Seconds from disaster?

Having been a yachtsman on the west coast of Scotland in the past, I'm a great admirer of the work of the RNLI. Hence I was a bit disappointed to see that their advertising agents appear to have been indulging in a bit of what I might call "tabloid" advertising techniques:-

Of course, the yacht is not sinking any more than the lifeboat is - it's just the swell obscuring parts of the respective craft. So unless there's a jagged reef of rock just yards out of view to the left of the yacht, it is manifestly not "seconds from disaster".

The blurb on the back of this flyer says:-

Twenty miles off the coast, in Force 9 gales, high waves and poor visibility, the sailing yacht Galasma's engine and electrics failed. Those on board could do nothing but hope for rescue. RNLI lifeboat crews battled the gale for a gruelling 10 hours, before bringing them safely home.

Let's analyse that.

Twenty miles off the coast, your engine and electrics fail. Well it's a yacht, could you not hoist your sails? Whatever, you're not "seconds from disaster" and it's not the case that you can do "nothing but hope for rescue". That's a criticism of the crew of the yacht of course, not the RNLI. But that photo doesn't look to me like a Force 9 gale - high waves and poor visibility, admittedly, but not Force 9. I really hesitate before accusing the RNLI of a direct lie, but the bit about "battling for 10 gruelling hours" to rendezvous with a sailing yacht, albeit with no engine or electrics but still floating upright and apparently with its mast and rigging all in place just doesn't ring true to me if that photo's anything to go by.

I'm going to give the RNLI - and its advertising agency - the benefit of the doubt and say they probably put the wrong story with the photo and the reality was something more like that the lifeboat was called out to take a casualty off a perfectly seaworthy craft.

Lifeboat at Castlebay, Barra - 2003

 

Garvault Hotel - remotest in Britain?

The Garvault Hotel in Sutherland claims on its website to be the remotest hotel in Britain. It's rubbed shoulders with establishments in the Australian Outback and Alaska in a Forbes magazine remote places to stay survey but even if that seems hard to credit, it's pretty flipping remote.

 

Not content with being in the middle of nowhere, it's even half a mile down a side road off a road to the middle of nowhere.

And if you turn through 180 degrees from that view above, this is what you see:-

This is what it looks like close up:-

Photo credit - Colin Kinnear

And this is where it is:-

 

Before I acquired my first car in 1987 (an Alfa Romeo Alfasud reg. USX 9V), I used to pore over Ordnance Survey maps looking for impossibly remote and interesting places to go when I got a car and the Garvault Hotel was very much noted down for future reference. Although I did subsequently acquire a car, and a wife, and we did a lot of motoring round pretty remote country house hotels in the far wild reaches of the country, the Garvault always eluded me - perhaps because it was just too remote. Although when we acquired our first flat and had our first flat warming party, I recall being very intrigued to hear our new neighbour was a regular guest at the Garvault for the fishing: "Oh, at that very remote hotel in Sutherland - does it actually exist, then?" I asked. He was amazed I'd even heard of it.

   

I have to confess the Garvault Hotel has never crossed my radar since that evening in 1991 until today when I was doing one of my virtual tours round remote parts of Sutherland courtesy of Google Maps Streetview. I found myself virtually on the B971 approaching Garvault and I thought, surely the hotel won't exist any longer ...

But it does. There don't seem to be any TripAdvisor reviews but there's quite a funny article in the Telegraph you can see here - scroll about half way down. Here's a taster:-

I enter out of the blinding rain into a bar that for some reason immediately makes me think of the 1970s, in particular the 1970s of Party Seven cans, Double Diamond and New Faces on the TV. The Garvault is run by an English couple, but at first I meet only the husband, Graham. He is cheery in a manner that, were this a film, would presage some terrible event about to happen. 'We wanted to get out of the rat race,’ he explains, and their success seems beyond doubt.

That the Garvault Hotel is remote, we can all agree on, but is it the remotest in Britain? This is a challenge someone like me with too much time on his hands has to take up.

Now, of course, it depends on how you define "remote" but I'd like to offer as a definition the distance to the next permanently inhabited house. In that case the Garvault Hotel is 4 miles from the houses at Badanloch Lodge. And the nearest village is Kinbrace at 8 miles (admittedly just half a dozen houses but does have a railway station, a primary school and street lights).

I'd like to offer up as a challenger to remotest hotel in Britain, the Cluanie Inn on the A87 from Invergarry to Kyle Of Lochalsh at the head of Glen Shiel:-

Photo credit - Claypotts Productions

Assuming Cluanie Lodge 2 miles away is not permanently inhabited (unless there's a permanent housekeeper in which case I admit defeat), the nearest house to the Cluanie is Achnagart Farmhouse 8 miles west in the direction of Kyle down Glen Shiel. The nearest village is Shiel Bridge 10 miles in the same direction (no station or school but it does have a shop, petrol station and caravan park). Admittedly, there's two little cottages next to the Cluanie but I think they may be staff accommodation. But if they're permanently inhabited independent of the hotel, do leave a comment and I will admit my error.

Photo credit Allan MacIver

It also has to be admitted that the Cluanie Inn is beside a double track trunk road to Kyle of Lochalsh and the Isle of Skye whereas the Garvault Hotel is half a mile off a single track road from nowhere to the back of beyond. Judge for yourself.

I stayed at the Cluanie a number of times in the early 90s. The main reason for stopping there was because we could - in other words it served its function of being a wayside inn on a journey which could not be accomplished that day. It was because we were leaving after work from Edinburgh to go to Skye before the bridge and couldn't reach Kyle before the ferry went off for the night. It was very good, the Cluanie in these days, nearly 20 years ago - I hope it still is ...

Photo credit Callum MacLellan

I seem to have digressed away a bit from whether the Garvault Hotel is Britain's remotest. Do leave a comment defending it or offering other challengers (the Kingshouse on Rannoch Moor perhaps? The house at Altnafeadh's only a couple of miles away ...)

Garvault - Photo credit MolloF

Connel Ferry

Local roadsigns ...

... and the Ordnance Survey ...

 

... both refer to it simply as "Connel" so it's pleasing to note that Scotrail and Railtrack still stubbornly refer to the last stop on the line to Oban as "Connel Ferry".

This is because, when the railway to Oban was built in 1880, there was a ferry here across the narrows of Loch Etive and not much else except an inn where the present day Oyster Inn now stands.

Extract from the ordnance Survey 25 inch scale map - note that it shows no detail of the north side of the loch because it was in a different parish from the south side.

On the beach opposite the Oyster Inn, the remains of the ferry slipway shown on the map above can still be seen:-

The narrowness of the mouth of Loch Etive and sunken rocks combine to produce a strong tidal stream, today called the Falls of Lora (but interesting to note marked on the 1870s OS map as "Falls of Connell") and when the tide is flowing at its fastest, the narrows look more like a turbulent river than an arm of the sea.

Picture credit - James T M Towill

The falls are just upstream (to the right when looking from the south side) of the ferry but must nevertheless have produced a boisterous crossing at times. One traveller recorded in 1797:-

"Leaving Dunstaffage, we crossed the narrow mouth of Loch Etive by what is called the Connel ferry. The tide rushes through this channel with such rapidity, that it sometimes forms a cascade of six feet. The ferry, in consequence, is frequently dangerous and always requires the cautious management of an experienced boatman The old pilot who conducted us over, with our horses had attended the ferry upwards of sixty years, and the management of it has been in the same family, handed from father to son for three hundred years. The mode by which we crossed it, reminded me of the rivers in Piedmont, the passage over which is exactly the same. The boat is launched from one side of the river, and intrusted to the torrent which carries it with great rapidity down the stream, the men all the while tugging at the oars, till at last it reaches the opposite side a considerable way lower down. By constant practice, the ferrymen are dexterous enough to reach generally the same point, where there is a sort of quay for landing; but this is not always the case, nor was it so when we crossed over. Sometimes the eddies are violent enough to turn the boat round, by which they lose the command of her, for a few seconds, and you are then hurried somewhat lower down the stream. Notwithstanding the perilous nature of the stream itself, the uncertainty of the old crazy boat they use, frequently thronged with passengers and terrified horses, who betray great uneasiness in passing I heard of no instance in which an accident had been fatal to any one." 

Connel from the west before the bridge

Having been transformed once in 1880 by the arrival of the railway to Oban, the scene at Connel Ferry was transformed again in 1903 by the construction of a bridge over the Falls of Lora to carry a branch line north to Ballachulish.

Connel Bridge from the east - picture credit Wikipedia

At first, the bridge was exclusively for use by trains and the ferry survived alongside it as can be seen on the 1906 OS one inch map:-

In 1909, a special carriage was adapted to carry a single car across the bridge and then, in 1914, a roadway was added so that vehicles could cross the bridge on payment of a toll. This, I think, would have marked the end of the ferry. Marie Weir's book Ferries in Scotland suggests the ferry continued until the railway line across the bridge was closed and the vehicle toll lifted in 1966 but I'm pretty certain she's mistaking the Connel Ferry with the Bonawe Ferry across Loch Etive at Taynuilt which - it is my understanding - continued as a car ferry until finally put out of business by the lifting of the vehicle tolls on the Connel Bridge five miles west. This is corroborated by the fact that the 1927 OS one inch map no longer indicates a ferry at Connel:-

So now the ferry is only recalled in the name of the railway station and the aptly named Ferryman's Bar of the Oyster Inn.

OS six inch map, 1871 - before the railway and bridge.

Fain Inn

A good five miles from the nearest habitation, a derelict house stands beside the A832 between Dundonnell and Braemore Junction in Wester Ross.

Photo Credit Wilde Tucker. The mountain in the background is An Teallach (pronounced "TCHALL-ach" - gaelic for "The Anvil"

This remote spot - which I drove past this afternoon - is called Fain. (It's from the gaelic word feithean meaning "boggy channels" which is apt because this is on the watershed where streamlets gather amongst the peat bogs to form the Dundonnell River.)

The empty house has something of a reputation as having once been a droving inn called the Fain Inn but I've always had my doubts about this. For a start, it doesn't look old enough to have been a droving inn (even allowing its present corrugated iron roof to have been a later addition). Also, it just doesn't look very "inn shaped", somehow. There's more pictures of the house here.

Photo credit Ben Allison

Anyway, the amazing wealth of information you can derive from the internet allows me confirm that there was an inn at Fain but this building isn't it. Here's the proof:-

First, Ordnance Survey 6 inch map surveyed in 1875

Note how the inn is marked to the north of the burn running in from the north east.

Next, the present day aerial view from Bing Maps:-

Note how the present day building is south of the burn.

The road from Dundonnell to Braemore is known as the Destitution Road because it was built in the 1840s to provide work for the local tenantry suffering from the potato famine. Before this, the main route east from Dundonnell was directly to Altnaharrie (still a hotel until recently) on the west shore of Loch Broom from where there was a ferry across the loch to Ullapool.

The original Fain Inn, of which no trace now survives, would have been established with the opening of the Destitution Road to Braemore in the 1840s. This was years after droving (taking herds of cattle south to market) had ceased but a Widow Mackinnon was noted as living at Fain in the 1861 census.

Photo credit Photospool

Although I didn't stop at the Fain Inn this afternoon, I did stop a couple of miles south and noted this brass plaque recording the upgrading of the Destitution Road from a single track to double track in the 1960s

Lots of history going on in the remotest of places!

The Porter's Lodge

Just before the end of the public road out to the Rhue of Arisaig there's a splendidly remote cottage which rejoices under the rather incongruous name "The Porter's Lodge".

As is so often the case with such names, there's an interesting story - this is it.

A few hundred yards past The Porter's Lodge, at the end of the public road, there's a stone shed with a slate roof looking out towards the islands of Rum and Eigg.

This was the goods shed for Arisaig Pier which used to stand here but has now completely crumbled away. Before the railway to Mallaig was built in 1901, Arisaig Pier was the port of call by steamers for the Arisaig - Morar area given that Mallaig and its harbour (like Kyle of Lochalsh) didn't exist before the railway.

The pier was away out here, about 3-4 miles by road from Arisaig Inn at the end of the road from Fort William, because the loch the village sits at the head of - Loch nan Ceall - has a narrow, shallow and reef strewn entrance unsuitable for steamers to enter as the Google Earth image below shows ...

and the 1858 Admiralty Chart confirms:-

So the MacBrayne's steamers, Claymore (1881-1931) and Clansman (1870-1909), on their weekly trips from Glasgow - which were the main means of conveyance of passengers and goods to the remote parts of the West Highlands before road transport became prevalent in the 1930s - didn't go up the loch. Nor, even, did they come alongside the pier at its mouth because Arisaig was a ferry call - i.e. where the steamer lay off shore and a small launch (the ferry) went out from the shore to meet it.

The eponymous "porter", then, was the ferryman who had acquired his alternative job title because, amongst his duties, was lugging the trunks of passengers - very often gentry visiting the various "big houses" in the area during the season - in and out of the ferry. And the "lodge" was not just where the "porter" lived but also the waiting room for steamer passengers.

A ferry coming out to a ship I know, although you can't see it, to be the Claymore at an unidentified location

I'm obliged to the online edition of the Arisaig, Mallaig and surrounding areas and islands local newspaper, "West Word", for educating me about Arisaig Pier and The Porter's Lodge. The October 2000 edition carries a reprint of an article originally written in 1965 by the Arisaig postman, Pat McCarthy, who lived at The Porter's Lodge and whose great grandfather, Donald MacKinnon, was the last (indeed possibly only) ferryman at Arisaig. The article contains some interesting details such as that the pier was built in 1885 and "the Lodge" a couple of years later. There's a description of the waiting room and a small photo of the pier when it was still in use equipped with a hand crane.

Steamers stopped calling at Arisaig when Mallaig harbour - where they could get alongside - was opened with the arrival of the railway in April 1901. Apparently, MacBrayne's offered their redundant ferryman, Donald MacKinnon, another job in Glasgow but he declined it. Presumably, if his descendants were still living there in the 1960s, they sold him the equally redundant Porter's Lodge - one would like to think at a pretty cheap price as compensation for not having offered him a new job at Mallaig!

The Claymore at Mallaig

Duncraig Castle

It's the great gothic pile across the bay from Plockton in Wester Ross which featured prominently in "Hamish Macbeth". It was also the scene of the 2004 BBC docudrama "The Dobsons of Duncraig" featuring the extended Dobson family's attempts to transform the castle from dereliction into an upmarket guest house and falling out spectularly in the process.

Photo credit Jeremie Rocher

It's not a castle at all, of course, but a Victorian mansion. It's said the ceilings are adorned with plaster mouldings of poppies and tacked on to its north end (though not visible in that picture) is an awful 1960s modernist institutional extension. This is why.

Duncraig Castle was built in 1866 for Sir Alexander Matheson. He was born in 1805 at nearby Attadale, the son of the tenant farmer there, but made an immense fortune as a partner in the Hong Kong firm of Jardine Matheson & Co. The eponymous co-founder, James Matheson, was Alexander's uncle. The core of JM&Co's business was importing opium into China in exchange for tea to be exported to Britain, hence the poppies on the ceilings at Duncraig: the firm's story was the inspiration for James Clavell's Tai-Pan novels.

Alexander Matheson returned to Scotland, was knighted and bought Attadale before going on to amass a huge estate comprising almost the whole of the parish of Lochalsh (i.e. all the land bordered by Loch Carron down as far as Kyle on the north and west and Loch Alsh and Loch Long on the south east). With his other estate at Ardross Castle in Easter Ross, it made Matheson the biggest landowner in Ross-shire.


Note how some of the tower roofs have since been removed

Duncraig is not Gothic either but what architects call Jacobean, in other words aping the style which followed Tudor when King James VI & I was on the throne of England (1603-25). It's characterised by clusters of tall narrow windows. The architect was Alexander Ross of Inverness who designed a number of Victorian mansion houses and shooting lodges in north west Scotland but also some more humble buildings including many parish schools in the 1870s.

Alexander Matheson was also a prime mover behind the construction of the railway from Inverness and Dingwall to Stromeferry in the 1870s. When the line was extended to Kyle of Lochalsh in 1897, it ran along the shore in front of Duncraig and a private railway station was built for the service of the house. This was common practice during the railway boom - it was sort of the Victorian equivalent of today's "community benefit" from building a wind farm except the benefit went to a local grandee (who in fairness had paid for a hefty chunk of the railway so the analogy is not exact.)


Duncraig Castle bottom right looking over Plockton to Applecross, the Crowlin Islands and Raasay - note the railway line along the shore in the left foreground

In fact, Sir Alexander Matheson had died in 1886 so the benefit of the private station was for his son, Sir Kenneth. But as is often the case with nouveaux riches, however, the money to maintain such a lavish country estate was not destined to pass down many generations and Kenneth Matheson sold Duncraig to Sir Daniel Hamilton in the 1920s (not sure of the exact date.) Hamilton also owned the neighbouring Balmacara Estate to the south of Duncraig - that had also belonged to the Mathesons but again I'm not sure if the two were bought together as all part of the same sale or not.

Daniel Hamilton had in common with Alexander Matheson that he had made money in a family business in the east, India this time. He bought a tract of land in a swamp called the Sunderbans in the Ganges Delta in Bengal, reclaimed it and did much to promote the interests of the local peasantry. He was a pioneer of what would now be called "micro-credit", was said to be close to Gandhi and is still remembered fondly in the Sunderbans. Back home in Scotland, he showed the same philanthropic spirit by bequeathing Balmacara Estate to the National Trust for Scotland and Duncraig Castle to Ross & Cromarty County Council for use as a domestic science college. Sir Daniel died in 1939 and these bequests were to take effect after the death of his wife, Lady Margaret. That happened in 1947 although during the war, Duncraig Castle was used as a naval hospital.


Photo credit Jürgen Ossa

It was during its time as Duncraig Castle College, in 1969, that the hideous modernist extension was added to the north (left) end of the house. This is plainly obvious in the aerial photo above but fortunately it's largely masked by trees and not really obvious in the view from Plockton which is where most people see the Castle from.

Duncraig Castle College closed in 1989 but it took Highland Council 13 years to decide what to do with the building. Apart from accommodating the production team for "Hamish MacBeth" (1995-97 BBC series filmed on location around Plockton starring Robert Carlyle as a village policeman, in the same mould as "Monarch of the Glen"), it mostly lay empty and deteriorating rapidly: a house like Duncraig - any house - dies quickly if left empty in a damp climate like Wester Ross. In the 90s, I subscribed to the West Highland Free Press and recall endless stories about proposals for Duncraig being rented as a back-packers hostel being objected to vociferously by the residents of Plockton and coming to nothing.


The elevation to the sea is at the bottom as in the picture above and this plan doesn't include the 60s extension to the left

Eventually, in 2002, the Council grasped the nettle and concluded it had no option but to sell the Castle. It was put on the market at offers over £350,000 and bought for £505,000 by Sam and Perlin Dobson, a couple from Nottinghamshire with experience in doing up and selling or renting houses. With plans to renovate it as an upmarket guest house-cum-wedding venue etc. (the Castle has a private chapel) Duncraig would be their biggest challenge. The Dobsons imported Sam's parents and several of his siblings and their families to join in the project - and a BBC film crew for good measure to catch them all falling out big style over the next two years and broadcast it to the nation in "The Dobsons of Duncraig". I didn't catch any of that series myself but you can read the unedifying details in this New York Times article.


60's extension cunningly hidden by the trees on the left 

All we need to know for present purposes is that once the dust had settled on the televised shenanigans of 2003-04 and the rest of the family had been evicted (literally, I gather), the Dobsons continued to run Duncraig Castle as a bed and breakfast for five years with some success. But they put it up for sale in early 2009 at offers over £750,000. I don't know how to link directly to a pdf but you can download the sale brochure from top people's estate agents Strutt & Parker via this link (look for the "Download Duncraig" link near the top of that article).

It was bought by Suzanne Hazeldine who is continuing to run the Castle as a bed and breakfast. Duncraig gets pretty good write-ups on Tripadvisor - you can see how people are just blown away by the location and views and the experience of staying in a "Scottish castle" although a regular theme of comments is having to try and ignore the decayed 60s extension as you sweep up the driveway (it's never been occupied again since the college closed in 1989 and the new owner now has plans to demolish it).

The view from Lady Matheson's Room

Meanwhile, Highland Council used the proceeds of sale of the Castle as an endowment for the Duncraig Educational Trust Scheme which makes grants to young people from the Highlands pursuing further education - it seems a reasonable compromise considering the Council couldn't retain Sir Daniel Hamilton's bequest of the building itself.

To bring some other threads of the story up to date, Jardine Matheson & Co is still very much in business and still trading in tea, though not opium. Now known as just "Jardines", the company is still based in Hong Kong, privately owned and run by Scots, the direct descendants of founder William Jardine. Though not a household name itself, perhaps Jardines' best known subsidiary is the Mandarin Oriental luxury hotel chain.

The private railway station, with its miniature octagonal waiting room, remains open as Duncraig Station albeit just a request stop now. I can understand why they kept it open while the college was still going but you can't help thinking it must now be near the top of Network Rail's "to close" list - if I were a railway buff (which I'm not really enough of), I'd be making a point of getting on (or off, or both) at Duncraig soon before the opportunity is lost for ever.


Photo credit Seoras

Sir Alexander Matheson's uncle, James Matheson, the co-founder of Jardine Matheson & Co, also bought a Scottish estate, the whole island of Lewis. And he built in 1847 a castle of similar style and dimensions to Duncraig which also became a college. Happily, though, Lews Castle at Stornoway has managed to retain its further education function to the present as Lews Castle College, a campus of the University of the Highlands and Islands.


Lews Castle, Stornoway - Photo credit Steve

 As far as I know, however, there are no poppies moulded in the ceilings of Lews Castle as there are at Duncraig Castle.

And finally, I expect Sir Daniel Hamilton would have approved of the recent trend towards community ownership of Scottish country estates in the Highlands. Indeed, I wonder if he's not kicking himself in his grave that he didn't leave Balmacara-Duncraig to Plockton Community Trust (or some such) rather than the National Trust. I wonder who he left his estate in Bengal to?