Wednesday 1 August 2012

Coll

One of the most surprising things about travelling to Coll to watch the football (blog entry here) was that so many people who had lived for years on West Ardnamurchan admitted that they had never been to Coll before they went with the teams.  It's a reflection of the way that the sea has been so much reduced as a means of transport, with the result that small coastal communities only a few miles apart have become cut off from each other.

We came in to Coll's only town, Ariangour, whose houses are clustered round one side of a good natural anchorage.  The settlement has a couple of hotels, some shops, a church, the CalMac pier, and the island's new community centre, An Chridhe.

As well as watching two great football games, The Diary had the privilege of being driven round the northeast end of the island by local builder Sandy Munro, to whom many thanks for his kindness.  We see Coll practically every day lying along the horizon to the west of Ardnamurchan, but it's not until one travels around it that one appreciates how long and narrow it is - to be precise, it's thirteen miles long and four at its widest.

The scenery is bleak.  Great, rounded lumps of the dominant rock, a billion-year old metamorphic rock called gneiss, are separated by flat areas of rolling meadow and bog land.  Little of this seems to be worked intensively, sheep being the dominant animal.  There was, at one time, a tulip farm run by a Dutchman, but this died when he left.

The only trees are those around the houses which, unlike on Ardamurchan, where they tend to be clustered in small townships, are scattered across the landscape. While many of the houses are traditional, stone-built, and single-storey, there are many which are modern, some of them holiday homes.  There are also old village settlements whose broken stone walls are testament to a time when the people lived closer together.

Other than the Ariangour anchorage, the long southeast side of the island is a line of almost unbroken rocky cliffs.  The opposite coast, in total contrast, is a series of beautiful white-sand beaches running along the gently curving bays and backed by machair.  This coast bears a close resemblance to Sanna.

The year-round resident population of Coll is around two hundred, very comparable to West Ardnamurchan.  There's always a distinctive 'feel' to an island community, a sense of self-reliance, of differentness, and this was very evident on Coll.  Yet, in some ways, its population is better connected than we are, having a regular daily ferry sailing to Oban and twice-weekly flights, also to Oban.

The Isle of Coll website is here.

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