by Mike Doyle

Islands hold all sorts of fascinations although for some more than others and for me more than most. The Castle Mountaineering Club has a climbing interest in the Scottish Islands of Arran, Rhum and Skye and these islands therefore feature frequently on the Club’s summer meets list. In my case, a keen interest in islands has become an obsessive urge to visit ever remoter, wilder and far flung spots. I am, though, wary of the D.H. Lawrence tale “The Man Who Loved Islands” in which the subject of the story, seeking ever smaller island sanctuaries, finally retreats to a slab of rock from which he is swept clean away.

My interest in islands began in Easter 1974 with a visit to Arran. The trip involved leaving my then base of Reading at five o’clock on Maundy Thursday evening, travelling to Bristol to collect one member of the team and and then undertaking a further journey to Stoke on Trent to collect two other members, followed by a run to Ardrossan and the early morning ferry to Arran. The return was equally frantic and saw me back at my desk at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning. In between, however, was an experience of true island bliss blue skies, anti cyclonic weather, a snow capped Cir Mhor and vistas of the west coast of Scotland and the nearby Paps of Jura. It was a three day glimpse of paradise that started a permanent island obsession.

Having whetted my appetite with the benign and accessible beauty of Arran, I began looking for more demanding locations, preferably those with mountaineering potential. A timely move to Sheffield and subsequent membership of The Castle Mountaineering Club certainly helped. Mull, Skye, Rhum and Jura became obvious choices. Unfortunately, I arrived in Sheffield with too little time spent in my new employment to have earned a week’s holiday and therefore felt obliged to remain south of the border whilst the Club trip to Skye in May 1975 went ahead. That was the year Skye wilted under a week long heatwave and much serious climbing was done including a Club traverse of the Cuillin Ridge. All I could do was seethe with rage on learning what a good trip I had missed.

The following winter I learned that the Club was planning a Spring Bank Holiday meet on Rhum, but I was again unable to join the trip. Rather than miss out altogether, I obtained permission to camp on the Island at Easter and so got there in advance of the main Club expedition. I shall never forget the feeling of commitment at the sight of MacBrayne’s ferry steaming away, leaving us ashore with only the tents and the food we had taken to sustain us for the coming week. A week of gales, leaking tents and wet sleeping bags took away some of the initial gloss, but the experience of watching deer only feet from our tent and an ascent of Askival on the only day of brilliant sunshine with views of the Cuillin on Skye, the nearby Small Isles and more distant Outer Hebrides shimmering beyond the deep blue Minch, easily compensated for the grimmer times. I was, though, left with a slight “niggle” when the subsequent Club trip in the Spring again found good weather and members packed in the routes.

The Rhum experience led me to visit a series of small and remote islands where the attraction was the intrinsic interest of the island itself rather than any mountaineering opportunities. Thus it was that I arrived green and seasick in North Haven on Fair Isle after two hours tossing about on the sea on the Island’s mail boat. Ignoring the obvious mountaineering and swimming! challenge of Sheep Rock, I was enchanted by the peace, abundant wildlife and cheerful simplicity of the fifty or so human inhabitants.

Thoroughly “hooked” by now, I spent a fortnight ploughing the Hebridean waters helping as crew on a seven berth yacht. Twice it was nearly all ended: first by a scrape with an unexpected overhead power cable on the west coast of Lewis and secondly by a navigational blunder that led us late at night into an uncharted bay at the entrance to Stornoway harbour.

Through this island touring, I eventually developed an obsessive interest in a small, remote and hard to get to island group beyond the Outer Hebrides. I mean of course “The Islands on the Edge of the World” as they were once described, or St Kilda by their present name. I first noted them with little more than idle curiosity as dots on the map, but then I read an article in a climbing magazine which aroused my interest. The description of the highest sea cliff in Britain and the largest gannetry in the world, surrounded by Atlantic seas, drew me to these islands like a magnet. The sad story of the former occupants of the islands, their fate at the hands of “civilization” and their ultimate evacuation added human interest.

However, my attempts at getting there were singularly unsuccessful. Twice The National Trust for Scotland rejected me as an applicant to join a work party, and an attempt to sail there by yacht had to be abandoned in high seas. The more my attempts to get there failed, the more I became obsessed with these Islands and the more I redoubled my efforts to find a way to cross that elusive forty five miles of Atlantic Ocean.

Eventually my patience and perseverance triumphed and I did duly set foot on the shore of Village Bay on Hirta, the main Island. Here at last was a remote island, well out to sea, out of sight of land and a truly wild place. The teeming sea bird life was ever present, the wind and sea pervaded all nooks and crannies and the drama of the cliffs was mind blowing. Yet amidst all this drama the old village and the old graveyard peacefully enhanced the natural appeal of the southern sweep down to the sea of the Island’s highest point, Conachair.

It was with a heavy heart that I bade farewell to these lonely and spectacular islands and returned to mainland Scotland. There have of course been other islands since and I have more targets for the future for example Foula, reputedly the St. Kilda of the Shetlands. Perhaps, though, I should try further afield. A glance at the shattered coastline of Norway also looks promising, with gems like the Lofotens very appealing and rekindling the old mountaineering spirit. Yet the lure of the Scottish Isles is hard to shrug off and once again I shall find myself setting off to the Hebrides. Although I shall be trespassing rather close to the Corrievrecken whirlpool, there are hopefully sufficient reasonably sized islands around to avoid my resorting to slabs of rock and experiencing the watery grave warned of by Lawrence!