Australians and Macquarries can now stay overnight on Ulva to celebrate the "Father of Australia"

Our new member Hostel on Ulva now allows Australians to stay overnight on the Island where the “Father of Australia” Lachlan Macquarie was born in 1762.  Few people know about the link between the Isles of Ulva and Mull and the significance of the standing and immense character of Lachlan Macquarie who was the enlightened Governor of New South Wales for 11 years.  Ulva is a tiny, privately owned idyllic island lying just off the coast of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. The connection between these Isles and Lachlan Macquarie is an inspirational and poignant story.

Lachlan Macquarie left his Hebrides home as a young lad: he enroled in the American War of Independence aged 16.  His impressive military career lasted over 30 years and took him to many corners of the globe.  But his early life was tinged with tragedy; the death of his first wife of tuberculosis after only three years of marriage left him depressed and he returned to Mull.  There he met Elizabeth Campbell, who in 1807 became his second wife. Macquarie was soon after offered the position of Governor of New South Wales by the British Crown and he went back to Australia in 1809.

His legacy is inspirational and is crediting for shaping modern Australia.  As Governor he set about transforming a society that was starving, with no proper infrastructure or community values. Critically he identified the importance of education in building a nation. He created an environment in which commerce and manufacturing could flourish introducing coinage and establishing the colony’s first bank “The Bank of New South Wales” in 1817.  One of his main priorities was public health, very aware of the link between poverty, disadvantage, sickness and crime.  Many believe that it was Macquarie’s example of tolerance and humanity that set the spirit of egalitarianism and sense of fair play that is considered a defining characteristic of the Australian people today.

Lachlan Macquarie retired as Governor in 1822 and died in London 1824 while defending himself against  Commissioner J.T Bigge's damning report on his administration which he felt was too liberal. But Macquarie’s reputation continued to grow after his death and today he is regarded by many as the most enlightened and progressive of the early Governors who sought to establish Australia as a country, rather than as a prison camp

Macquarie was buried on the Isle of Mull in a remote mausoleum which is maintained by the National Trust of Australia and is inscribed "The Father of Australia". Macquarie formally adopted the name Australia for the continent, the name earlier proposed by the first circumnavigator of Australia, Matthew Flinders. As well as the many geographical features named after him in his lifetime, he is commemorated by Macquarie University in Sydney.

Click here for more information on Ulva Hostel

More information on the Ulva and Macquarie clan link can be found here> and click here for information on the Macquarie Mausoleum on Mull.

 

Coll Bunkhouse stars in innovation and customer service

5 star jumps for a 5 star Hostel!

Coll Bunkhouse, the community-run hostel on the Isle of Coll, has only been open for two years but is leading the way in how Hostelling can be a hub of innovation and customer service. This has been recognised by Visit Scotland Quality Assurance which has upgarded the Hostel to the highest possible quality assurance accolade of five stars.  Since it opened the Hostel has received excellent customer service  reviews which, coupled with its suberb facilities is a big influence on the grading.

One of the main aims of George McConnachie, Development Manager for Coll Bunkhouse is to extend the season for visitors, providing something special to tempt guests at less popular times of the year. The island recently hosted a three day chamber music festival, Music Coll, for the second year running, launched the successful new Coll Bird Festival in April this year and will again hold Coll of the Sharks in August, the annual festival of basking sharks.

 

5 Star Jumps for a 5 Star Hostel

 

The latest innovation is a partnership with Coll-based fitness instructor, Carol Flett, to launch a Health and Fitness Retreat as a fully catered short Hostel break with a focus on healthy living.  These breaks are iaimed at  guests who not only want a trip to the Isles but also to kick start a healthy living regimen or as a boost to an ongoing healthy lifestyle. As well as the health and fitness related workshops, guests can enjoy a range of activities including cycling, beach walks and an island tour. Local caterers to provide as much local produce as possible so the Hostel is really showing off the best that the Isle of Coll can offer.

Coll Bunkhouse really makes Hostelling a five star experience for all types of guests and at SIH we congratulate them on their success and vision.

 

Find out more on the Coll Bunkhouse website>

At the Hostel Door

A female merganser, of the red breasted variety, yesterday circled the pond three times that I saw and then landed on the water.  It was before 7.00am and just none of the hostel guests was about. She dibbled and dived for mini trout and other delicacies, swam around to explore and then contented herself on the bank with a meticulous preen.  I am no twitcher but put the glasses on her and felt privileged that of the many nearby sheets of water available to her she chose our tiny pond to visit.

I was reminded of the first three lines of D.H. Lawrence's poem, 'Snake'. 

“A snake came to my water trough,

On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,

To drink there.” 

Unlike  Lawrence, who felt threatened by his visitor, 'the voices of my education'  told me not that she should be killed, but revered.   Of course, within a very short time when the first up hosteller padded by, she took off in a strong uplifting straight line, cleared the trees and was away.  Our sleepy hostel guest though saw nothing of her and went on his way in blissful ignorance.  Now we have a note at Reception to alert folks to the possibility of them too appreciating our early morning visitor. 

Two days before and with three hostellers for company we had parked our bikes as far up the glen as we could and walked on to the loch where my neighbour Ian had told us there was prolific bird life this month in particular.  Plenty breeze today, no midges.  This loch is far more remote and another three hundred feet higher than us.  It looks straight into the hill.  There silently we marvelled at the flights and calls of the curlew, this year outnumbering by far the customary peewits.  Of course they saw us before we saw them.  It was a true gathering of the avian clans and we were thrilled.  A solitary goldeneye male guarded his mate and sitting tight, we guessed, in the reeds on the far side.  His striking markings can be seen on several lochs more widely scattered in the strath.  Black headed gulls curled not much above us and went their own way. 

On the following morning at the post office I bump into Ian, another Ian, who with his brother Donnie, farms those acres and told him of our visit.  “ That loch is deep, deep; a mystery,” he tells me.  “ We've lost more than one cow in there; I wouldn't like to say just how deep it is.” 

So many of this month's hostel guests are coming from all over.  Predominantly Scottish but with a healthy flow of independent travellers from France, Germany, Holland, Turkey, USA, Canada,  the rest of the UK, New Zealand, Australia – and that's just the last four weeks.  What is encouraging is twofold.  First, their appreciation of what they find here in terms of location, the welcome and the facilities once they have arrived.  Secondly, many have come from other Scottish hostels, usually independent ones and are very happy to tell us of the good times there had there.  Often they bring greetings from those hostels to us.  I like that feeling of fraternity.  Our own team this year is really switched on and robust good company.  We are so fortunate and our guests like particularly that aspect of their stay with us. 

This hostel's ground has a good track record in accommodating independent travellers.  From 1900, for about ten years, Macdonalds travelled from  Lochaber on the west coast on their way to the Wool Fair in Inverness. This fair was for the trading of horses.  A regular camping spot for these independent travellers was right here.  The Gaelic for our ground is interpreted as 'The cool spring in the wood'.   Quite often we have found bits of chain, horseshoes and half disintegrated tackle buried not far beneath the surface of the camping ground. 

In a remarkable little book loaned to us by our Buckie born friend Madge and which she discovered in Wastebusters at Forres we learn more about these early travellers.  In Elizabeth ( Suzie) McKay's  ' A Discarded Brat, a tiny's tale of survival' published in 1979 by Highland Printers of Inverness, she tells of such independent travellers. 

“  From west the country came the tinkers' carts, traps and caravans, lumbering leisurely along a procession of men and women of all ages.  They had hit the trail sometime in April to reap their harvest, bringing with them linen, coloured calico and a glitter of household wares.  They were skilled in the art of soldering kettles, pots and pans, in return for a few coppers or some rags and rabbit skins.  The tinker tribe were made up of several well known families. 

Old Angus brought his family and their children and his aged mother who was very much weather beaten, wrinkled and furrowed about the features and who dearly loved to smoke her little clay pipe.  The tribal folk were not beggars, but rather the relics of the ancient clans, forced to take the highway like rolling stones seeking moss:  the women folk with their bundles of humanity wrapped in tartan plaids, strapped safely to their backs and a basket of wares over their arms ….........” 

Later, 'our' Macdonalds set up home in the wood here, built the start of what became our own first cottage home and earned their honest crust for just a few years before the call of the road took them away north.  At least, unlike their own displaced forbears, they had a choice.  Hostellers listen to these tales almost with reverence and as hostel keepers with a revived camping ground we have a sense of  satisfaction in being their successors. 

This morning, George is rebuilding a part of the watercourse, Greg and Thea are preparing the hostel and camping ground for tonight's visitors from Aberdeen, Switzerland, Edinburgh and Cumbria and I am writing this.  Have a great summer. 

Hostel Keeper

An inspirational lifelong hostelling journey

Scottish Independent Hostels exists to help promote the values and uniqueness of a Hostelling stay in an Independently run hostel.  Hostellers also help one another and here is an excellent example from David & Valery Dean of the Lazy Duck Hostel who are always willing to help Scottish Hostellers, and even overseas ones too.  This is even more remarkable when you consider that the Lazy Duck is one of our smallest hostels, but as you will read, has much, much more besides.

David had a request for help from Christian and Jana Berking:

Hello David,
This is Christian Berking from Northern Germany. I am not sure you remember me and my wife Jana joining your beautiful homeland two times in august 2012 on our honeymoon. :-)  We spoke about  many different things, especially to build a cottage in the woods. Now we are on a big journey www.horizonte-erfahren.de  with our bikes. Behind the tour is to develop and managing our own home such a little bit like yours. Would you be so kind to give us some details how to manage a project like yours? I know that you build first your own cottage and bought some land. After some time it grows bigger and bigger. That' s all I know at the moment. How did you finance it and was it difficult to prepare yourselves in such a big project? Me and my wife are very interested to live in harmony with nature and have an income, when we are seniors.
We wish you and your wife a wonderful season
Yours sincerely Christian and Jana Berking

And this is the response from David.  Not only will it be very helpful to the Berkings, what a lovely inspirational insight into the lifelong journey of one of our most fascinating members! 

Dear Christian & Jana,
        Goodness me, what a journey you are having.  We wish you every success and fulfilment.  As to what has happened here at the Lazy Duck over 40 years, the glorious and perhaps unconventional thing about it, and us, is that in no sense has it been 'planned'.  There never was a five, ten or twenty years plan other than to feel in our bones that having come here when we were first married we would at some stage want to share this spot with others.

Our thirty years work in education until 1996 saw us living in accommodation attached to our schools first in England, then Wales and then, lastly in Valery's native Scotland about 90 minutes from here by car.  We came when we could to the cottage and then when in 1979 we built our house here we came for holidays with our children.  All the time of course we were both extending our land holding when the opportunity and finance allowed and working on the watercourse, now the ponds, and  planting and landscaping.

  Our professional work elsewhere though meant that what visitors now see as the Lazy Duck did not really accelerate until I 'retired' for the first time.  Valery too was fully involved in our educational work but when we did arrive here for full time living, apart from my continuing consultancy work abroad we were able in 1999 to develop first the conversion of our winter storage Drascombe boat house to make the hostel.  The camping ground followed by accident almost in 2003 when the horse ate all the heather under the 200 year old pine trees. The two eco huts followed in 2011 and 2013 respectively. Each development has more or less funded the next one and what savings we had  have been more sensibly used to top up the cost of these building projects rather than leaving our small amount of money in the bank. 

Essentially though it is we as non professional hospitality givers and accommodation providers which has allowed us to take a very fresh look at what we have hoped to do here.  We are not mightily impressed by the brash tourism machine which surrounds us.  Although, to a certain extent, we have to rub along with it we far prefer to bring to the Lazy Duck our own values of ethical connecting with visitors who arrive to what many of them see as this 'oasis'.

 In determining our response to them as people and in an attempt to exceed their expectations of what they have booked we need to understand the physical and human environment they have come from.  If we can do this then we can more usefully gauge our response to them both on arrival and throughout their stay.  In our publicity we aim to make no claims which could mislead.  Furthermore for instance,, we would rather a camper with children cancel because of bad weather than have a child's first experience of camping turn out to be a bad one. That said, we provide a shelter for campers which in itself can become a welcome and 'fun' refuge for all ages when the rain is throwing it down.  Laudable risk taking by and with children is one thing.  Misery is another.

Hut visitors in particular are often celebrating an anniversary, possibly becoming engaged to be married or just spending special and quite private time together.  Our contact with them following their arrival needs therefore to be thought about carefully.  Each couple is different in their requirements of us and we need to think about each of them and respond accordingly.  We must neither underplay nor overplay our part in their visit.  We must learn to 'read' them as accurately as we can.  In this 'slow' tourism exercise therefore where visitor numbers comparatively are really low we can afford to do that.

 The help we recruit from our local village for preparing accommodations or tradesmen who may meet our guests or international volunteer summer helpers who come to us, usually two at a time for two months between May and October are thoroughly schooled in this thinking.  Hostel visitors, who are our central reason for being here of course, come in all shapes and sizes, some solo and retiring, others in a group and happily gregarious.  We must be prepared well with our response to all and strive to be faithful to the human, empathetic values and culture which have inspired and guided us whatever we have found ourselves doing with our lives.

Finally, for now, it is fine and a privilege to be able to create a place such as this.  As seniors though we find the clock does not stand still and while the creating and maintaining has been much fun and most rewarding we recently have had to make plans for taking life a little more gently.  There were several options but only one good one for us.  It was to recruit joint managers to ' take the strain' and allow us to continue making a contribution appropriate to our age and stage.

 This we have now done and are fortunate in having live next door to us in what was the letting cottage a much younger couple whose extensive professional experience, high personal qualities and refreshingly like minded thinking to our own  are not only helping us maintain what the Lazy Duck can offer but encouraging us to achieve even more for our visitors.  The 'more' is not in terms of plant and facilities for we have probably done enough 'physical' creating on these three hectares/six acres.  Their contribution has been to 'modernise' us somewhat just in the way our own professional children hoped they would and to bring a sense of further youthfulness  into our lives and our work.  We could not have been more fortunate in the appointments we made.  They have been with us since last September only, but everything is looking good.

I hope this is of some help.  Every good wish to you for your own futures.  As members of the Scottish Independent Hostels network  www.hostel-scotland.co.uk   we would be happy to point you towards other equally motivated colleagues who would I feel sure be willing to share their hostel creating/owning/managing experience with you.

All the best,
David
David Dean
lazyduck.co.uk

 

A new Stone Plaque for Loch Lomond Memorial Park

The New Stone Plaque

One of the defining things about Independent Hostellers is the interest they have in their own community. One of our members, Jock Cousin of Balmaha House Hostel,  has recently been responsible for ensuring the placement of a new memorial plaque to those who gave their lives in the first and second World Wars to replace one stolen years ago.  Since 1995, the area around Ben Lomond, including the mountain summit, has been designated as a war memorial, called the Ben Lomond National Memorial Park. 

 


Jock is on the right as the new plaque is placed on site

A few years ago the brass plaque for the sculpture was stolen, presumably for its scrap value.  Jock, a fighting soldier for 28 years with the British Military felt it was very important to get the plaque replaced and arranged at his own cost and through his military connections for a plaque to be commissioned and transported from Devon where it was made, to Balmaha.  This was no easy task as the new plaque was made of stone; Jock was determined to provide a memorial that would last and have no scrap value for thieves!

The stone plaque is a lovely thing and sits very well in its surroundings.  It carries the description “This Land Rising from the shore of the loch to the summit of Ben Lomond was dedicated in 1996 as the Ben Lomond National Memorial Park to be held in perpetuity as a tribute to those who gave their lives in the service of their country” . Due to the efforts of Jock, it will be there for a long time to come.

At the Hostel Door

So what's so surprising about Harris and Lewis being voted the World's fifth most delightful to visit islands in the World?  Following close on that accolade are ones for Mull and Orkney.  Trip Advisor travellers gave the Outer Hebridean islands top slot in Europe in their 2014 Travellers' Awards announcement.  Given the competition both in Europe and World wide that is amazingly good news for the islands themselves and for the whole of Scotland too.

As I proposed to my first and only wife, in a sand dune on Harris's Luskentyre beach forty years ago this year I know well how enchanting and bewitching this landscape can be.  But it's not just the landscape is it.  In coming to their decision the travellers who reported back to Trip Advisor commented in glowing terms on just what effort the residents of all the islands had made to make them welcome and to tempt them back.  A lot has happened in those forty years to build on the innate and natural open-heartedness of the islanders.

An Insight into Independent Hostelling and Volunteering.

It’s difficult to encapsulate what is so unique and special about the people who own and run Independent Hostels, especially since even within our own SIH Membership every owner and every Hostel is so totally different!

A great insight as to why people run a Hostel is The Lazy Duck owned by Valery and David Dean.  The Lazy Duck is the smallest Hostel within our membership and totally delightful.  Like many of our members, there are other types of accommodation on site running alongside the Hostel to provide a sustainable and profitable enterprise.

For over 30 years The Lazy Duck has hosted climbers, walkers, paddlers, campers, cyclists, mountain bikers - solo travellers as well as families and activity groups. Fiddle and clarsach, guitar and pipes have played late into the evening and many a 'craic' has been enjoyed round the camp fires at the Hostel and on the camping ground.