Her name was Kitty Ann-Mackay and she lived to be 100. The people of Eilein nan Ròn were the descendants of people who had been cleared by the Duke of Sutherland from the inland straths of Sutherland in the early nineteenth century. They had made a success of island life. But by 1938 Kitty’s family were among the last boat load to leave. Many people left their houses furnished in case they should choose to come back.

Leaving nan Roan. Scottish Maritime Museum

"We had mixed feelings - we were sad, but we knew we had to leave the island," Kitty said.  “The population was declining, and the people were getting old, so it was not a sudden decision. It was thought about for a long time. They left in December. I remember them saying that they were very sad looking back at the island without light. Even the people on the mainland said they had never seen the island without light at night. We were all so sad to leave, but it was the older people who were most affected by this. They had lived there all their lives."

Ray is the little sweetie in the front. Her Granny, with glasses is at the back. It takes a village to raise a child? Happy days in Summer, 1937. They were sheep dipping on the beach.

Ray Richard, nee Mackay, whose great-great grandfather had been one of the three original families to settle the island having been "cleared" from Strathnaver. Ray has given a wonderful aural history on Wick Voices, link below. A lot of men worked the herring boats, women and girls might work in Hotels or domestic service off the island. Ray said: “There was one old lady, died in her nightdress. She had never been off the island. She must have been so contented. They were contented.”

George Mackay and his wife Janet Munro. George's father Donald was the owner of a fishing boat called "The Morning Star" and described himself in the 1881 census as "Fisherman and Farmer." Which would sum it up for the whole community I'd think.

So this community had started with the clearances. The wild, challenging land of Northern Scotland was Mackay Clan country sold to the Sutherland family in the nineteenth century. The extraordinarily wealthy Sutherland family will forever be synonymous with the clearances. There's is not such a great history.

I’d spent the morning in Strathnaver Museum a few days before where the harsh old story is retold. “We were burnt out of our houses like wasps” a Mackay witness to the Napier Commission had recounted. The Sutherland family had made a few positive contributions locally. They had built the town of Betthill to accomodate newly cleared crofters. One Lord Sutherland had interested himself in roads and harbours. He laid the first stone at Skerry harbour, so maybe at Tantine and Eilean nan Ron as well? It surprised me to read that in 1938 each nan Ron family that left the island was given £100 by the then Duchess of Sutherland as compensation to help them make a new life.

Look at these confident, smiley children and their lovely Mum. Well turned out and bonny. Photo thanks to Hamish Hibbert. Hamish posted this picture in response to someone's request on the Friend's page for more information on Jessie Mackay , top right in the picture.

After my second cup of coffee I was moving on. I didn’t want to sink back into the dark stuff of the clearances and anyway the Eilean nan Ron community had made something fine on the island, their lives had worked out.

On Facebook I scrolled down posts, reconnecting with friends and family. And then I hit gold. Facebook suggested I might like to visit a page called “Friends of Eilean nan Ron”. Too right I would.

Willy the Post. Still from a BBC documentary thanks to Neil Dykes

And here on Facebook I met the descendants of the island, with all the warmth and generosity that you would expect. They haven’t left the island. Maybe theirs was the hiraeth I had experienced so powerfully on the island. Over and over happiness strength and good humour flow from the photos. As Ellen Henderson commented “they might have left but their hearts and souls never left their beloved island Roan.”

Still from a BBC documentary thanks to Neil Dykes

Many of them shared their photos and memories with me and allowed me to use them in this blog. This was a fitting end to my visit to Eilean nan Ron. I feel fully welcomed in to a community that is alive and warmly celebrated.

 Still from a BBC documentary thanks to Neil Dykes

And finally. this is the paddling I didn't get to do. Those caves. This is going to wet the appatite of every sea kayaker I know but you need settled weather. The tidal flow isn't huge, around 2 knots but the northern edges of Eilean Nan Roan and Neave are out of the shelter of Tongue Bay and are more turbulent. And of course there are very few landing places.

Thank you to everyone who shared photos and stories. I have a camera I can use on land but dropped my waterproof camera in the sea few days earlier so you've really helped me out. I hope I haven't made too many mistakes in my account of your beautiful island.

The islanders set out fish in one of the caves and used salt spray to naturally cure it. Ray Richards describes this in her aural history linked below.

Ray Richards, nee Mackay, whose great-great grandfather had been one of the original families after being cleared from Strathnaver, has made an aural history of her memories of the island. Her soft voice fills many of the gaps my curiosity left unfilled, how the houses were built, what the crops were, how the fish were salted. Do give it a listen. She brings the island alive.

https://www.wickvoices.co.uk/voices_listen.php?id=1008202120282810632&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0ghbVy5UBbBiCTEq4NZaezKJIpgvxjK0gwrcQAcpm_Tfc743RtOcvoriM_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw

On this trip I slept on one island and circumnavigated five so I will donate £15 to Aban, a fantastic new charity that gets young people adventuring outdoors. If you would like to support them you could use the donate button at the top of the page or just share this post. Thank you