What it’s like to live for five days on an uninhabited Scottish island (Patrick Galbraith, July 6, 2019, Country Life)
Scarba is a precipitous mountain rising up between two notoriously dangerous tidal races. To the south, the Corryvreckan Whirlpool rages and, to the north, the Grey Dogs rushes out into the Atlantic. The former almost killed George Orwell in 1948 when he misread the tide and the latter is said to be the watery grave of a Viking prince’s canine companion. According to Hebridean lore, the ghost of the drowned dog prowls the cliffs on moonless nights, seeking out the souls of shipwrecked sailors sheltering in caves along the shore.
It was in the back of one of the more luxurious caves — luxurious on account of the goat dung littering the floor being relatively dry — that I decided to unpack my sleeping bag. Five minutes later, after finding a ledge for the books I had with me and pouring a little whisky, I declared the place home.
Earlier that day, a ginger-haired man on the mainland assured me that, not far above the rocky scree on Scarba, there’s ‘a wee lochan full of famished trout’. Capitulating to my hunger, I picked up my fishing rod and walked out into the rain.
An hour later, I was still walking and, an hour after that, with darkness beginning to threaten, I traced my way back.
That night, as the flames of my feeble fire threw shadows on the back wall, I shivered in silence and looked at my dog. Not long ago, she would have roamed the island looking for things to kill, but, now, her muzzle grows grey and she only cares for afternoons by the Aga.
‘Fishing with hunger in your belly and despair in your heart is altogether different’
At 8pm, I forced myself into a sleeping bag that had belonged to my brother when he was a Boy Scout of slender build. Lying there half-suffocating, with my nipples exposed to the wind and desperately willing sleep to come, I evaluated Hattie. In 2011, I paid £200 for her as a puppy, so I estimated she’s cost about 0.05p a day — remarkable value for a dog of such kindness.Then, I awoke. Hoping it was 4am or 5am, I turned over my watch. Painfully, it was just 10pm. The rest of the night followed the same pattern — I would lull myself to sleep with some tedious calculation and then awake an hour later, starving, frightened and cold.