After 10 months with Covid patients I’ve got the wildlife bug
Sue Loughran tells Anna Burnside why she’s quit her hospital job to be a ranger on the remote abandoned island of St Kilda
OCCUPATIONAL therapist Sue Loughran is hanging up her face shield and swapping her PPE for shorts and a sturdy fleece.
After spending 10 months looking after Covid patients at a hospital in north Wales, she’s heading back to St Kilda to work as a ranger on the remote island off the Outer Hebrides.
Sue, 55, spent the summer of 2019 on St Kilda and was all set to return last year. Then, a week before she was due to leave, lockdown started. After a few weeks at home, she decided to return to her first career – occupational therapy.
After six months outside showing visitors round a world heritage site that’s home to a million seabirds, working at a hospital that was coping with a pandemic was a shock to her system.
Sue recalled: “It was really hard being indoors all day long. I got outside and gulped in the air at the end of the day. When you’re working in Covid conditions, wearing PPE, you are sweating away and can’t see out of your mask very well. It’s tough being inside such a lot.”
Her job was helping all kinds of patients to get the skills they need to live independently.
She explained: “We would see people postCovid, maybe straight from the HDU. They would have fatigue problems, neurological problems, respiratory issues – a whole load of factors when they may not have had any difficulties before.
“They would need physical rehab and help with psychological issues as well.
“In the future, occupational therapists are going to find people with long Covid a huge amount of work. They are the ones who will see a whole lot of difficulties that people are left with.”
But even as she was busy with this vital work, Sue was checking in with the National Trust for Scotland to see what was happening on St Kilda. “I hoped maybe it would open up later in the season. I’d have been prepared to go at any point.”
At breaks, she tried not to bore her new colleagues with stories about the amazing sunsets and heart-stopping views. “I didn’t talk about it too much, they don’t want to hear that.”
The NTS, which owns St Kilda, kept its three staff off the island last year. The toilets, shop and camping area it runs for visitors who come on cruise ships, boat trips and yachts were closed. But this year the unique site, which is the UK’s only dual UNESCO world heritage site, is open again and Sue is beyond excited to get on the helicopter at Benbecula and travel 40 miles west across the Atlantic to St Kilda.
Two years ago, when she made the journey for the first time, she wasn’t sure what to expect. She thought the island, which was abandoned by its 36 residents in 1930 when they couldn’t sustain their puffin-eating, seaweed-burning way of life any more, would be a sad, lonely place. What she found was the opposite. “It was the most incredible, gorgeous sunny day. I spent the entire day in a bit of a daze, when it was getting to the evening I thought, I’m not going to bed tonight, I’m just going to keep on looking. It was just amazing, an incredible feeling. I met everybody, I had this incredibly warm welcome, it was one of those days that make your heart sing.”
Sue’s home for the six months that there
are staff on St Kilda is the Manse, one of the row of abandoned stone cottages. It has been renovated by the NTS and has home comforts Including intermittent broadband. but There’s not enough bandwidth for Netflix play they watch films from memory sticks, leary board games and read. In 2019, Sue even rned to play the ukulele. “Badly,” she said. but there’s always something to do. Going for a walk is gorgeous in the evening, when you see the night birds. The Leach’s petrels and storm petrels come in when it gets dark.” Groceries, mail and other supplies are transported by helicopter from Benbecula twice a week.
As well as her two NTS colleagues – an archaeologist and a seabird specialist – there are 10 MOD contractors on the island. In 2019, there were 70 builders doing heavy demolition work on the old MOD buildings. This work is almost finished so they won’t be there this year.
Scientists researching the rare Soay sheep who roam wild on the island come and go throughout the season.
Volunteers, organised by NTS, come to work on the island for a fortnight at a time. In 2019, these included Sue’s husband Steve, a Scot who travelled from their home in north Wales to spend his holidays renovating ancient stone cottages.
Then there are the visitors. Sue is not sure how many they will see this year. International cruises that once stopped at St Kilda have now been cancelled but there might be more British cruisers out on the Atlantic.
She said: “We can’t predict what it’s going to be like. A lot of cruise ships are now setting up again for British tourists. I suspect there will be a lot of people on private yachts. We have to be ready for action any time.”
Sue’s job is to welcome visitors and tell them the rules of St Kilda. These were strict before and now have a new layer of Covid protection. With no medical facilities on the island, they have to be extra careful.
“Covid affects everybody all the time, we must not drop our guard,” she said. “People travel to St Kilda on a boat with other people, they use the toilet, they might come into contact with other people on the island.”
She must also make sure that visitors don’t bring any unwanted wildlife with them. Rats would be disastrous to the island’s colonies of puffins, gannets and fulmars.
And before they head off to explore, she warns day trippers to be wary around the great skuas. These large ground-nesting birds, known as bonxies, are very protective of their young. They have had a go at Sue for coming too close and won’t hesitate to dive-bomb anyone who wanders too close to their babies.
“I warn the visitors this might happen. They’re just good parents, defending their chicks as well as their eggs.”
Sue doesn’t mind the aggressive bonxies one bit. “Even when I was still an occupational therapist I was volunteering, learning about wildlife, reading, getting out and about.
“I have always been drawn to wild places,” she added. “They have been part of me all my life.”
I’ve always been drawn to wild places. They have been part of my life