Had a Good Holiday?

The Diary's kind friends and neighbours in Kilchoan keep asking whether we had a good holiday. The answer is "No". One is supposed to come back rested and restored after a 'holiday'. The Diary, some four days after returning, is still absolutely shattered.

We didn't set out to have a holiday. A holiday is "a day of festivity or recreation when no work is done", an opportunity to relax and revitalise. By that definition, every day The Diary spends in Kilchoan is more of a holiday than our recent journey.

We went away, not for a 'holiday' but for an 'experience'. During the three weeks we flew some 10,000 miles, travelled for a day and a night through the Rockies on a train, and probably drove a thousand miles across south-eastern Alberta. When we arrived home we were jet-lagged, weary and disorientated.

So, why self-inflict such pain? Why fill the atmosphere with yet more carbon dioxide? Why come back to a thousand jobs that need to be done, to a full email inbox, to a pile of post a foot high, and a garden full of weeds? Part of the purpose was to visit our son and daughter-in-law, whom some of you will remember from their days working at The Ferry Stores and the Kilchoan House Hotel. They are in fine form, have a new house, and send their warmest regards to the many people of West Ardnamurchan who were so friendly and generous to them.

But the main purpose was to experience a different place, different people, a different lifestyle - and Canada offers a breath-taking contrast to the West Highlands of Scotland. The area we toured, the so-called Badlands, are gently rolling prairie grasslands, mainly producing wheat, beef and oil, cut by sudden and spectacular ravines, some of them slicing down into Cretaceous rocks which have the world's largest concentration of dinosaur fossils. It is a huge country, a landscape of distant horizons and dead-straight roads, of empty spaces and awe-inspiring views - the picture above looks from Red Rock Coulee southwards to the mountains of Montana.

And this big land is inhabited by big people, whose restaurant meals are served on plates the size of tea-trays - refillable, free, on request - where everyone, even 80-year old grannies with a 'mall' next door, drives nothing smaller than a Dodge RAM 1500 pickup with a 5-litre, V8 engine, people who are slow-speaking but warm and welcoming and constantly insisting you take another shot of ice-cold brandy.

It's a different world, it was well worth experiencing, but it's good to be back in Kilchoan - for a well-deserved holiday.

Thanks to Phil W Shirley for his photo of Whitesands Bay, on Flickr, here.