Dad’s bench the perfect spot for Uisken selfies
A bench built to remember a happy camper is becoming a top selfie spot on Mull.
Leo Norris’s dad Peter first took his young family to spend the summer at Uisken near Bunessan in 1966 and it flourished into a tradition lasting more than 50 years.
Peter and his wife Binkie were 88 when they reluctantly gave up their tent for a cosy caravan.
For the former head of a Barnardo’s residential school in Peebles, discovering Uisken was love at first sight and, after he died three years ago, his son Leo wanted to find a unique way of celebrating his dad’s passion for the place. ‘We don’t have a gravestone, so the bench is special to us. It’s a fitting tribute to dad and Uisken,’ said Leo.
With ideas from family and fellow Uisken campers, he came up with the idea of the scallop shell-shaped bench made from oak and inscribed with Peter and Binkie’s names and the message To All Who Love Uisken. Under the bench is a plaque inviting people to email Leo with their selfies.
To date, he has received about 50 selfies and he is ‘open to suggestions’ on finding a way to share them with others.
‘They’re all very different but what they have in common is their love for Uisken. It would make a great installation. I’m open to suggestions,’ said Leo.
In the 1960s, it was just the Norris family and one other who set up their camps at Uisken but even when the beach’s popularity grew and more tents and caravanners arrived, Peter was happy to share it, said Leo, who lives in Fife, and was just 11 on the first holiday there.
The bench has a bell attached for people to ring. The Morning Bell, as it is called, is a nod to Peter’s habit of making porridge then ringing an improvised bell made out of a fishing float to call other campers to join them for breakfast.
‘I got the idea at dad’s memorial service from a young person who used to camp next to them. It was also a way of remembering his extraordinary capacity for being inventive. Every year he’d put something in the Bunessan Show that he’d made out of found objects, often bringing a prize home from the craft tent,’ said Leo.
Significantly, the scallop shell also symbolises pilgrimage. ‘It’s a measure of the place that so many of the visitors return year after year and each new generation keeps coming back,’ added Leo. Peter also started off the first Uisken Beach Games, rounding up children to take part in the fun. The August event, with races on the sand and home-made rafts, still continues and is the biggest single fundraiser for the Ross of Mull RNLI, said Leo, who brings his grandchildren on holiday every year.
‘We’ll be back at Easter,’ he added.