Nairn - Debbie Young's Writing Life

Laura on top of a hill — Hurrah, I’m on holiday!

If you have ever travelled anywhere with a child, you will know that young eyes can spot a play park miles away. It’s strange how much their eyesight improves on holiday. If only they had the same visual acuity when searching for their shoes before school!

On the first day of our Scottish holiday, we are scooped up from Inverness Airport by my husband, who has already spent 10 days in the Highlands in our camper van. The sun is shining, so we head east for an afternoon at the beach, at the unpretentious seaside resort that is reputed to have been Charlie Chaplin’s favourite. Apparently he used to fly all the way from Hollywood to bask on the beach at Nairn. (Or so the Rough Guide to Scotland tells us.)

Ignoring the spectacular views across the Moray Firth that may have lured Chaplin all that way, my daughter Laura homes in on the large tiled paddling pool a stone’s throw from the seafront (but doesn’t throw any stones). It’s knee-deep on a child, and the local council kindly provides a lifeguard in the form of a kindly middle-aged lady in a cardigan. It’s not exactly Baywatch, but who cares?

To her parents’ delight, the pool is also a stone’s throw from an old-fashioned seafront cafe dispensing excellent cups of tea and ice-cream – bubble gum flavour for Laura, Irn Bru blend for her dad, while I favour the Scottish Tablet variety. Well, we are on holiday.

We savour our ice-creams while Laura cavorts in the paddling pool until closing time, the kindly lifeguard lady breaking it gently to the splashing children that they’ll have to get out so she can go home to have her tea. Baywatch, it ain’t. Then follows a short spell on the swings and slide, cleverly built into the side of slope between the pool and the beach, before we persuade Laura to head vanward for our own evening meal.

But the fun’s not over yet, as on the way back to the van she spots an even better source of fun: a good old-fashioned hill. Health and safety be blowed, you can’ t expect a small child on the first day of an exciting holiday to trip to pass by a hill without rolling down it a few dozen times.

Who needs theme parks anyway?

Laura at the bottom of the hill — I conquered

I’m gradually catching up with posts written on my 2013 summer holiday, and more will follow soon, but in the meantime, if you liked this post, you might like to read the others that have made it onto the blog so far:

What Not to Discover on Your Summer Holidays

The Unusual Souvernirs of Camper Van Travel

Beachcombing in Ullapool – A Story Behind Every Stone

wp 20130802 002 — Laura looks for treasure on Ullapool’s shore on Loch Broom, Scotland

We’re in Ullapool, on the north west coast of Scotland, and my husband, our ten-year-old daughter Laura and I are beachcombing along the pebbly shores of Loch Broom. It’s a sea loch, which means it opens out into the sea rather than being enclosed by land and its water is salty. Who knows what treasures we might find here, washed up on these ancient shores?

My husband always casts a scientific slant on these expeditions. His natural reaction is to classify the rocks with their correct technical names.

“Ah, that’s an aggregate, ” he declares, dismissing a glorious hotch-potch of a rock with a single harsh word.

A couple of days earlier, on Nairn beach, I’d been pleased to find a heart-shaped piece of sea glass, particularly because I’m working on a story of lost love called “Sea Glass”. Its pale, opalescent surface, gently scoured by the sea, hints at secrets locked within.

“It’s only a basilisc pebble,” is Gordon’s reaction to my find.

I decide not to tell him how much I paid for a pair of delicate green sea glass earrings in Strathpeffer en route to Ullapool.

wp 20130802 004 — So where’s the rest of the house?

Although not all our beachcombing finds are so classically pretty, all are beautiful. Today I’m intrigued by a house brick, its once sharp corners softly rounded by the sea. Where is the rest of the house? I wonder. Has it fallen into the sea? How far has this brick travelled?

My daughter has tuned in to my thoughts.

“I can’t stop looking at all the pebbles,” she declares. “There are so many of them, and behind every stone there is a story.”

And every stone is different, ground to a unique shape and size by relentless, indiscriminate tides. The sea is an unbenevolent creator.

For a moment, I see myself as a pebble, tiny among a universe of pebbles that extends in either direction as far as the eye can see – inland to the far end of Loch Broom, out to sea where the loch broadens to segue into the sea, flowing out around the Outer Hebrides before rushing towards more distant lands. Its next stop: Canada and the USA, to whose shores so many impoverished Highlanders fled in the wake of the unspeakably cruel Highland Clearances. For most of these reluctant emigrants, these pebbly shores of Loch Broom would have been the last they ever saw of their beloved Home Country.

As Laura slips three carefully chosen stones into her pocket as bounty, I touch my sea glass earrings with renewed appreciation. We’ll treasure the few stones that we can, each in our own way.

Tag: Nairn

The Role of the Hill in Children’s Summer Holidays

Beachcombing in Ullapool – A Story Behind Every Stone