The long road to Skye
On the Sunday of my first visit to Gothic Farm a loud vehicle drew up outside, the stable door to the kitchen flew open and in strode a procession of the wildest-looking band of people.
It was Donovan Leitch and his friends. They were all bursting with tales of the islands that Donovan had just bought off the Isle of Skye in western Scotland, a small part of the main part of Skye too, with some derelict cottages and an old schoolhouse.
Donovan sang, “How high the gulls fly o’er Islay”. I was swept up into this great gale of ideas for a future of like-minded people going to live in a remote and northerly part of the UK. Not a community so much as a collection of sympathetic people – painters, musicians, writers.
We should go with them. But how? Donovan and his friends had a Land Rover. Robert and I had nothing. We told them about our finding a small wagon and a black horse called Betsy, and so the idea of the two of us and Blue, or three of us with John and his dog Swanney, going up there on foot seemed to appeal to everyone, none of us in these our wildest dumb dreams figuring that walking might take us a lot longer to get there.
Extract from Wayward: Just Another Life To Live, White Rabbit Books, out now