The Highland boundary fault crosses Scotland from the Isle of Arran in the west to the town of Stonehaven in the east. A fault line – a discontinuity in rock, displacement because of rock movement. This fault line crosses the Isle of Bute, cutting it in two, with Highland to the north and Lowland to the south. So the sign in the public gardens in Rothesay, Isle of Bute, marks the boundary between Highlands and Lowlands. ‘Old Red Sandstone’ is typical of the Lowland rocks, compared to the greyer types of schist in the Highland Regions.
Glencallum Bay Lighthouse is on the southern tip of the Isle of Bute. Its Gaelic name Rubh' An Eun apparently means the place of the birds.
To the lighthouse.
The path is muddy in places, the wind has dropped, but the path is stony, not little stones but those big chunks of rocks, tipped one way or another, with gaps to fit your foot in, or wedge it in forever, so your feet slide at an angle and the next step is never the same as the last step, so you are watching the path and you’re hearing the sea and it slaps against rocks, you can’t see them just the horizon of grasses and bushes but you hear the sound of the water on rocks and you see the spray.
There’s a big rock jutting out over the path, forming a cliff of its own profile, all ledges and layers and I think – this is Ozymandias, clearly, so high up, so irregular shaped, so looming-over the path so you catch your breath going under it, hoping this contour, quite unsupported, won’t topple over and crush you.
But before I reach the red stonework, the profile of the king of kings, a figure approaches from the other direction. The wind shakes the willow catkins and the water surface flutters and froths. The path is narrow. The stones it is made up of are sloping and smooth, angled and sharp.
Have you been all the way round the point, the southernmost part of the island?
No, I’ve just been to the lighthouse, he said. To go all the way round that’s about five miles.
Already it’s late afternoon. The lone walker I meet on the path does not want to stop.
Ahead, there’s a few sheep. I glimpse movement, behind a grey rock. The black of their faces, the cream of their wool, the brown of their horns, all blend in with the rock and the grey of the lichen and yellow of grass. After the rock, after the profile of the giant, Ozymandias, there’s a sheer face of cliff, there’s the sea on the left, there’s a flat plain of marsh grass and stones and the lighthouse, in the distance. It has a softness about it, its whiteness is stained by the salt of the sea-wind, yellowed like grass, grey-grained like the rock. It looks like a friend you’ve not seen in a long time but you know them, you still recognize them, feel warmth in the seeing of them.
The top of the lighthouse is windows, glass all around. So the light can flash out, can warn ships in the passing, the straits are narrow here, there are rocks and their memories, the sea sucks and thunders, there’s a gap here, a crevasse, the lighthouse is an island, an inlet of water rushes and cuts through the rocks and the level of water rises and drops and it rises and drops as the waves rush up the chasm between the rocks and I think – it’s so narrow I could jump across it and the sea slaps and it sucks then it drains away and I know I won’t jump there, way too much frothing and foaming, the sea is alive and it’s writhing its way up the channel, the gap, and only a limpet, that’s what I think, could feel safe on the side of this slippery rock.
Limpets know darkness and rockslide and immersion in water and the pull of the tides. Limpets I think, don’t feel danger. Just the need to hold on and hold on, not let go when the drag of the waves pulls against them, let nothing between them and rock surface, their home.
The lighthouse has its own little island of rocks and its view out to sea. Like the limpets the lighthouse holds on.
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