The emigration stone on the Links

©May Hunter

When I was small, living in the Kyles of Bute, the sea was a positive and comforting factor in our upbringing. We sometimes sailed down from Glasgow on the Jeanie Deans, one of the last paddle steamers. I remember being taken down into the engine room and watching in awe as these huge gleaming pistons pumped up and down. I remember also the neighbour who said, trying unsuccessfully to conceal her pride, “Ma John has got a job on the boats. He’s to get twa pound and ten shilling a week. But, ach, we’ll just live like ordinary folk just the same!”

When we moved to Stornoway in 1952 the sea, in the form of the Minch, became a more challenging proposition.

Since coming to Cromarty from Aberdeen in 1999, I have found both these aspects of the sea here. Looking towards Ben Wyvis in the evening, with the sun going down, the sea comes alive with red and pink and gold. But then I remember the monument down on the Links, with the powerful words of Hugh Miller describing the departure of Highlanders who had been torn from their homes and launched out on an uncertain future. For them, the sea around Cromarty must have represented the threat of the unknown.

For me, though, sitting in my study and looking out on the Cromarty Firth, I find the sea therapeutic. It certainly beats the chimney pots which I stared at for twenty years through the velux windows of my study at the top of the manse in Aberdeen.

It certainly beats the chimney pots – by John Tallach, 7½ years in Cromarty.