The rest of the house party at Inverbroom Lodge at the foot of the sea loch were all accomplished sportsmen in one way or another.
7 whole days and nights living as if in a movie made about the quintessentially Edwardian house party in the highlands.
Breakfast was as lively and vibrant as the dinner party the previous evening and from which guests might possibly be still recovering. (Queazy makes it sound as though the food was disgusting!!!) Eggs and bacon, kedgeree or cereals were all available and once sat down with our selection, the host would chair the morning discussion as to who would do what particular activity. A great way to ensure the smooth management of the facilities available and, at the same time, made sure that each participant was given a shot at a different activity.
It also depended on the weather.... Was there enough water for fishing on the Broom? After a night's heavy fall, was there too much? Were the midges likely to be out on the river, or maybe on the hill? Who'd like to catch a salmon or who would like to try their hand at stalking, maybe wake-up a few grouse? How about a change of scene? A "rest" from the previous day which can last for up to 8 hours of forced marching over broken ground. Outside of circuit or basic military training, it's probably the most arduous and exhausting day you've had in your adult life. Towards the end of the stalk you come upon your prey and you lie in the heather, which this particular day has midges running into the millions who feed on your scalp, earwax and nostrils - even if clean and empty vessels - with an appetite so relentless that grown men have been known to suddenly jump up and run screaming to the nearest river or loch and throw themselves into the deepest pool.
So the idea of a day off visiting the museum in Ullapool, a cappuccino in the Ceilidh Palace, buying 'Superior' fingers of shortbread or a tartan postcard comes as a welcome idea. Ullapool is a charming port built in the Georgian era and of very little pretence. It is lovely to watch the ships unloading their catch but astonishing to find out that the entire lot has been presold to the Spanish..... large road vehicles are queueing up to be loaded with cod, languoustine and enormous crab which are then taken by truck 2000 miles to the Costa Brava to be consumed by Scots and others on holiday, thinking that they are sitting at a seaside restaurant on the Med eating local produce. (The Med, of course, is almost a dead sea: the tide only rises about a foot in each cycle and there is one entrance {between the rock of Gilbraltar and North Africa} and one exit in the Levant. So it is really a basin of water that is employed to wash the sun cream from holiday makers and provide a watery grave for empty plastic containers and old condoms... These are the thoughts you have as you sip your cappucino looking out across the harbour and wonder what to write on your post card.
Back at the Lodge the ghillies and stalkers are waiting faithfully outside the kitchen door for their instructions and daily charges. They look fit, upright and purposeful in their elegant 'estate' tweed, deerstalker hats (yup, they really do exist and have a proper function outside of Sherlock Holmes and his tourist shop in Baker Street) and try to be patient with the general indecision. They know they are more than ready for us once we get our acts together.
Getting ready is preparing your own picnic from a selection of delectables that the cook (or Cook) has laid out on the huge butcher's block in the centre of the cavernous kitchen. Hams, cheeses, roast beef, cold fish etc. Each person is responsible for preparing their individual lunch... how much or how little, alcohol or water? It is a clever and efficient method and means that each person is accountable for their own happiness; it takes a few days for the uninitiated to appreciate this but then they love it when they finally get it.
Once on the hill and through the first pain threshold of the day, the ethereal beauty of the moors is utterly romantic and pertaining to the upper regions of space. There is little talk - to conserve energy as well as to make sure you can't be heard. You follow in the immediate footsteps of the Stalker, up close and attentive to his stance. After a couple of hours climbing over peat heaps and crossing burns and brooks you settle upon a knoll and start to 'spy'. Well, the stalker does because he can spot a herd across the valley where you can see out-of-focus bracken, scree, bogs, burns and miny waterfalls.....even after he has told you that there are 10 or fifteen stags of which two are 'right for taking'; in other words, two that are right for you to shoot.
Then the actual 'stalk' begins, to get in range of a good and safe shot without scaring them off, by sight, smell or noise. Bear in mind that they can smell you in the wind from a mile away. The 'stalk' proper can be a few hundred yards dragging yourself over broken ground, along the burns and around boulders. It is never the most direct route and after the day's march is utterly exhausting. You are carried by the excitement of not believing that you are doing what you are about to do. An intelligent, civilised human being who is about to end the life of an animal the size of a cow. For sport.
Then there's the macho heartiness of watching the disembowelment of the beast - which for once is exactly the right word. There is no point in carrying all of that meat down the mountain when it a portion of it is useless to humans and extremely heavy and can be left for the eagles. Then there is the smell to be bravely ignored and the reaffirmation that you are a champion, the 'all man' member of the house party and despite a keen watercolourist, you are at heart the die-hard hunter, gatherer and provider.
The fishing provides light relief in so much as the ghillie will not only cary the tackle, but select which part of the river to fish that day (weather, light and temperature depending) and even choose which fly to tie, which he then attaches the fly for you. He stands patiently and attentively at your side, calling you sir and allowing you feel that such perfect attention and care is nothing lass than you deserve. His thrill at you catching an 8lb Salmon, by fluke, on your 15th cast of the day is total (see the picture below). Once more you march back to the lodge triumphant and full of good vibes - certain that you are fulfilling your duty once again as a hunter=gatherer and good and proper guest. It is all recorded in the game book for ever - for others to see and assume that you are the accomplished sportsman that you are hoping you are beginning to look.....despite forgetting your garters and your socks are round your ankles and your plus-fours looking faintly like a Vivienne Westward sartorial statement.
The Summer Isles Hotel can take on the atmosphere of a beautiful terrace restaurant in the Med. Having got there it is as well to forget the holiday budget and indulge yourself and your host the the full 'fruits de Mer'. It might be good to apply for the 'mortgage holiday' to cover this one. But when in Rome.... It is also a lovely contrast to being on the hill for the day. Rose wine, sit back and relax in front of the shimmering light on the sparkling sea and gaze at the archipelagio - the large body of water and many islands in different shades of blue and pigeon grey.
We drove on across the north of the highlands to the East Coast and a wonderful mansion near Bonar Bridge. William Prideaux had been invited to stay with his friend for a few days of more of the same. His friend's father was the oil and gold tycoon and he resides with his wife and young family in what he describes as a 'Deauville Villa' in the midst of a few thousand acres. He is jovial and good fun and allows his children a wonderful free run throughout the place. They all rush off with the keeper in the argocat in pursuit of game.
Algy Cluff is exactly as you would hope to find him or as I did having read about his buccaneering ways in the press when I was a schoolboy in the 70s. Urbane, amusing and a little outspoken. He retired from the Spectator Magazine as Chairman 3 years ago having sold it to the Barclay brothers some years before.
Over the next two days William gets his first stag to add to his tally of first grouse.
We spend a couple more days at Inverbroom and one or two new characters enter the scene from Monte Carlo and also Madrid. They are keener than anyone to shot something. They will fish, but its not the same as shooting something. Dead. Properly Dead. There was a lot of telling lies and drinking too much.
After collecting William from Grinuard (the Cluff estate) - still with the ritual blood on his face as a mark of his rights of passage, we motored on south of Inverness to Tomatin which is just between Inverness and Aviemore. We were guests of Carol and Simon Woolton at their estate, Clune Lodge, on the banks of the Findhorn.
Clune Lodge is a lovely Arts and Crafts mansion in the middle of juniper-land. Carol has decorated the entire house from top to bottom with exquisite taste and it is rather like staying in the sumptuousness of a totally private boutique hotel. Dinner was delicious and our only regret was that the visit was so short. It is one of the prettiest houses I have stayed in.
Whatever anyone says, and everyone has a theory, the drive from the highlands proper to London in one go is extremely demanding and tedious.
Gosh London takes a bit of getting used to. Everytime the doorbell rang in the morning I expected to find a Ghillie or Stalker resplendent in the estate tweed. Of course it was a washed out looking kid selling dish cloths and dusters.
I had a lovely lunch with Julia Marozzi of Bentley Motors in Shepherd's Market and the following day with Liz Hoggard of the Evening Standard in a Lebanese joint on Kensington High Street.
A FEW DAYS PAINTING
I stayed a night or two in Jolyon's Buba-hut at White City before taking the train to Diss and Kate Bernard's cottage in Lopham to paint for a few days. The poet Oliver Bernard, Kate's father and Geoffrey Bernards brother, kindly picked me up from the station and even waited in the Summerfield car park as I shopped for essentials; I was after all, going to be on my own and with out a car in the middle of nowhere.
A week alone painting is one of the delightful benefit of being an amatuer artist. Kate's brother Joe lives next door and it was great to see him play in his blues band at the local pub on the Saturday night.
The YORKSHIRE DALES
On the Saturday Sally Prideaux came by to pick me up for another massive journey up north for a 50th irthday party. Again it was lovely to drive the length of England on a glorious day - the mighty oaks, the flatness of the Fens and then eventually the drystone walls mark the fact the we are properly North again.
Arriving at Hawnby on the yorkshire dales was to be suddenly transported into winter and a rude shock given the length of the Summer Our host had erected a tent and constructed a large BBQ. Lights in the trees swayed dramatically in the wind. I sat next to a beautiful niece in her 20s and opposite a lady that reminded me of Rose in Upstairs Downstairs. She enquired of the children whether they had been on the hill stalking or grouse shooting at all this year. It transpired that she was the dowager Viscountess who had been widowed a few months ago. In fact she was the Vuiscount's nurse for many years (he'd contarcted Polio swiming in the war) and had married him a couple of years before he'd died in his nineties. The children didn't need to question his motives as the estate had been very efficently tied up in trusts.
Everyone danced through the storm and most of the night and the next day we were all treated to a sit down lunch in Hawnby. It was the best roast beef that I have tasted in England.
To break our journey back we crossed North Yorkshire to Ellingstring and a stay with my friend the journalist Jonny Beardsall. I met Jonny 30 years ago when we were at Catterick and then Sandhurst. We had both joined the 14/20th Hussars. He'd stayed in for a dozen years although never fired a shot in anger.
Jonny and Janey and their daughters Ruby and Hebe live in a hamlet that is inhabited by a population of 20 people all of whom are enaged in manual labour in agriculture. The house interior is like something out of a Edward Burne Jones or Millais painting. The range in the kitchen - which is still used for cooking and hot water - is the sort of thing you find in a pub painted upo as a kind of curiosity. The whole place had a look that made Mary Killen's beautiful rural cottage look like a minimalist loft conversion in the City.
Infront of the house is a lean-to that acts as a stable to a pretty pony that definately bites. Out of spite or boredom. The pony can get through the back of his stable into the downstairs cloakroom that this also a very fully equiped tack room and taxidermist half-way house. From there the pony may and often does, enter the kitchen.
We rowed, with the aid of an electric outboard motor, across a long man-made resrevoir and Jonny lit a fire on a damp bank amounst the midges. There we cooked sausages and fried potatoes as the heavens opened and dumped on us. It wasn't just a shower. We got back absolutely saturated.
We left on a lovely sunny morning after Jonny proudly showed me the deer hound called Viking that had been in his freezer for a year. He is hoping that Janey, an accomplished sculpturess, would make a bronze of it one day.
To go to the Blackwell Arts and Craft House at Windermere. The drive was simply delightful through many simple but charming and elegant market towns. As we arrived to see the Whitefriars Glass exhibition, we were just in time for a lecture on the subject from Professor Haslam, the curator. A wonderful bit of serendipity as it was a one off. We then had delicious parsnip soup and potted shrimps.
Lake Windermere and its environ is the playgound of Manchester and Liverpool tycoons. The whole place had the feel 'Half a Sixpence' and expected to see Tommy Steele enter the scene somewhere. After a moments hesitation to post Kate Bernard's Blackberry charger back to her as I'd unwittingly taken it the week before, we contemplated the fun of stopping at a bed and breakfast for the fun of a novel experience. Sally offered it as my 50th birthday present. The idea of my 50th birthday present being a night in a B&B in Windermere or Blackpool was too much to contemplate and was one issue in my life too many. We headed off to town although I did manage to persuade her to stop for a look at Morecombe Bay.
Dinner in the Electric was confirmation that we were back in town. Jason Orange from 'Take That' joined Joa and Andrew Studholme and me at our table. I had not seen him since the concert on the first of July when he'd given us tickets to the front row of the Royal Box. He charmingly introduced us to Howard and Gary too. He empathized my dilemmas for turning 50 as he too found himself resisting his twin brother's request for a joint party for their up-coming 40th!
I told him that I think he had slightly more to celebrate in his life todate. He graciously argued not.
