Bookmarks

Each bookmark is hand-made, being printed in batches of 5 on 210gsm matt photo paper, with pictures on the front and text on the back. The border is based upon a traditional Celtic design. Once the bookmarks have had their two runs through the printer, they are laminated and cut to size, approximately 4.5x20.5cm (1¾x8 inches).

This is one of my favourite views of the Kyle, looking south from Melness with Bens Loyal and Hope standing like sentinels in the distance. The sand-banks are resting places for seals, which you might hear calling mournfully - if you are quiet. The pebbles and mudflats are home to hundreds of less obvious waders and shorebirds. The rocks and seaweed at the water’s edge are where you might, if you are lucky, see an otter fossicking for crabs. But you have to slow down to Nature’s pace.

In Winter on the North Coast, the sun rises late and sets early, bracketing days that may be wild or dreary. But this is a small price to pay for those sparkling Winter days when the air is crisp and clean and the slanting sunlight is golden and fresh - and there are no midges! These jewels of days glisten all the brighter for the long nights and the dark storms. Beauty and hope are often found at unlikely times and places.

Living on the northern edge of the Highlands, one is always aware of the transforming quality of light: a blaze of sun ignites colour in black peat; a swirl of mist blurs the hard edge of the crag. On this day, the Kyle and Ben Loyal became a fantasy of silver and blue-grey in the brittle light of an approaching storm. Reality, too, varies its appearance in the changing light of our moods and emotions.

Ben Loyal soars above the deep sapphire glow of Lochan Hakon, its four granite peaks reaching 2500 feet into the darkening sky. Twilight softens its western crags and, as detail is lost to the eye, one becomes more aware of the overall form and shape of this queen amongst mountains. Sometimes it does us good to lose sight of the individual crags - the details and complications of life - and view again the overall shape and form, to remind ourselves of ultimate purposes and goals.

Early Spring on the North Coast, with the gorse blazing gold but the heather still winter drab - no suggestion of the deep purple that will enfold the hills later. The trees bear no more than a faint hint of summer green - but the promise is made. Ben Loyal looms clear and fresh beyond Lochan Hakon - 2500 feet of new canvas for the year to paint. The optimisim of Spring can be part of our lives, whatever the season.

This is the view that greets those climbing Ben Loyal from the Ribigill Farm path. Most climb the steep heather slopes to the left of the front crag, Sgor Chaonasaid, and thus attain the summit, An Caisteal, at 2504 feet (765 metres). However, a much more interesting way is to bear right below the front crag and to climb diagonally to the wide grassy bowl between the 2nd and 3rd peaks before ascending to the summit ridge. This route is longer and steeper, but far more rewarding. The quick, easy, obvious ways are not necessarily the best, whether your mountain is a Scottish Ben, or some other challenge of life.

These cottages at Skerray are typical of thousands scattered throughout the Highlands. Many are crumbling ruins today; memorials to communities and a culture that has, sadly, almost disappeared. Others are being restored or rebuilt, symbolic of a new Highland life that is sprouting like green shoots from the weathered but deep-rooted stump of the old. Change is rarely easy - the grafted stem doesn’t always take - but alongside the natural grieving for that which is fading, there is also the stimulus of hope renewed; the vigour of growth overcoming the pall of stagnation.

Ben Klibreck - 3156 ft (962m) - forms a long high ridge that curves up above the Crask Inn and descends to Loch Naver, 7 miles further north. Its name may mean Mountain of the Hillside, or Hill of the Speckled Cliff, possibly referring to the west-facing crags just below the summit pyramid of Meall nan Con. In Strath Vagastie below, the A836 winds its single-track way northwards, crossing the river by a small stone bridge. We pass so quickly, forgetting what a barrier rivers and gorges were to our ancestors. Some individuals today are bridges, enabling easier communication by reaching across the rifts of misunderstanding and pride that often separate people. We may take them for granted, like bridges of stone, but their value is, nonetheless, immense.

Farr Bay is a half-mile crescent of clean coastal paradise thrust deep inland at Bettyhill, bounded by cliffs, sea-stacks, and sand-dunes. Life abounds. Seals peer like quizzical pantomime spies from the water; rabbits race and frolic over dunes and cropped-turf headlands; and bristling with all manner of wonderful beasties are the rock pools: jewel-like windows into surreal, alien worlds. Amid all this vibrant fecundity and beauty, humans are surprisingly rare, the masses migrating south in their annual search for sun and sea. But the rewards are great for those few that leave the herd, trading security for adventure and wonder.

The rich rolling farmland of Caithness - “The Lowlands beyond the Highlands” - becomes increasingly rugged as you drive westwards. On this particular evening, the Sutherland summits of Bens Loyal and Hope, Foinaven and Cranstackie, rose like frozen waves beneath a surreal sky. This picture shows them from the old single-track road with its passing places. Nowadays, most of this road from Thurso to Bettyhill is double-track, straighter, and faster - but some of the magic has gone. As we worship the great god Efficiency, we seem (paradoxically) to have ever less time for the more important things!

The Rabbit Islands guard the entrance to the Kyle of Tongue - little jewels of heather and grass, bracken and lumpy rock. On the south side are two tiny sandy beaches; to the north, a tumble of fierce little crags and cliffs, cut through in one place by a low rock arch. The islands are accessible by foot for only a short time each year when a sandbank is exposed at extreme low tide to Ard Skinid. Viewed here from Melness, the Rabbit Islands overlap the larger isles of Eilean nan Ron. The Orkneys are just visible in the far distance. From the other side of the Kyle, the Rabbit Islands look far less rugged, sand and smooth grass predominating. Each viewpoint gives a different and valuable perspective - a geographical principle that should be applied more often to other aspects of life also.

The old road across the Moine was built in 1830, and the house, now a ruin, provided shelter for travellers. Geologically, the Moine is an area of complexity and importance, its secrets mostly hidden beneath spongy layers of peat and blanket bog.
It is a forbidding, storm-moulded landscape - unchanged yet miraculously transformed by light. Attitudes work a similar magic.

Eilean nan Ron - Island of the Seals: 700 acres of heather and rock poised atop 200 ft high cliffs, one mile offshore at the entrance to the Kyle of Tongue. Between 1820 and 1938, this was home to several hardy, God-fearing families, whose houses can still be seen from Skerray. They lived in rugged harmony with the sea, and raised sheep, cattle, and crops - a tough but fulfilling life. Old Betty Macdonald never once left the island in all of her 95 years. Sadly, all the families finally had to leave as the fishing declined and the young men (the island’s future) acquired a taste for a wider world that they discovered during World War I. But here is peace - to live in contentment within the boundaries life has given you, without losing a sense of wonder and fascination for all that lies beyond.

The “Queen of Scottish Mountains”, Ben Loyal, is seen here from Melness Cemetery. The mountain’s modest height of 2506 feet (764m) is more than compensated for by its graceful ridges and dramatic syenite (granite) torrs. The name “Loyal” probably derives from the Gaelic “lagh”, meaning “law”, thus “the Mountain of Lawgiving”. So here we have Law and Grace on high, and a reminder of our own mortality below. “A picture is worth a thousand words” - or, in this case, it provides a solid sermon outline for any good Minister o’ the Kirk.

The 1 ¼ miles of clean white sand of Balnakiel Beach look west across the Kyle of Durness to the Parph Peninsula and Cape Wrath. Behind the beach rises a maze of high dunes that fade into the close-cropped, puffin-tunneled turf and 300 foot high, Moine Thrust cliffs of Faraid Head. On limestone bedrock at the near end of the beach stands the ruins of a 1619 church. Here are the graves of the Gaelic poet, Rob Donn, and the highwayman and murderer, Donald Macmurchow. An earlier church on this same site is thought to date from St. Maelrubha in 720AD. Also buried here are the victims of the Canton, a 3 masted barque wrecked on Faraid Head in 1849. A Viking grave was uncovered recently near the dunes. The big house opposite the church was begun in 1720 for the Lords of Reay, replacing an earlier summer-house for the Bishops of Caithness. To walk along the beach to Faraid Head is a delectable experience of space and time - truly a foretaste of heaven.

The quartzite peaks and ridges of Foinaven dominate the lochan-strewn wilderness of Northwest Sutherland, soaring to a height of 2980ft (914m) at the summit of Ganu Mor. Arkle and Ben Stack, with the distant pinnacles of Quinag, can be seen to the south, on the right of this painting, while the smoother profile of Meall Horn looms in the distance on the left. This is remote and lonely country, and achingly beautiful. To climb Foinaven has been a life-long ambition, now happily fulfilled, but the boggy approaches and steep scree slopes were daunting, and there were many temptations to turn aside to less strenuous goals. The view from the top, however, and the sense of achievement were well worth the sweat and aching legs. Commitment is the price of all that is truly worthwhile in life.

The Crask Inn stands in wild, expansive country, brooded over by 3156-ft Ben Klibreck, the highest mountain in the district. Built around 1815 by the Sutherland Estate, this most remote of havens has provided welcome refuge for generations of weary travellers in the far north. Thomas Telford upgraded the road in 1819, but it is still single-track even today, and the only electricity comes from the inn’s own small generator. There are no street lights to pollute the clear night skies. There is a working croft alongside, reclaimed from the heather and bog-moss, where Mike and Kai Geldard raise Highland cattle, sheep, and vegetables, inbetween looking after various intrepid guests. This is rugged country, and there are no airs and graces about the Crask, but the welcome inside is as warm as the peat stove in the tiny bar.

At only £1.50 each, these make lovely, inexpensive gifts
- even if I do say so myself! When I first experimented with
shrinking down a 2-foot wide painting to something little bigger than
a postage stamp, I was amazed how well it looked. I hope you’ll like them too.

Achnabat is a tiny crofting settlement just south-west of Skerray. It appears on William Roy’s Military Map of 1747-55 and thus predates the Clearances and the subsequent establishment of the crofting system. The name “Achnabat” means “Field of the Boats”, which seems a strange name until it is recalled that the flat strath between Achnabat and Skerray was partially flooded with Skerray Loch until it was drained in 1831. This view was painted after November rains, looking south into a low winter sun. I was fascinated by the contrast between the ephemeral sparkling light and the solid shadowed trees and hill - a scenic parable of the need for light and shade in life: for spontaneity and tradition, values and rules, inspiration and perseverance, faith and works.