Helen Hail
Handa Island
We hurry from Ullapool
to make the ferry
but are ignoramuses among the twitchers
and leave our lunch in the car.
The claymore hilt of the helm
aimed at the island,
the silent boatman
from generations back
steers our course
and strands us on the strand.
The knowledgeable ones stride off,
their backpacks fi rmly strapped on,
binoculars at the ready.
We think of lunch and afternoon plans,
then tentatively pick our way over rough sheep pasture
widdershins.
There is the site of an old chapel of which nothing remains and a graveyard near the RSPB visitor shelter. People from the mainland were also buried here at one time to avoid the ravages of wolves. (RSPB leaflet)
Noted.
At Puffin Bay,
as any birdwatcher knows,
it is too late for puffi ns.
At Otter Bay, no otters,
but they are shy creatures,
as are the seals today.
A few common gulls wheel overhead
and at The Great Stack only the fulmars remain.
Inland, not a skua in sight
but plenty of rabbits
and at least it isn’t raining.
Then a lizard, a common lizard, engages us for a while.
No twitchers to be seen
and we are early, much too early,
back at Chapel Beach,
pathetically begging a ride in a chance boat
and, like those before us, bloated by potato famine,
we leave.
Huddled in the car at Tarbet harbour,
a scrap of a place,
we fall upon the oatcakes and rollmops,
the best we’ve ever tasted,
and gaze towards the grey shadow that is
Handa Island.
Page(s) 27
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