A very long time ago my father, a British tax attorney was trying to figure out a way to reduce his tax burden so he decided to become a farmer.
He bought a few thousand acres of bog on the shores of Loch Broom at the end of a very long arduous single track road from Inverness to the small fishing village of Ullapool. With the money he earned advising celebrities and businesspeople how to manage their taxes he built a hotel, planted forests of pine trees on the barren hillsides and developed a sheep farm down by the salt water inlet called Loch Broom and in his way saw a place of beauty long before Instagram put the north of Scotland on the tourist map.
His daughter my younger sister continued the work and has three children of her own who are prepared to continue the dynasty all of which is remarkable enough. What is unusual for me is how much I like being here in this miserable cold wet foggy climate. In a life filled with places visited all I have of Ullapool is happy memories. My father the lawyer became human here when we drove up for a few days, me to explore the rocky tidal shoreline on my school holidays and he to sort some new tangled business problem on the farm, in the forests or at the hotel. The view from the cottage where I’m staying, Loch Broom towards Ullapool:
Lucy came by after lunch and we took her sons’ dogs for a walk and talked as we went. She is much younger than me filled with wisdom beyond her, or my, years.
Her dogs, Ruby and Sionnach are wild terriers ready to chase deer or sheep across the hills and they are as old as Rusty, so they have to be held firmly to their leashes. For someone who ambles with Rusty, that level of vigilance makes me nervous; let the dog go accidentally and wreak havoc.
We sat around the dinner table my first night here and talked and drank wine and told stories and I didn’t want it to end. And then I thought to myself I was last here shortly before my motorcycle accident eight years ago, far too long ago, realizing time has slipped through my fingers. We had planned to visit Ireland together, a trip scotched by Covid, and then Layne and I retired and went for a drive and here we are these many years later.
I picked up my new passport, the tool that offers extra possibilities to me the traveler. I am the wanderer who knows I will miss Lucy and her stories when I fly back to Paramaribo next week, and she gets back to real life managing many things. Ullapool is the wettest place in Great Britain, the climate is cold and windy with Atlantic storms blowing in from frigid regions but it is fascinating and filled with colorful people, as desirable a destination to Britons as Key West is in the US. Tourism is flourishing as much as fishing used to in this village and my sister is a pillar of her community, a life well lived apparently. Around here being “Lucy’s brother” puts me on the map, makes me less of an unknown quantity on the street, where everyone knows everyone who isn’t a tourist.
We stopped off at the Royal Bank of Scotland where Lucy introduced me to the teller as you do in small towns apparently. While she talked to the manager I wandered outside with my camera.
A man with two small daughters walked by and one of them asked me, with all the seriousness of a four year old who I was, this bearded stranger. “Lucy’s brother,” I said equally gravely. Lucy of Leckmelm? the father asked and I was identified.
The ferry to the Isle of Lewis departs from Ullapool where huge fishing fleets used to tie up. If you saw the movie “Local Hero” there was a plot line involving Soviet trawlers. Well here in Ullapool during the Cold War they visited all the time trading vodka and fish and making friends in the village. They call them Klondykers.
On the subject of movies I mentioned the TV series “Hamish Macbeth” to Lucy and she said it was entirely true to life, a series about the difficulties of a rural policeman in the Highlands filed with eccentricity.
My nephew Duncan described Ullapool as the last outpost of civilization and culture as you go north. From here to Thurso, where he once held a job, there is nothing.
I have been all the way to top of the country and I’d agree with that assessment, stretches of great beauty and few people.
Lucy and I also drove out to see our father’s grave at Clachan church a beautiful austere building at the south end of Loch Broom.
It is now a community hall disfigured as Lucy put it by a Tardis outside. Community halls need toilets and there is no plumbing so the blue box will have to do. I like a practical approach.
I plan to be buried here as Lucy tells me there is indeed room. I can’t think of a better place to spend eternity.
Lucy got a call as we walked and it was the meter reader who was trying to find the electricity meter at her farm. A long discussion ensued as she explained how to find it in a shed. She warned him the floorboards are pretty rotten and to stay safe he needed to walk on the stone parts of the floor or he might fall through. There was a pause as he digested the information and the discussion went on for a bit. Lucy sighed as she hung up. “Ever since they got rid of Munro Sparky,” she said sounding nostalgic, “no one knows how to find the meters anymore.”
My father loved Rolls Royces which he as a self made man viewed as a symbol of success. He never bought them new, but even used they represented to his patriotic mind the pinnacle of British engineering. Sometimes even they let him down. I recall he bought one that had body rust masked by newspaper lacquered over the holes but nothing phased him. Lucy and I were talking about how he used to manage the farm on his visits in the Rolls Royce driving farm tracks and sparing neither himself nor the car. It had wheels and an engine therefore it was designed to transport him.
On one memorable occasion I had forgotten about Lucy reminded me of the time he hitched a trailer to the car, probably the first time ever a Rolls Royce became a utility vehicle, and drove some animals to market in style until the rear axle gave up the struggle and disassembled itself from the rest of the splendid car in front of all the already astonished farmers. Nothing perturbed him, a true eccentric, he just muddled on. Yet in court he was a brilliant piercing merciless advocate for his clients. And he loved this place.
Ullapool seems to be a magnet for colorful characters and in that it reminds me of Key West before mainstream America got ahold of it so there has been plenty of laughter at the dinner table as my family reminisces.
The meter reader called back for more directions which conversation caused me to crack up again as Lucy went through the precise directions to the overwhelmed employee on the phone.
The austere chapel is home to a collection of historic photos at the moment and I could have spent all my time looking at the faces from far in the past staring into the camera but I had to go and try on a top hat for Saturdays event.
The first baronet of Braemore was a civil engineer of some note building bridges hiring locals as the obituary pointed out and apparently making life better for those around him. It sounds too good to be true but that perhaps is just because of these times we live in. I like to think making life better for those around you could become fashionable one day.
When I came down stairs Tuesday morning there were some visitors outside whom I startled at their breakfast.
They ran when I appeared. They were right to run as we had had venison for dinner the night before, shot last July by Lucy's eldest. Solais explained to me why I’ve never liked venison when he told me the meat tastes terrible if shot at the wrong season, when the animal is malnourished and stressed it has no fat, it’s tough and the meat tastes gamey. The deer we ate was perfect, like tender beef and I was astonished. I keep learning stuff.
They follow the beat of their own drummer in the Highlands, and for me looking in from the outside I feel fortunate to get this small window into a life made rich by joie de vivre.
This a neat tidy village bustling with events and shops of all kinds including a well stocked “charity shop” as thrift stores are known here. My jacket for the wedding came from here for five bucks Lucy told me. 
I recall formal meals at the Caledonian hotel which half a century ago was the place to go. Lucy tells me it has lost some of that luster but is working its way back as time changes all things. I still like the exterior look. 
Nowadays there are many more restaurant choices in such a small town. 
And ethnic foods are also available mostly in the summer months of the tourist season. Ullapool is too cold for me but I really enjoy the warmth of the people and the small town atmosphere. 
I had never heard of a refill store, a place where you bring your containers to refill them with pastas or nuts or seeds or even soaps and detergents. Lucy was looking for gram flour which is British for chickpea flour and here it was in tiny Ullapool. 
There is a supermarket of course which also now incorporates the post office since the last post mistress retired and the stand alone office was closed. Tesco is a nationwide chain: 
I remember the old sea mine standing on the sidewalk in Ullapool since forever. It’s supposed to raise funds for distressed seamen, but Lucy gave me a stricken look and said she’d never put any money in it and of course neither have I. It’s padlocked so there’s no way to know if there is any cash in there:
Ullapool has a new waterfront promenade made of locally quarried stone:
And a proper new marina for fishing boats and pleasure craft. 
The Harbour Trust spent about six million dollars three years ago to create this new waterfront and ferry terminal. 
And there is a new in 2022 ferry terminal for the twice daily service to Stornoway on the isle of Lewis. 
Calmac is the ferry company that serves the Hebrides and the communities along the west coast,
…and the harbor also is a stopping point for Norwegian flagged ships that supply the salmon farms on Loch Broom, controversial as they are. Farmed salmon are raised in terrible conditions I have discovered, crowded pens filled with sea lice that eat the salmon alive. But there’s money to be made of course and local jobs at stake. 
