Campbeltoon essay

Since June we’ve lived in Campbeltown, an isolated community on the mainland island of Kintyre in the far southwest of the Highlands. The place has a harsh appeal, with parades of tidy streets, and rusted-brown stone buildings leaning out towards each other.

Sitting at the computer on the first floor of Cousin and Armour Vets, we overlook the domain, where a non-stop procession of soccer matches play out. On Tuesday nights the school pipe band practices in a church-yard. Further along is the harbour of Campbeltown Loch, where a small fishing fleet and twenty or so yachts tie up. Pine logs and wind turbines are loaded at the main pier, besides the now defunct ferry terminal. Sailings to Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, only 15 miles away, ceased four years ago. It seems that three and a half hours of driving along narrow winding roads from Glasgow were too many for most.

Walking to work in the mornings, I sometimes get the warm smell of fermenting mash barley. Springbank Distillery is an important employer, and a survivor from the days when there were over 40 local distilleries. Lots of people are on the street, and here they look at you and smile, or say ‘Morning’. About 5000 Scots live in Campbeltown and surrounds, and its distinct sense of ‘place’ reminds me of the local identity present in Oamaru, or in a smaller Gisborne.

The countryside about Campbeltown is even more like rural New Zealand. Besides a few beach settlements, there are no other villages for nearly forty miles. Rich green pastures are divided with baton and wire fences, instead of the thick hedgerows and stone walls of England and Wales. Forestry, heather and gorse spill down the hills and gullies, defining margins of productive farmland. Limousine and Angus cattle claim the high ground, Ayrshire and Holstein Friesians the low.

56lb weight throw - Southend Games (photo Dagfinn)


Some memories from our time here..............

A beach bonfire and mountain-bike rides with folk from the surf-shop. Walks to wee lochs in the hills with a botany group. Guided runs up Beinn Ghuilean with a spritely English retiree in his 70’s. Climbing on the beach with Aisla and Math (kindred spirits!) while their baby sleeps on the bouldering mat. Learning to play shinty (crazy Highland hockey) at Monday night training sessions. Getting lapped at the mile race at the Highland games, and falling on my ass while throwing the hammer. Toasted sandwiches and cups of tea in dairy farmers’ kitchens. Cheap fishing gear and pulling the mackerel out of the loch and onto the pier before the seals can steal them from the hook.

Math showing us some local rock

bothering mackerel


not a mackerel - sister Pip (keen fisherwoman) visiting

hoping for mackerel

campbeltown show

clipped and cleaned coos

pip - mad keen mtber too!

michaela

shinty..

it's just like hockey..

only mental!

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Farms in the UK

British farms are different from at home. Here, cattle spend at least six months or more a year in large sheds, being fed concentrates and silage. High stocking rates and small grazing areas mean it’s almost impossible to leave the stock out of doors during winter, although the weather would for the most part allow it. The work of feeding and cleaning is substantial, and means farmers live very close to their charges. Almost invariably then, the farmhouse, dairy and cattle sheds are clustered together about a yard. The Wallace and Gromit farm is a pretty accurate model!

Having stock in multiple sheds mean that farmers often do without decent central handling facilities, which I found really frustrating at first. Being presented with an angry calving heifer snorting around a pen with a loop of baling twine around her neck makes me nervous. A 1000kg Simmental bull is even more intimidating, although it turns out the months of confinement and contact turns them into big puppies most of the time.

British farmers are good sorts, for the most part. If you´ve read Herriot, that´s a good part of the way towards getting them. Of course the reductions in subsidies and fixed prices for commodities have meant the farm worker might no longer be employed, and the wife is working 4 days a week as a nurse/teacher. However there is still a nice SFP (Single Farm Payment) to be had for each bit of land you own, now regardless of stock numbers, as well as small environmental grants for taking care of the stone walls, and leaving areas for field birds etc. If I remember right, a 45ha dairy farm near Campbeltown milking 270 cows was advertised with a 65,000 pound SFP.