This Must be the Place

Sometimes, you find a place at just the right moment and it becomes part of your soul.

I found such a place a year before the pandemic kept us tethered to our homes. Back then, my soul was bruised, reeling from a break-up, the first relationship since the father of my child that had potential. As many of us know, the curse of the middle-aged singleton is the hope that kills…

Romance aside, my son and I often have cheap holidays in Scotland during school breaks. We get a twin room in a hostel, go for walks and swims in places new to us and, in the evening, play pool with travellers from around the world. We’ll argue over games of Monopoly and eat delicious food. The memory of us eating scallops under a blue sky at the green shack at the CalMac terminal in Oban is imprinted in my mind forever. Grinning at the deliciousness of it, garlic butter smearing our chins.

When I travel anywhere, it’s independently and I love the research part of it. Going deeper into rabbit holes on the internet until I find the place that I know I want to be. It’s divined by a combination of practical factors and romanticism. Most of the time, I just go with a feeling.

That spring, still hurting, I was looking at a few days in Skye over Easter, a place I’d been to before but my son, then aged nine, had not. Browsing the hostels in the region, my attention was drawn to the only hostel on the tiny island of Eigg in the Inner Hebrides. With a population of just over a hundred, it couldn’t have been more different from the tourist-infested Skye. There was a family connection too: my father’s cousin’s wife was born and grew up on Eigg. Although she’d died some years past, I remembered her beautiful lilting accent and gentle but steely ways.

That feeling took us to Eigg that spring. We took the famous West Highland trainline from Glasgow to Arisaig, to stay the night before the morning ferry. Our film references differed: my excitement was travelling over the desolate Rannoch moor to Corrour station, made famous by Trainspotting. His was the Harry Potter journey over the Glenfinnan Viaduct.

At Mallaig the next morning, there was a period of uncertainty. Engineering issues with the ferry… would we be able to get there? Luckily for us, an event was planned in the community hall the next night and they needed to transport the talent. After a certain amount of faffing, CalMac commissioned a small fishing boat, and we were on our way.

Something happened to us when we arrived in Eigg that day. There’s a peculiar light there that drew us straightaway. Normally, loch or sea water reflects the colour of the sky; on a dull day it will look grey. It was cloudy then, yet the sea was a clear, pale turquoise, white sands fringing the bay. I felt instantly that for whatever reason, I was in the right place, somewhere that could give me relief from my feelings.

Later, we walked down to the sole shop for supplies, then to the sole café for drinks and food. Almost immediately, my son disappeared off to climb on the rocks next to the sea with the island kids, who came to the café with their parents. He was adopted into the tribe for the duration of our stay, and that forced me to talk to some of the friendly Eiggachs at a time when I felt at my most unsociable.

The next day, we experienced that most terrible Scottish weather: heavy rain, plus wind. We attempted a walk but retreated, sliced in two by sharp, horizontal showers. Our plan to walk up An Sgurr was abandoned and instead, we spent a cosy day in the hostel. In places like Eigg, the weather will shape your days. If you run a sheep farm, you must put your oilskins on and go. But the rest of us might coorie in and watch the rain batter against the windows, the Ardnamurchan peninsula a vague, grey shape on the horizon.

That evening the rain cleared, and the community hall event went ahead. My son got filthy and happy roaming the woods, while I got to know people who lived on the island. And though the rain soaked much of our stay, my son cried when we had to leave.

Those conversations led to a longer summer holiday there. That July we had the Fèis, music, endless sunshine, and blue skies. In the north, we saw the Cuillins of Skye from a sun-scorched hill at Sgòrr an Fharaidh. In the evenings we listened to music, played a made-up battle game on the tyre swings at the cabin or watched the sunset over Rum. By the time summer was over, my heart was on the way to being healed.

We booked to go again the following summer, but like everywhere, the island shut down. Without a doctor, their island stayed closed for a year. Thereafter, we Glaswegians were punished for spiking the virus, just as the rest of the country opened its doors.

It took me until May this year to get back to the island. During our lockdowns, I’d pictured us stripping down for a warm, evening swim at the Singing Sands, or laughing with new friends at the café, watching dolphins play in the bay. I often wondered if it would feel the same when I went back.

This visit, the weather thwarted me again. It rained and rained for two days. I managed a swim in the turquoise bay and walks amongst the wet carpets of wild garlic and bluebells, but the best thing was the music and craic. That moment I arrived, walked down the pier to the shop hangout, and someone said, ‘look who it is!’ And gave me a hug.

I knew then that this would always be the place.