Gigha really is a rather lovely small island, about six-and-a-half miles long by one-and-a-half wide. Farms, wee beaches, four wind turbines, people who smile and wave, and the ferry chugging backwards and forwards from the Kintyre mainland. In 2002 it famously distinguished itself by a successful community buy-out (at £4 million), putting an end to a series of more or less unsatisfactory recent lairds. But there had been one laird who was loved and who gave the island its crowning glory — the Achamore gardens: Lieutenant Colonel Sir James Nockells Horlick of the Coldstream Guards whose simple gravestone in Kilchattan burial ground has the memorable epitaph from Isaiah "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks". Since the island has been managed by the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust the population has increased to more than 150. But I fear some of the new housing is not very inspiring. But at least houses are being built to accommodate the increasing population. There are a lot of anchorages for the size of the island, so one of them is sure to suit the wind conditions. Approaching the island from the east these days is a whole lot easier than in 1896 when Cowper lamented that "There is absolutely not one single perch, beacon, or buoy, in the whole of this nine miles Sound" (Sailing Tours: The Yachtsman's Guide to the Cruising Waters of the English and Adjacent Coasts, Part V, The West Coasts of Scotland, the Orkneys, and the west coast of the North sea. Frank Cowper, Upcott Gill, London, 1896).
