Europe

We drive for almost an hour along the perilous eastern coast of Jura along a gnarly track, known as “The Long Road,” that has even Charles holding his breath from time to time as the car dances on the edge of one precipice after another out over the sea. Finally we come to the end of the paved road and a gate with a sign forbidding vehicles to venture any farther. Waiting for us on the other side of the gate, leaning against a very beat-up and muddy Land Rover, is Mike Richardson.

“I’ve got to put the bloody sign up to keep igits from taking their rental cars up here,” says Richardson, who will turn 74 in September. “There’s no way they can make it on this road and then I end up having to tow them out.”

The road Richardson refers to is really nothing more that a nasty rough track full of gouged holes a foot or more deep and grass knee-high in places. As we bounce along at 5 miles per hour, Richardson says, “This road is exactly the way it was when George drove his Army BSA motorbike over it 60 years ago. In fact, it might have been better back then.”

George Orwell's house, Barnhill, on the east coast of Jura. Photos by David Lansing.

The George he is referring to is George Orwell, who came to Jura in 1946 to write his last novel, a book with the working title The Last Man in Europe (which ended up being published as 1984). According to Richardson, Orwell was looking to get as far away from civilization as possible—which is why he picked the wild and unpopulated stretch along Jura’s eastern coast.

“He was a wounded animal looking for someplace to hide,” says Richardson of the author and war correspondant, one of the first journalists to enter the German concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. “What he saw there made him lose faith in mankind. He couldn’t comprehend the horror. And shortly thereafter he wife, Eileen, died, quite suddenly after a botched operation, and he was quite ill from the tuberculosis that would eventually claim his life at the age of 46 in 1950. So he was a man at the end of his rope, in a way—a bit of the last man in Europe himself as he saw it.”

After about 40 minutes or so we make it the five miles to Barnhill, the old white stone house built in the 1850s, where Orwell lived from May 1946 to January 1949. Richardson takes me upstairs to the bedroom just above the kitchen where Orwell spent most of his time at Barnhill hammering away on his typewriter.

“It was his bedroom,” Richardson says as I look around at the cramped space, “but he didn’t sleep here. He preferred sleeping in an army tent in the garden. Thought the fresh air would do him good. More likely it made things worse.”

Mike Richardson in front of Barnhill where Orwell wrote "1984."

Later we sit on an old wooden bench in front of Orwell’s house looking out at the stone field walls, probably erected during the Bronze Age some 3,000 years ago, and the cherry trees Orwell planted and the bay from which he launched a 14-foot dinghy and tried to circumnavigate the island only to capsize just up the coast at the treacherous Corryvreckan whirlpool where he almost drowned. Or at least that’s the conventional version of the story. Which Richardson says with a wave of his hand is nonsense.

“Bullocks. He wasn’t anywhere near the Corryvreckan,” he says. “He was with his son and they were headed for a small island along the west coast to collect puffin eggs and when they stepped out of the boat, it capsized and they were stuck on the island for three hours until a fisherman picked them up. That’s the real story.”

Then why, I ask him, do people always talk about Orwell almost drowning at the Corryvreckan whirpool?

Richardson says, “Makes for a better story, I suppose.” He gives me a wink. “And you know how the Scots are with their stories.”

I do.

Jura has only one road, but it is the ultimate Great Wee Road. The narrow, twisty lane from the ferry landing to Craighouse, where the Isle of Jura distillery is located, seems absolutely indulgent once you see the road north of here.

You’d think that anyplace that actually had a going concern, like a whisky distillery, couldn’t really be called a village, but there’s no other name for Craighouse. As Michael Heads, the distillery manager says, “We’ve got one pub, one shop, and one wee hotel here. That’s Craighouse.”

The busy main drag in Craighouse, Jura, a village with "one pub, one shop, and one wee hotel." Photos by David Lansing.

The Isle of Jura distillery, like Bruichladdich, is another company that has had a tough time of it over the years. Rebuilt in 1963 after being closed for 60 years, they seem to be doing pretty well these days. Michael says the distillery originally made a heavily peated whisky, “but that kind of went out of fashion so when they reopened they started distilling a much lighter Highland whisky that was used mostly for blending with other whiskies.”

But they haven’t given up on smoky, peaty whiskies completely. Charles and I sit in Michael’s office nosing a new expression called Superstition in which the island peat used to make the whisky has to be cut when it has a certain amount of moisture and oil in it. Usually the peat used is only perfect for a couple of weeks out of the year. If they miss the window, the whisky is off. Which is why it’s called Superstition.

It’s a lovely dram. Maybe my favorite of the three dozen or so whiskies I’ve tasted so far on this trip. The smoke in the whisky is apparent, as is the brine. When I mention this to Michael, he’s pleased as could be.

“Most experts will tell you that it’s impossible to have a briny-tasting whisky,” he says. “But look at where we are? Flush up against the sea. In winter, you walk down the lane and you’re licking salt off your lips so I don’t care what anyone says. I say the whisky can’t help but have a taste of brine to it.”

Before heading to the north end of the island, we stop at the Jura store to get a bit of dark chocolate to go with the bottle of Superstition I’ve bought. A red-faced man is leaning against the counter in the tiny shop complaining to the shopkeeper about being the only one at the dance at the community hall last Saturday to wear a kilt.

“Use to be Fib and Morgan would wear a kilt but I guess they’re just too good for the ol’ tartan now that they’ve gone off to Edinburgh.”

“They’re fine lads,” says the shopkeeper.

“Nay, they’re gone,” says the red-faced man, disgusted. “They’ll not be back. And you can bet they didn’t take their ghillie shirts with ‘em.”

“Never mind,” says the shopkeeper. “You wore your kilt. Fib and Morgan are gone. Now never mind about it.”

Charles and I are at Port Askaig waiting for the ferry to Jura. Since we’ve got about an hour to kill, I suggest we go somewhere for a beer.

The Port Askaig hotel bar; too civilized for us. Photo by David Lansing.

“There are only two pubs around here,” Charles says. “The bar at the Port Askaig Hotel, right next to the ferry landing, is terribly civilized. I’d suggest that.”

“What about the other place?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “It’s just down the street but I couldn’t recommend it to you. It’s the sort of place where you walk in to the crack of cue balls and the sound of women fighting.”

So that’s where we go.

Unfortunately, there are no women fighting when we show up. Too early in the day, Charles says. While we sip on our drams of 10 year old Bruichladdich (with McEwan backs), Charles tells me a bit about Jura.

The ferry takes only five minutes, he says. In fact, the Sound of Jura is so narrow here that often times deer will try to swim across it, thinking Islay’s hills look greener.

Herd of red deer on Jura.

“Not many make it,” he says, “but you hear stories every once in awhile of a fisherman catching one in a net.”

Charles says there are 170 people on Jura and at least 6,000 red deer. “Even in 1800 there were 2,000 people living on Jura. But not anymore.” There are so many deer on the island that even though they allow hunters to shoot almost a thousand deer a year, it doesn’t make a dent. In fact, says Charles, slugging down the rest of his whisky, there are so many deer on Jura “it’s a wonder they have not yet kicked the islanders off in a revolt.”

And with that we head back to Port Askaig and the ferry.

The roads on Islay are narrow and lined with bracken and wildflowers: delicate foxglove, creamy astilbe, lacy Queen Ann’s lace, Monet-colored lilies, and arching penstemon, as well as wild gooseberries, goldenrod, daisies, purple thistle, wild fuscias, and the odd lilac. A riotous border of color enclosing fields of lime green grazing pastures. This is the landscape Van Gogh would have painted had he been Scottish.

My favorite Western Isles wildflower is the ragged robin, not so much because of its looks (which remind me of a droopy pink daisy) but because they cheerfully bloom in absolutely the worst conditions imaginable—damp and peaty meadows. This silly flower just loves poor soil. In fact, the best way to kill it is to fertilize it. Which means that while it used to be found all over the UK, it’s pretty much died out, mostly because of all the fertilizers used in the fields. But there are still enough damp, forgotten fields on Islay where it blooms from May to September to put on quite a spectacular show.

Ragged robin on Islay.

The other thing I like about it is a story, likely to be apocryphal, that Charles told me. He said that a hundred or more years ago, young Scottish lassies use to grow ragged robin in summer, naming each of their plants after a boy in the village. The first plant to bloom would be the boy the girl was going to end up marrying. Sort of a Scottish version of “he loves me, he loves me not.”

Although almost everyone who comes to Islay does so for the whisky (myself included) it really has some spectacular flora and fauna. In fact, Islay has some of the most amazing birdlife in all of the UK (with over 180 species, it has the richest bird life in the Hebrides). There are snipes and lapwings, choughs, hen harriers, golden eagles, countless species of geese, and, of course, the ever secretive corncrake which, should you be lucky enough to spot one, looks a bit like a small pheasant.

A secretive corncrake in high grass.

Yesterday as I was walking through some heavy grass to take a picture of the ragged robins, I heard the distinctive rasp of corncrakes and followed the call to a clump of nettles. Two of the little guys hung around just long enough for me to snap a picture before disappearing into the thick grass.

Like ragged robins, they tend to depart towards the end of August, first of September. So for me to spot both of these rarities on the same day right next to each other was golden.

And fleeting.