I I don’t recall the photo being taken. I don’t remember the picture being taken. ScotlandIt was sometime in the 1980s. It has a hazy, warm and melancholy quality that you find in old colour prints. I’m wearing blue jeans, white trainers, an army surplus jumper – and am perched on a standing stone.
When I turned 50, my mum gave me this photo. She found the photo in her loft. Some of these childhood photographs, souvenirs of visits with my grandmother to historical sites, have place names written back. This picture was a blank mystery. Though I didn’t recognise the location, something about the landscape and quality of light suggested it was Islay, an island I’d visited just once – when I was not quite 12. I decided to go and see if I can find it, put the photo in my notebook, and then set out.
Islay lies on the same longitude as Glasgow, making it the southernmost part of the Inner Hebrides. It may sound like a short hop, but it’s not. The watery fractures along Scotland’s west coastline require a lengthy drive north, then south, along the shores sea lochs. A two-hour ferry ride from Kennacraig is required to cross the lochs. Islay, the eighth-largest island in the British Isles, is not well-known. It’s bigger than the Isle of Man or the Isle of Wight. Some of its communities – Ardbeg, Bowmore, Lagavulin – have given their names to famous whisky brands, but the island as a whole feels a little obscure.
The CalMac ferry slid up the Sound of Islay with a saltire (Scottish Flag) flapping on its prow. To starboard, the cloud-covered mountains of Jura, a nearby island, were a dark presence. Islay appeared more welcoming to port with its bright strand and purple heather. But appearances can deceive. A cormorant – the devil’s bird – flew in front of the ship in the direction of Islay, not Jura, and I wasn’t at all surprised. I remember being fascinated as a young boy by an illustration of the island that made it look like a demonic creature. The Rinns Peninsula formed its horns, the Oa Peninsula its claws, while the north-east coast was its leathery wings. It sat on the edge Scotland, ready to take flight towards Irish shores.
After disembarking in Port Askaig I drove to Port Charlotte where the Museum of Islay LifeThe, located in an old church, is a delightful jumble. A wooden figurehead stands next to an old island telephone switchboard. A stuffed red squirrel is seated in a bell jar. An American flag sewn by Islay woman to fly at the graves of US soldiers whose corpses washed ashore after the SS Tuscania, which was torpedoed in 1918 by a German U boat, has faded over time.
During my childhood, I had spent many hours in this museum. One exhibit was particularly fascinating: the skull an Irish Elk. The skull was found in a peat-bog in the early 19th century. I remembered it as being almost black. But now, seeing it again, I realized that my memory was wrong. It was a greyish brown color, not much darker than oatcake. Yet I had not misremembered its great size – an almost 2-metre span between the tips of its antlers. The creature is now extinct. It lived on Islay and died there about 12,000 ago. This was around the same time that the first people arrived in the island. They were hunters from Scandinavia or northern Germany. They may have seen the elk crossing the virgin landscape. Maybe it smelled the strange human smell and kept its distance.
Islay boasts a large number of ancient sites. It could be one of these standing stones in my photo. I had made an appointment to speak with Steven Mithen who is an archaeologist and has a special interest in the island in the hopes that he could identify it. I was lucky enough to catch him. The University of Reading’s professor was soon to leave for a camping trip on Nave, an island just off Islay, where he would hope to find Viking boat burials. I showed the picture to him when we met up for a cup of tea.
“That’s Cragabus,” said he. “Lovely photo. Wonderful place.”
The stone on which I was sitting, he explained, was a surviving part of a chambered cairn – a Neolithic stone tomb probably built around 3,500BC. It was discovered in 1902. The cairn was reopened during the Bronze Age and used for burials by the later people. I had a little knowledge of beaker buryings. I’d excavated one myself – in 1984, the same year, I think, as my visit to Islay, helping my grandparents to trowel up the bones of the person buried alongside a decorated pot.
My grandfather, Eric Ross – Grumps to his grandkids – was a coachbuilder. It was a way for him to earn a living, by building buses at a factory. But archaeology, was his passion. During the Second World War, he fell in love with archaeology. He joined the RAF aged 20 in 1941 and served in Italy and north Africa. One of his friends told me that he was the only person I knew to have used a real working Roman bath. His squad spent a few minutes at the baths that were still operational and fed by the hot springs just before the Tunisian victory parade.
Washed desert sand off his body at Roman ruins, is that how history got into his skin? As an origin story, I really like it. Unfortunately, I was too late. We lose people before we can hear their stories. It’s something I would have liked to do myself, as well. It feels like I’ve missed a step whenever I recall our past adventures. This trip to Islay and my book, Upon a White Horse : Journeys In Ancient Britain And Ireland, is an attempt to walk that path a little.
Prof Mithen directed me to Cragabus, located in the south west of the Island, off of a single track road. On the map, it was marked with the gothic style that evokes strange, old places. After Port Ellen I followed the sign for Mull of Oa to get there. After climbing a farmgate, I walked a short steep rise. The megalith that I had sat on was there: almost 2 metres high, with the same shape and a tip covered in lichen. Its lower portions were softened by snagged sheep’s wool. I leaned my phone up against a fencepost and snapped a photo 41 years after taking the first one: an older man holding a stone.
Many people who were brought to ancient sites as a child have blurry old photos of themselves there. As time passes, the power of such photos increases. The stones remain the same, even though the people who took them have passed away and we’ve changed. When we return to the stones as adults, we will be able to compare ourselves with them and see how our lives are compared to eternity. It was like that when I went to Cragabus. I felt bigger but smaller, older and yet not old at all.
Peter RossIt’s On A White Horse : Journeys through Ancient Britain and Ireland This publication is published by Headline at £22. You can buy a copy of the book for £19.80, go to guardianbookshop.com. There may be a delivery charge.
