The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Orwell, the whirlpool and a wee dram
The wildscape of the Isle of Jura has inspired writers and musicians alike: Robin McKelvie tunes into its charms
There is something about Jura; there must be. George Orwell declared this remote Hebridean outlier “extremely ungetatable”, but then spent years writing his darkly dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four here, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty (aka the KLF) torched a cool £1million there in 1994, and this year Greg Coffey, the retired Australian hedge fund owner, will launch a golf course already hailed not only as one of the best in Scotland, but anywhere. Not that the population of 6,000 deer takes much notice; on Jura (which means “deer” in Norse) they are more interested in munching on grass in the mountains that frame perhaps the most inspiring and off-thewall of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides.
My first sight of Jura was appositely dramatic. Out of the Islay mists the darkened hulks of the infamous screescorched quartzite Paps of Jura reared into view, rendering our ship the look of a bathtub toy. Eking into Loch Tarbert on Jura’s wild west, the low-slung ridge filled with a welcoming party: about 50 red deer (the UK’s largest land mammal) stood guard, antlers silhouetted in the ochre and tangerine gloaming, adding to the cinematic appeal. Not a human soul in sight.
I didn’t see anyone at all on that first two-day walking and camping trip; the norm rather than the exception here. Indeed, the west coast is only accessible by boat, or on a Bear Grylls expedition. The 2011 census listed 196 humans on Jura: it may be Scotland’s eighth largest island (142 square miles), but it doesn’t even make the top 30 most populous. This is a wildscape of stark mountain, tumbling glen, blanket bog and craggy coast, where otters, sea eagles and many a lethal adder thrive unruffled by man. Swathes of Jura are secured by NatureScot as a Special Protection Area – it’s easy to see why.
Jura’s inhabitants make do with only one real road, one (sort of ) village, a solitary whisky distillery, a wee shop, hotel and bar. Oh, and a new gin distillery (Lussa). It takes two ferries to get here. Trying to work it all out at the Jura
Hotel, I marvelled at the sun burning down over the Small Isles, feasting on boat-fresh scallops and venison with a local dram in hand. Jura started to work its magic on me, too. I mean, what do you really, actually need on an island?
Orwell clearly didn’t need much. The whitewashed, spartan house at Barnhill he rented isn’t easy to get to even today, lying well beyond the literal end of the road on a little trammelled track in the north east. It must have felt like the moon in 1946, but Orwell (known to the Diurachs by his real name, Eric Blair) found something here, spending much of the next three years on Jura before the tuberculosis that was to kill him forced his retreat to Gloucestershire in January 1949, just months before his magnum opus was published. He never returned, but the four-bedroom house is still in the same family who rented it to him – if you’ve a boat or a 4x4, you can seek inspiration at Barnhill, too.
I swam to Barnhill from a yacht in the bay – wild swimming was popular on Jura long before it vied with Joe Wicks for popularity during the pandemic, but Orwell’s most striking swim was unintentional. Sensing a challenge, he took on the might of the notorious whirlpools in the Gulf of Corryvreckan. The motor broke off his boat and Orwell, his sister, adopted son, niece and nephew were all hurled into the tumultuous waters. The world might never have seen Nineteen Eighty-Four were it not for a lobster boat chancing by.
Orwell shouldn’t have messed with Corryvreckan, the third largest whirlpool in the world, but I understand the draw. You can hike to the cliffs above the whirlpools, worth it not just to watch the dedicated fast tourist Ribs that venture out from the mainland seeking thrills, but also to take in the views across to the sheer rock sentinel of Scarba, the brooding neighbour that makes Jura look like Piccadilly Circus.
There are only a couple of times a year when Jura is overrun – once literally – by visitors. The annual Isle of Jura Fell Race is a seriously improbable event that has 250 runners of questionable sanity battle from sea level up a whopping seven peaks, including those Paps, with 9,000ft of ascent over 17 miles.
I’ve walked much of the fell race route and won’t forget what a guide on my first ascent said: “Walking on Jura is a bastard.” It is. It’s real one step forward and three back on the broken turf-tufted ground and even harder on the treacherous scree-ravaged slopes. Route finding is difficult at best. You set off on a promising path only for it to peter out on a precipitous ledge; the work of those deer puts mountain goats to shame. The other busy event, the Jura Music Festival, is more relaxed – whisky rather than water fuelled – doing its bit to ensure Gaelic song and culture endure on an island where the language has been under threat for decades.
Back in the “capital” of Craighouse, the other of the twin hubs (along with the hotel) is the Isle of Jura Distillery. With roots in the early 19th century, the whitewashed postcard-perfect distillery was closed for years, only resurrecting in 1963. Today, it is barrelling along, conjuring up sweet malts with little of the peat smoke of neighbouring Islay, tame enough to charm their way into airport retail. I asked the head stillman his favourite amongst their myriad whisky expressions. “Definitely the 16-year-old,” he said. “We call it the ‘Diurachs’ Own’ as it’s like the island – warm and welcoming with enough fire to keep you wanting to come back for more.” I’ve returned to Jura half a dozen times so I cannot argue.
For such a sparsely populated and ungetatable island, Jura has an impressive string of admirers – and inspired them, too. It features in Ian Rankin’s Question of Blood and Andrew Ervin’s Burning Down George Orwell’s House, as well as novels by Alexander McCall Smith and Anne Michaels. Capercaillie, Skyclad and the Mekons have all conjured up music inspired by Jura; and in 2010 Poets and Lighthouses, an album recorded on the island by Tuvan singer Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha reached No1 in the World Music Charts Europe, with Jura’s Skervuile Lighthouse on its cover.
Greg Coffey has obviously been beguiled by Jura, too. He snapped up the Ardfin Estate for a reported £3.5m in 2010 and splashed out an estimated £20m fashioning a course that Golf World hailed as one of the greatest on the planet. There is little risk of Jura being deluged by golfers, though. You cannot just turn up. I’m not sure Orwell would have rushed for a round anyway. He would surely be more intrigued by the KLF burning their fortune into the Jura breeze 10 years on from the titular year of his Jura-penned novel.
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