Book 42 - Island: Diary of a Year on Easdale

Island: Diary of a Year on Easdale by Garth and Vicky Waite - first published in 1985

Garth and Vicky met by chance on a train in Scotland when they were both widowed and in their 50s.  They married, retired early and moved to the small island of Easdale off the island of Seil in Argyll.  This book is an illustrated nature diary of their first year on Easdale - 1979.  It is in the same format as Edith Holden's The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, which was published in 1977.

The diary includes details of what Garth and Vicky did and places they visited but it is mainly an illustrated account of the wildlife they observed - flowers, plants, mammals, birds, insects, marine creatures, reptiles and amphibians.  There are no pages without at least one of Vicky's paintings.  The diary entries, which are in Vicky's handwriting are interspersed with quotations and poems - some of them by famous poets and some written by Garth and Vicky themselves.  It is a gentle book to dip into and savour.   7/10

Islands covered - Easdale, Seil, Luing, Mull, Iona

 Former quarry workers' cottages

 Ruined quarry building, Easdale

 Harbour on Easdale

 Village from the summit of Easdale

 Ferry Waiting Room, Easdale

 Bridge over the Atlantic linking Seil to the Mainland

Book 41 - The Flight of the Cormorants

The Flight of the Cormorants by Mary Withall - first published in 2000


After enjoying a holiday on the island of Seileach in Argyll in 1990 American businessman and developer Milton T Humbert decides he would like to build his next large holiday complex on the neighbouring island of Eisdalsa.  With a golf course, a marina in an old slate quarry, indoor swimming pool, hotel, indoor recreation areas and either a bridge or sky rail across to Eisdalsa, it would completely change the characters of the islands, while bringing little economic benefit to the local residents.

Milton sends one of his employees, an Australian called Jack McDougal, to visit Seileach incognito and to produce a feasibility report.  At the same time Dr Alan Beaton arrives in the area to assist the local GP.  However the GP has a heart attack just before he arrives and Alan ends up running the practice almost single handed.  Both Jack and Alan are attracted to Flora, the local pharmacist and GP's receptionist.  When the locals on Eisdalsa and the neighbouring village of Seileachan find out what is planned for their villages understandably most of them are determined to oppose it.

The author lives/lived on Easdale and the islands are described very clearly. The novel contains a plethora of colourful and memorable characters suffering from a variety of health problems.

Seileachan and Easdalsa are in real life the neighbouring islands of Seil and Easdale.   Slate was quarried from the mid 18^th Century.  The heyday was in the late 19^th Century when over 450 people lived on Easdale Island but large scale quarrying came to an abrupt end on 22^nd November 1881 when the sea flooded the workings during a violent storm.  The quarry closed in 1911, although a small amount of quarrying for local purposes continued until the 1960s.

Islands covered - Seil and Easdale

 View from the summit of Easdale looking over one of the flooded quarries

 Seil from Easdale - one of the flooded quarries is in the foreground

 Former slate workers' cottages on Easdale

 Ellenabeich, Seil

Book 40 - Kidnapped

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson - first published in 1886

The main character and narrator of this novel is 17 year old David Balfour.  In 1751 after the death of his father he leaves his home in the Scottish borders and walks to the house of his uncle Ebenezer at Cramond on the shores of the Firth of Forth to claim his rightful inheritance. David's father was older than Ebenezer and should therefore have inherited the family estate but they fell out over a woman - David's mother.  Ebenezer, who is a paranoid miser first tries to kill him and when he fails to do this he arranges for him to be kidnapped and sold into slavery in America.

The Covenant, the ship David is travelling on, collides with another smaller ship, which sinks,  and the only survivor, a Jacobite named Alan Breck, is rescued and brought on board the Covenant.  He and David become friends.  The Covenant runs aground off the island of Mull and David is washed ashore on the island of Erraid.  He thinks he is stranded there until after several days he realises that Erraid is a tidal island and is joined to Mull at low tide.  He walks across Mull in search of Alan Breck and gets a boat to the mainland.

Alan's arch enemy is Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, who is known as the Red Fox.  He is a government supporter.  David encounters the Red Fox but while he is asking his servant for directions a sniper shoots the Red Fox dead.  David is suspected of being a conspirator and Alan Breck is suspected of being the murderer.  David and Alan meet up and flee together south across the Highlands heading for Edinburgh.  They are pursued by government soldiers and then David is very ill.  After several close shaves and adventures they finally reach Edinburgh.  With the help of Ebenezer's lawyer and Alan, David is at last able to claim his inheritance.

Many of the characters in the book were real people e.g Alan Breck Stewart and the Red Fox.  Lots of Scottish dialect words makes the story hard to understand in places.  A few of the more obscure words had the modern equivalents given in brackets but there were still lots I had never encountered before.  That said it is a good old-fashioned adventure story.  I chose it because I thought most of the action took place on Erraid and Mull but in actual fact only a couple of chapters are set on the islands. 

Stevenson wrote a sequel to Kidnapped - Catriona.  This was published in 1893 but was never as popular as Kidnapped.    6/10

Islands covered - Erraid and Mull

Lochbuie, Mull