Date: 21^st – 22^nd February 2023

Land-based research work undertaken to connect with the ancestors in Glenstrae, Glenorchy, Glen Lyon and Glenlochy in Argyll, Western Scotland and to visit the ruins of a house called Lagwyne in Carsphairn.

Diary notes

At Tyndrum a map laid on the café table along with a half-eaten apple. I had decided, ‘take the single-track road through the lands of Glenorchy to include a small detour to the Bridge of Orchy’. It wasn’t far up the road, only a few miles, when I spotted a white hotel sat near a river. Built as a hunting lodge it was overlooked by the highest mountain in Argyll, Ben Cruachan. It looked every day and homespun and yet I felt I had been somewhere similar before.

Back in the fiat the terrain became rugged and spectacular. I thought, ‘my ancestors once lived here.’ It was the strangest of feelings. At the half-way point and by a bridge, I parked and threw my half apple into the fast-flowing river. It was to honour all those long-ago family members who had passed this way before me. I imagined the apple bobbing down to Loch Awe and somehow leaving a connecting trail of its pulp and pips. It travelled swiftly. I felt as if my heart would break.

Apples seemed important. There was Marion Campbell’s ancient Gaelic lament, ‘Griogal Cridhe’, written for her husband, Gregor MacGregor, who was beheaded in 1570, with its talk of apples and deep sorrow.

‘A building, site or piece of land has its own memory, consciousness or frequency as does a person, animal or bird. Usually when high emotion has been experienced, the resonance gets trapped and takes on a life of its own.’