Highland fling
Alex James
Iwasn’t planning to take the family on holiday. We live on a farm and there’s always something happening. It gets harder and harder to drag oneself away. Claire got quite indignant about having missed the strawberries when we arrived home today. There were only a few soggy ones left. ‘If it’s not the strawberries it’s something else. We were always going to skip something. Try a redcurrant,’ I said cheerfully, spitting out a pip, but she ignored me. I even managed to find her some mulberries later, but I could tell she was still filled with loss. She’s pregnant and she needs strawberries.
The year before last we went to Bournemouth and completely missed the plums. That was a total disaster. It didn’t feel like summer had been fully realised without the sweet punctuation, the exclamation mark of more plums than one could possibly handle. The way they cascade into readiness, the crash and burn approach to being a fruit fills one’s heart with joy. Ah, the bounty of nature.
Rather than miss anything we stayed at home last year. I took the kids to the toyshop in Oxford, filled the car up to the brim with plastic junk for about a tenth of the price of putting them on an aeroplane and spent a week being silly in the garden. That was a great holiday. We had a chef over one night and a masseuse another day. It all made perfect sense: luxury in the living room.
The idea of staying in a hotel with three small children was terrifying, let alone getting there. They’re too young to camp or go on boats and there’s too many of them for anyone to invite us to stay, so this year I was rather relishing another week of bouncy castles and slip’n’slides chez nous.
Then I was in Scotland a couple of months back, seeing a man about some cheese. No, really, we make cheese. The chef at the hotel where I was staying nearby had arranged, without asking me, for his neighbour to give me a tour of the estate next door to the hotel early in the morning before I returned to my waiting artichokes. I was a bit miffed about having to get up so early, but suddenly I was in heaven.
A vast baronial seat in the Scottish highlands: 30,000 acres of primary geography, young streams babbling through mossy mountains. Ospreys in from Africa, a sea eagle, even bigger than a golden eagle, stags. All weather and wonderment and there in the middle of it all, at the fulcrum of a vast glen, was a farmhouse. ‘Aye, they rent it oot,’ said the gamekeeper, my guide. ‘How much?’ ‘Eight hundred.’ It was impossible to tell whether that was for a night or a week and I had to ask him. I took it without looking inside.
And that’s why we missed the strawberries. It was fantastic, a three-and-a-half mile drive to take the rubbish out. The shop was 20 miles away. Mobiles didn’t work, and the internet came on Thursdays.
Nothing has happened there since the mountains went up. Claire and I snuck out to the hotel for dinner on the third night, leaving her still slightly culture-shocked parents with the nanny and the children. My friend the chef had found a way of turning cheese into a kind of caviar. I couldn’t have organised it better for absolutely nothing to happen and I’d stumbled on a whole new cheese paradigm. Love holidays.
I turn down a lot of travel writing. It doesn’t pay enough for the amount of time it takes. It’s quite frustrating having to say no, all the same. Even today one of the big champagne houses was offering a stay in the poshest tent ever constructed and as much champagne as I could guzzle, but I’m working on a new, triple-cream cheese and I can’t tear myself away. There is a tacit agreement between travel writers and their hosts. You will never read anything unpleasant in a travel supplement. There is no such thing as a free holiday. Even when absolutely everything is paid for, which is rare, it is astonishing how much one gets through in tips alone. However, I paid for this holiday. My family travelled on easyJet and said it was the most disgusting experience of their lives. I knew that already and chose to drive the 700 miles with all the equipment. I rather enjoyed the drive. The farmhouse was an absolute bargain. Four beds, three baths and hotter than a hospital for 800 for the week. We intend to go back next year, so if you think I’m telling you where it is ...
Previous page
