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The Machair

IN Edible Plants
21st July 2017/by Kate

My childhood was spent by the sea. The summers were longer and warmer then. Weren’t they? Well, maybe not, but what sticks to memory is the sun on our tanned, feral faces, as we spent our days down by the shore; picking snails off the old dry stone walls and flowers from the shore. We’d nestle down on the edge of the beach with silverweed and thyme underfoot, unpack the barbecue and spend all evening there – it never seemed to go dark. Not once did it occur to us that we had crossed rare micro-cities of creeping thyme, eyebright, lady’s bedstraw, birds-foot trefoil, clover… The happy bees zipping around our ankles were something to squeal away from not to celebrate. The marram grass on the seaside dunes eliciting yelps as it whipped our legs in the breeze.

Here in western Scotland the ‘grassy’ grazed hilltops of the dunes behind the sandy shore are where the machair forms, one of the rarest habitats in Europe. Only found in the north and west of Britain, particularly the western Scottish islands, it is thanks to the fortuitous blend of a prevailing Atlantic weather system, longstanding calcarious marine sediment movements, as well as ancient and continued land practices. In early spring and summer, the wild machair flowers pull themselves up through accumulated sandy soils. A mix of wind blown sand onto soil has gradually created this unique seaside stage. Protected in winter by swathes of washed up kelp deposited at its feet; cultivated by our Hebridean ancestors and fertilised and grazed by their livestock – this unique but fragile fertile habitat has been created.

Lady's bedstraw (yellow) white clover and wild thyme

Lady’s bedstraw was once harvested in the Hebrides for its striking red and orange properties when used to dye fibres, particularly famed in the old Harris tweeds.

Now, as a grown up kid, the summers seem shorter and colder but the machair sights and scents still make my head swim in the summer. Clover’s honeyed high notes. Bedstraw, warm, savoury and subtle. The delicate intricacies of this landscapes inhabitants only adding to its splendour.

Lady’s bedstraw was once harvested in the Hebrides for its striking red and orange properties when used to dye fibres, particularly famed in the old Harris tweeds. Yet, so widely gathered was the bedstraw, that land owner’s sanctions were brought in to prohibit its picking – though like many an island tradition there are tales of undercover acquisitions.

Wild thyme pops out bright purple flower heads from early to high summer; scrambling down to the shore releases the herbal scent – sweeter than its backyard garden cousin.

Red and white clover spread out through the grassland, oh what a scent! We’d pick up a white flower head and sook out the floral nectar.

Purple harebells, yellow trefoil, self heal… The species found on the machair are wide and varying, a haven for rarer flora to flourish – indeed some of the rarest orchid species are only to be found in Scotland’s machair.

But the machair has more important things to do than bring back childhood memories. With intensive agricultural practices encroaching, grazing patterns changing, even increased visitor numbers to our beaches; stricter steps have been enforced to protect and educate people on this delicate land type. When visiting our northern island neighbour of Tiree last summer, I was impressed that restricted camping and walking areas mean Tiree’s natural machair is blossoming – never have I seen such abundance of healthy-looking bedstraw as we cycled across the island.

The machair is an almost unbelievably unique, complex, diverse and gloriously rich ecosystem but it will always be evocative of all that was good in my childhood summers; a place to indulge in scent and colour.

In but a few months from now, once summer has truly passed and the brightest flowers have gone, the Marram grass will hold steady the peripheries until the winter storms tangle the kelp and protect the precious machair once again.

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WMD – THE STORY OF THE YELLOW SUBMARINE HAS BEEN FULL OF CHARACTER AND CHARACTERS RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING.

It started with our friend ‘Demolition Dave’ helping Duncan McGillivray and his gang to demolish the old Inverleven distillery – buying up all the old equipment for scrap and loading it onto barges on the Clyde. All so Duncan had some spares to keep Bruichladdich running in the days of No Money.

As this odd flotilla was being towed round the Mull of Kintyre and up to Islay, Laddie MD Mark Reynier received an email from the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in the USA who had been monitoring distillery webcams on the grounds that our processes could have been ‘tweaked’ to produce the dreaded WMD. ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’.

Never one to allow the opportunity for a good story to pass him by, or to get his beloved distillery in the news, Reynier embellished the tale, which soon grew to involve spies and the CIA and visits by weapons inspectors. All of which made great headline-grabbing copy in the febrile media atmosphere then prevailing around WMD.

One of the stills from Inverleven was dutifully set up outside the old Victorian buildings, and became an iconic sight, with a pair of Duncan’s old wellie boots sticking out of the top to represent those weapons inspectors searching for dangerous chemicals deep in its copper bottomed interior.

A special bottling was commissioned (of course) and dubbed the ‘Whisky of Mass Distinction’ (geddit?) and much hilarity ensued. At least among the Laddies, the rest of the whisky industry having long since given up on the noisily irreverent rebels.

WMDII: A YELLOW SUBMARINE

Things were about to get even more eccentric because, shortly afterwards, Islay fisherman John Baker was heading home to Port Ellen when he spotted something awash in the sea off the bow of his boat. Being a resourceful man, he attached a rope to said object and towed it into the pier where Gordon Currie lifted it out of the water. It proved to be a very beautiful yellow submarine.

Very conveniently, the yellow vessel had ‘Ministry of Defence’ and a telephone number stencilled on it, which was of course immediately called. What happened next was to become the stuff of legend. He was connected to the Royal Navy. “I have found your yellow submarine” said John. “We haven’t lost a yellow submarine” said the Navy. Which was an odd response as the evidence to the contrary was overwhelming.

John and Gordon then loaded the submarine onto a lorry and took it to a secret location in Port Ellen (actually fellow fisherman Harold Hastie’s back garden). The local newspaper was called, then the nationals, and the following day the red-tops were full of pictures of the two friends astride the lethal-looking machine, carrying fishing rods, and asking: “Has anybody lost a yellow submarine?”

Hilarious… unless you were the Royal Navy – who did eventually admit to it being theirs. HMS Blyth, the minesweeper that lost it, eventually came to pick it up, slipping into the pier at dawn to winch it aboard. By that time, Bruichladdich had (of course) commissioned another bottling, WMD2: The Yellow Submarine, and a box of lovely liquid was graciously offered, and accepted by the captain as a goodwill gesture.

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