{"id":718,"date":"2012-10-15T13:10:31","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T18:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janicebyrd.com\/?p=718"},"modified":"2012-11-15T22:07:53","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T03:07:53","slug":"at-home-in-islay-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/at-home-in-islay-scotland\/","title":{"rendered":"At Home in Islay, Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.\u201d\u00a0 Anita Desal<\/em><\/p>\n

I looked down from my window seat in the little plaid-painted commuter plane to view the green and purple island below.\u00a0 There I surveyed the wee Scottish island as if it were the tourist map laid out on my kitchen table back home in Texas.\u00a0 It really did resemble a witch carrying a bag of coal on her back!<\/p>\n

Twice before I\u2019d come to Islay on the ferry from the Argyll coast of western Scotland.\u00a0 I came first in 1987 on a church mission trip, and six years later, I brought my daughter.\u00a0 My husband Jerry, who is adamantly opposed to sailing, accompanied me on this his first visit to Islay.<\/p>\n

For twelve years Jerry had heard me speak about the violet heather that covers Islay\u2019s moors in October, much like the bluebonnets that cover Texas in April.\u00a0 He was not disappointed.\u00a0 The breeze was cool and scented with peat that was being hand-harvested in the bogs along the roadside as we rode with our friends, James and Mary, to their white stucco cottage in Port Ellen.<\/p>\n

Jerry and I had the bedroom on the second floor with a casement window that overlooked the harbor, just beyond their street.\u00a0 The outside walls of their home, more than a century old, were a foot thick.\u00a0 Just standing in front of the window made me feel as if I were looking out from a castle tower.\u00a0 I imagined the bay was a large mote keeping out any and all unwanted intruders.<\/p>\n

There was so much I wanted to share with Jerry, and new discoveries I hoped we could experience together.\u00a0 Two days would not be enough time, but I reminded myself that hurrying would taint my reality of Islay.<\/p>\n

Jerry and I slept late the next day.\u00a0 Once awake, however, I remembered my urgency to explore.\u00a0 I put on jeans and my Islay sweater. The \u201cjumper\u201d with its black sheep design had been hand-knitted for me from Islay wool.\u00a0 It was a glorious day for bike riding, but there wasn\u2019t time.\u00a0 Instead, Mary chauffeured us around the island.<\/p>\n

From the car I pointed out to Jerry the woolen mill, the whiskey distilleries and the WWI monument to the American sailors who drowned off the coast of Islay.\u00a0 Our first destination was the Kildalton Cross, Islay\u2019s most famous treasure.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hewn from a singe slab of local, gray-green stone, the ninth century, eight-foot Celtic cross stands unbroken and well-preserved enough for us to recognize the Bible heroes carved on its east and west faces.\u00a0 Nearby in the ruins of a medieval church, a grave slab, carved with a depiction of a man in armor, spawned our speculation about what the twelfth-century patron, the Lord of the Isle, might have looked like.\u00a0 \u201cAll of the MacDonalds in the world come from Islay,\u201d Mary bragged.\u00a0 Indeed, the church had stone arches!<\/p>\n

We stopped at Claggain Bay, where the small, smooth beach stones were multicolored and resembled a giant\u2019s marble game laid out in the circular cove.\u00a0 Jerry spotted gray seals basking in the sun atop some rocks in the bay.\u00a0 We passed a field with two prehistoric standing stones, and it was simple enough to climb over the stone fence to get a closer look.\u00a0 Mary took our picture with the Bronze Age monolith, and then showed me how to gather heather by its roots.<\/p>\n

In the town of Bowmore, we visited the eighteenth-century, Church of Scotland \u201cRound Church.\u201d\u00a0 Just around the corner is the little Baptist Church where I worked the first time I came to Islay.\u00a0 I was so anxious to revisit my favorite shops that our anticipated lunch of fish and chips was postponed until I could browse at Roy\u2019s emporium, The Celtic House.\u00a0 Next-door was the bakery where I always buy Empire biscuits. We ate the jelly-filled, cut out cookies as an appetizer.<\/p>\n

Mary knows and spoke to everyone.\u00a0 One woman we meet on the street exclaimed, \u201cYou\u2019re wearing my jumper.\u00a0 It must have been ten years ago, at least, that I knitted it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had hand surgery and can\u2019t knit anymore.\u201d\u00a0 I wanted to tell her how much pleasure and how many wonderful memories her sweater had given me, but I am overwhelmed by the serendipity of our meeting.\u00a0 Instead, I told her that I had returned with my husband, and hoped that that was evidence enough of my devotion to Islay.<\/p>\n

The next day, I insisted that we take the five-minute ferry ride to Jura, Islay\u2019s neighbor island to the north.\u00a0 Mary and James\u2019 daughter, Ruth, was the county nurse and the only medical personnel on Jura at the time.\u00a0 The cottage where she lived was separated from the beach by her rose garden, which was in full bloom.<\/p>\n

We went inside for a cup of tea and scones. Hours later I checked the time only to realize that we had just missed the last ferry returning to Islay.\u00a0 Ruth raced us to the pier in her little blue Audi, which doubled as her mobile clinic and traveling office.\u00a0 She honked sharply three times at the departing barge.\u00a0 The captain recognized her car, and teasingly admonished her from the ferry\u2019s loudspeaker.\u00a0 \u201cWill the nurse from Jura kindly set her watch with the rest of us?\u201d\u00a0 The all-but-empty boat turned back to rescue us.<\/p>\n

Too soon it was time for us to go.\u00a0 Jerry said he\u00a0didn’t\u00a0think he could actually live in a place where the sheep out-number the people, \u201cbut it was a nice place to visit.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ll be back, someday, but until then, I\u2019ll have my heather bouquet to remind me of my island home in Scotland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.\u201d\u00a0 Anita Desal I looked down from my window seat in the little plaid-painted commuter plane to view the green and purple island below.\u00a0 There I surveyed the wee Scottish island as if it were the tourist map laid out on my kitchen table back home in […] Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions\/874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/janicebyrd.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}