I feel quite smug to be as far from the Olympic madness as I possibly can be. The Jura Sports (the highland variety, obviously) are much more my bowl of porridge and happily they are being held today in the beautiful grounds of Ardlussa.
From the kitchen window I see stags. They come down from the hill to graze on the boggy grassland around the bay. Greylag geese are scattered about them like waddling rocks. There are four, five, sometimes nine. Some are old and square looking, sort of pointed at each corner, but carrying an impressive head of antlers. (It seems to me that antlers are a stag’s own proudly bourn trophies, added to season by season and testament to the blood pumping he-battles won and lost each year). Others are young and elegant, positively oozing sex appeal and youthful pride. They remind me of Seth, from Cold Comfort Farm. All of them are getting ready for the intense drama of the rut to shortly come. Soon they’ll move away from their stag party to mark out their own territories and ladies.
There’s something about Jura that I love. I find comforting the tiny yet grounded and strong community that makes up an estate and then the estates that make up an island. I love the weatherproof box at the end of the drive where the groceries are dropped off. I batter up the stoney track to find often what I haven’t ordered. I’m even fond of that. It’s a little challenge. I’ve learnt to collect dripping and use it often instead of butter. Butter can be precious here. So is milk. I’ve started to use UHT for white sauces and things that don’t mater so much in readiness for the milk delivery simply not turning up. There’s a battalion of bread rolls in the freezer and masses of meat. And if we run out of them there’s plenty of strong flour and dried yeast in the larder and fishes in the sea.
Even the postcards are handmade; home-taken photos printed by inkjet on to photo paper and cut out by hand.
At Lussa bay there’s an inspired sort of ‘café’. It’s called ‘Tea on the Beach’. There’s a table and on it a basket, a cool bag and a walkie talkie. In the basket are thermoses of hot water and equipment for tea and coffee. In the cool bag is a tin containing cake. There’s an honesty box. If the customer is left wanting in anyway, the walkie talkie is there to buzz through an order for more.
And sometimes it just doesn’t get dark. I say sometimes because, well, sometimes it just doesn’t. There seems to be no particular reason or pattern. Sometimes the light just decides to stick around.
The housekeeper’s stories make me smile. She tells me how she won’t drive on Islay. You see, the souls on Jura tend to hop over to Islay when the local shop here can’t provide. It took me a little while to understand what she meant when she said was worried she’d forget which side of the road to drive on. Then it dawned on me that Islay actually has roads – with two lanes. On Jura there is just one. With one lane. It has grass in the middle. It goes from the ferry port in the south and works it’s way up the east coast of the island before it runs out about three quarters of the way up.
The gallant and softly spoken head stalker and the ghillie arrive each morning in Landrovers and decide on a plan for the day. Everyone piles in with their ‘pieces’, along with fishing rods and even a grill for impromptu barbeques. Everything for any eventuality. Today is sea fishing and a beach trip up the west coast of the island. The Landrovers lead to small wooden motor boats on the shores of Loch Tarbet. These ferry to a larger vessel which eventually chugs everyone out to sea and up to the beautiful bays on the west side – totally remote and only accessible by boat, hill machine or keen and heavily booted foot.
The result at the end of the day is rather a lot of fish. We hot smoked mackerel with mounds of bog myrtle and heather. I made sea trout sushi from a particularly fine specimen that had been swimming in the loch just 20 minutes before it was presented to me in the kitchen. Little brown trout were served up for breakfast a couple of times, rolled in oatmeal and fried in butter and the mussels were the fattest, juiciest ones I’ve ever seen. A splash of whisky and cream were great with them. I’m not mad on whisky but I love it sometimes and Jura has long been my favorite when I do, so it was nice to see the distillery later in the week.
On the last day we went to check the lobster pots for the last time. Still nothing. But then there’s no R in August and I think everyone’s tummies did rather well for fish without.
I was dished one of my most original and favourite compliments ever after a supper of cheese souflee, roast rib of Islay beef with tarragon hollandaise and a white chocolate and Scottish raspberry cream pot pudding (although I suspect the praise was more deserved by a farmer on Islay). He said with a gluttonous grin; “I’m going to explode if you keep doing that!”. The mildly masochistic joy that is holiday three-course-three-helpings-a-night gorging has been dubbed here ‘en-Jura-nce’.
One of the guests, on a slightly tipsy walk down the hall to the drawing room, wafts a comment that makes me smile; “Has Rosie gone to bed? I wouldn’t blame her after cooking a meal like that.”