Un article pour le Girnigoe issue (1/4)

         Mille excuses à mes lecteurs et lectrices qui ne maîtrisent pas l’anglais, mais je vais publier dans les jours à venir l’article que le responsable de la revue Sinclair m’a demandé d’écrire en hommage au clan Sinclair et à son château (auquel est consacré mon livre « le Ceilidh »). J’y explique à quel point le Caithness a joué un rôle important depuis 1979, date de ma première « intrusion » dans cette région si éloignée du Royaume Uni...

   Wandering about Sinclair Girnigoe since the time I was the local “French assistant”

The first time I came to Caithness was in 1979… I was camping around all over Britain with some friends. We had a special ticket on the train and we could travel wherever we wanted. South, north, east, west. I don’t know why, but, from the first glimpse, I felt attracted by that territory that the station in Dingwall called “the far north”.

         We arrived in Thurso on a wet day and I remember there was a highland gathering or something going on. Not very comfortable yet, and we faced very bad conditions for the tents, the walks, the cooking etc, so that my friends felt quickly “fed up” with that “poor and bliek country”…  I didn’t feel the same way, and, as we were all “struggling” on the path near the old castle, instead of complaining like the others against the wet wind, and the screaming hitchkock seagulls, I was thinking that I had to come back on my own another time…

And I came back indeed… It was in September 1983. I had asked to be employed in Caithness as a French assistant (Wick and Thurso High schools). Then, during all one year, from September to july, Caithness was for me ! I was staying in Wick, Glamis Road, and somebody kindly gave me his gran’ mother’s old bike. Then started  my love affair with seals in Staxigoe, gulls in Noss Head and ruins at Dirlot, Keiss, Ackergill, Old Wick, Bucholie and specially Girnigoe.