Scottish Islands Explorer: Staying on Flannan

Fascinating photos of the Flannan Isles via >  Scottish Islands Explorer: Staying on Flannan: Not the easiest of landings, nor the most secure-looking steps, but this was the landing place for an expedition to the Flannan Isles ...



A place of (unsolved) mystery still - though for my taste much of the atmosphere is lost through the 'medium' of modern technology.  It seems in a way a shame that you can go there on a fast boat with powerful lenses and take the place apart, in a sense.  I can't help feeling that it's equally regrettable that visiting remote places these days seems to involve eye-popping amounts of ugly orange lycra, portable toilets, and hi-tech equipment. Oh for a wooden boat or a coracle, and a decent set of tweeds....or perhaps not....I suppose one must be 'practical'.  Very unattractive however. But I suppose you aren't thinking about appearances when you're desperate for the toilet in the middle of a Force 9.  Perhaps that's what happened to the three lighthouse-keepers!   One of them made an especially violent curry, and they all....no of course not.

I wonder if they suffered from scurvy.  It is possible, if they were there, unrelieved, for long stretches. I must read up on the mystery, and theories thereof.



Best account of Flannan that I can think of (the poem aside) is the fictionalised encapsulation in Neil Gunn's The Silver Darlings - they sail away, away west, beyond the horizon....and encounter wondrous things...



Haven't read that book for about ten years - not sure how much of my remembering is really from the book and how much is from my own imaginings.

boredom

Geoffrey and I are still recovering from the dreaded lurgy. We're not sure if we've had "swine-style flu", or just bog-standard, or just "bad colds". Either way, we've barely moved from the fireside for about a week. But we must be getting better because we've started to get bored. Readers will know that we don't have a telly or even a wireless. We do know about these things, and how people fill their time staring at other people capering around in little boxes blaring away in a corner of the room - or as Apsley and Cherry have theirs, nailed foursquare to the wall. But we can't enjoy such pleasures as we don't have leccy.
No. We have to entertain ourselves, the old-fashioned way. Sometimes we might take the old volume of Tennyson or Browning from the mantelshelf and read aloud to one another. Sometimes we might have a game of whist - although not often as that tends to get Geoffrey awfully worked up. He's a terrible loser. Sometimes we might whittle away at a piece of driftwood, fashioning some mythical creature from the bare wood. (actually, no, we've never done that.)
Mostly we just sit and chat aimlessly while enjoying our pipes and madeira, and wait contentedly for the odd visitor to arrive. And that's precisely what we've been doing for the past week. So why on earth are we bored? I wouldn't go so far as to say we're bored out of our minds, or bored rigid, it's more..well, I don't know...
"We're fed up, Tuppy!" declares Geoffrey, bursting willy nilly into my train of thought without a care in the world or a by your leave. "Let's plan a holiday!"
"But where should we go?"
"How about a health spa?"
"Don't be ridiculous Geoffrey! your mind must have been affected by the flu. Snap out of it, please!" Health spas indeed!
But he's got a point. They say a change is as good as a rest. Perhaps it's time for us to get the old coracle out and head across the seas again - although I don't think I could face the Flannan Isles so soon after the last fiasco...(see previous posts)

heading for home

What luck! turns out Ranald and Sandy had stopped off at Flannan Isle for a breather on their way to "Hereabouts..." ( see gazetteer for info.) , where they've been invited to give Apsley and Cherry's abode, The Old Rectory, a makeover.
"But WHY? Only last year they got it stonecladded and decked and goodness knows what all else." we asked.
"That's precisely why," replied Ranald. "They want all that stripped down now. They're sick of it. They want a different look for the autumn. More rustic, I think, wasn't it Sandy? Log fires and sheaves of dried this and that? Gourds and twig-type stuff, in earthenware pots? Textured fabrics, in natural tones?"
Sandy shrugged. "No earthly idea and frankly I could not care one jot. They're SO tacky, and they won't listen to advice. It's their way, or no way. Frankly I'd rather it was no way, as I've NO interest in working for them, but what with the recession we need the money. Anyway - can we offer the two of you a lift back to the Outcrop?"
"Yes!!" we chorused, clambering on to their enormous backs.
"Hang on!" they shouted, as they unfurled their beautiful white wings, took off into the westering wind and soared homewards.
As we soared skywards, we glimpsed some wreckage. It looked very much like a pile of rusting tin cans - rusting korn bif tins, to be precise. In fact, we deduced that it was Tuppence's latest TTD (time travelling device - see previous posts), which must have crash-landed on Flannan Isle, hence his mysterious presence on the island. As we flew over the Minch, we glimpsed a tiny white woolly figure clad in yellow oilskins, sculling valiantly away, heading for...well, hard to tell really. But I'm sure it was Tuppence.

trapped in the lighthouse with an armed maniac

We followed Tuppence's advice and struggled out into the howling elements to rescue the coracle. Luckily for Tuppence, he was sporting full gale-style protection kit, viz. an oilskin coat which reached to his ankles, seaboots, and a matching oilskin hat. Geoffrey and I were less fortunate. Of course, my wool does contain lanolin, and Geoffrey's feathers have waterproofing, nevertheless we soon found ourselves shivering and soaked through as we battled across the slippery seaweed covered rocks to the shingle beach where we'd stashed the coracle.
Eventually we managed to drag it into a cave high above the tide line, where it should be safe enough.
After, we restored ourselves with some emergency madeira and cake rations beside a crackling driftwood fire, inside the lighthouse.
"But what on earth are you DOING here, uncle Tuppy?" queried Tuppence, fixing me with his most piercing and disapproving gaze.
"I might ask you the same question, nephew," I replied, refusing to be intimidated by his stare.
"Can't say," he said curtly. "Top secret. Special ops."
"For goodness sake! don't be so melodramatic!" I snapped, then instantly regretted my loss of self control as Tuppence threw off his oilskin to reveal a brace of pistols stuck into his belt.
"Don't worry, uncle Tuppy. I won't use them. Unless I HAVE to."
Geoffrey and I exchanged glances. Tuppence was even more power mad than ever. We would need to take steps. Either that, or leave the island asap.
As soon as Tuppence nodded off by the fire, Geoffrey and I had a whispered confab.
"We can't let him go around behaving like this, Tuppy! Carrying pistols, and throwing his weight about! He's completely deluded! he's going to end up in the hulks!"
"Hold on a minute, Geoffrey. We don't know who's pulling his strings, do we? For all we know, he really could be on special ops.."
"Rubbish! he's bonkers! let's get those pistols off him while he's still asleep."
Suddenly, a hail of shot blasted into the lighthouse wall, and the initial T appeared in bulletholes above the fireplace.
"You fools!" laughed Tuppence, twirling the smoking pistols then sticking them back into his belt.
Geoffrey and I backed towards the door as swiftly as possible under the circumstances. Trapped on Flannan Isle, with a maniac armed to the teeth? there was only one thing to do...
RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a surprise meeting on Flannan Isle

Well we're still on the Flannan Isles and a wild and windy spot it is. We're quite sheltered in the old lighthouse, but it's terribly creepy (to put it mildly). The door was swinging open on its rusty old hinges when we arrived, and inside all was dank and dark. Geoffrey struck a match and revealed the cobwebby remains of the lighthouse keepers' final meal - a bit of stale bread and the dregs of some ale. Which I polished off - no point wasting it - and I have to say it was a damn sight tastier than Scott's last biscuit (see previous posts - some while ago, I got into a lot of trouble after scoffing that).

We got the fire lit and were toasting ourselves by its flickering light when we heard ghostly footsteps in the stairwell which spirals upwards to the light itself. At first we blamed it on the wind, which was beginning to howl abominably, and the pattering of rain on the tiny leaded window, but the volume intensified, the footsteps thundered downwards towards us, and eventually we huddled together behind the door in terror for our lives...

Suddenly the door burst open, and a voice piped, "Better move the coracle further up the beach uncle Tuppy!"

It was Tuppence, my incorrigible nephew - but what on earth was he doing, on Flannan Isle?

an unexpected holiday

Spockfingers threw himself on to the settee and promptly fell sound asleep. The snoring was so unbelievably loud that the walls and roof of the outcrop began to shake alarmingly. We decided we'd have to wake him up - no easy task - and instantly regretted it, because he then burst into song. Awful renditions of various "numbers" he remembered from T in the Park. We tried to find out how long he intended to stay with us, but he refused to say.
Eventually, we decided that if HE wasn't moving, WE would have to. So, we got out the old coracle, packed a few belongings and supplies into a couple of teachests and set off into the blue. We sculled and sculled with a following wind, past the time-space continuum anomaly, and the Infra Inn, and the Hulks, (now rusting and empty, thankfully - see last years posts if you want to know how we rescued all the poor sheep who were awaiting slaughter) until we cleared the headland of "Over There".
Eventually, we reached the archipelago of St Kilda, but the seas were against us and we had to scull away again through mountainous waves. After sailing through the night, we ended up at the old lighthouse on the Flannan Isles.
We're still there...