The voice of one of Scotland’s most remarkable figures returns to the page in the form of Isobel Wylie Hutchison’s Peak Beyond Peak. These essays detail her Scottish journeys over a period of 50 years, giving fascinating insight to a great explorer, and a testament to cultural connection and communication. You can read an extract below. 

Peak Beyond Peak
By Isobel Wylie Hutchison
Published by Taproot Press 

It was at Castlebay, in Barra, some twenty years ago, that an Islesman suggested to me the attractive idea of a walking-tour right up the Long Island to the lighthouse at the Butt of Lewis, a distance of about 150 miles.  

The suggestion appealed to me, and I set off forthwith and alone, for I agree with Robert Louis Stevenson that a walking-tour, to be properly enjoyed, must be undertaken alone, freedom being of its essence.  

I went at my leisure, for I wanted to explore the islands. I stopped a week in Barra, another in Benbecula, and another in North Uist. Then, as time was running short, I had to walk through Harris and Lewis rather hurriedly, halting only one night at each resting-place. My last journey, from Stornoway to Port of Ness (close to the lighthouse at the Butt of Lewis) was the longest and most monotonous day of the interesting tour. I seemed indeed to have reached the end of the world. The road stretched straight before me, with no cross-roads or interesting sign-posts. Darkness fell early, for it was October. The moor turned purple, then faded into dimness. I was very weary. A big woman working in a croft by the roadside spoke to me in Gaelic, but no sympathy was to be had from her, and the cheering vision of a belated cup of tea faded. “You must be strong,” she said enviously, “to hae walked all the way from Stornoway.” I passed on by long straw-thatched houses of a primitive but picturesque type. The district seemed fairly populous, there were churches and schools. Finally I reached Port of Ness, and was soon seated by a roaring peat fire with my feet in a steaming tub of hot water, for my last landlady was a woman of sound understanding. Next morning I completed my journey by visiting the tall white lighthouse at the Butt.  

“There’s no land now,” said the lighthouse-keeper, waving his hand towards the dark green water, “Between you and the Pole. Except,” he added reflectively, “maybe Iceland.” Iceland! Somewhere, far out there to Northward, was that mysterious isle of fire and frost beyond which, say the old writers, the world ends abruptly in an awful abyss. To this strange land amid the arctic mists Culdees from our own shores carried the torch of Christ in the eighth century. Hundreds of years before that it was probably visited by Scotsmen in their skin coracles. Why should not I visit it too?  

Why not indeed? ‘Why not?’ is a motto, by the way, to which I became attached at a very early age. Perhaps I should rather say, that at a very early age it became attached to me. When I was very young I had a mild attack of scarlet fever. The kindly doctor who attended me used to enquire how I was, and I invariably replied, “Don’t know,” for to my youthful idea it was part of a doctor’s duty to find that out for himself and then tell his patient. The doctor however retorted by dubbing me ‘Why not?’ Why not indeed, and so to Iceland I went. And there I came up against my motto again, for Dr Charcot’s famous ship, the Pourquoi Pas? had just arrived in the harbour of Reykjavik. I attended a lecture given by the great explorer, visited his ship, and even exchanged a few words with Dr Charcot himself in his cabin, where he sat surrounded by a museum of interesting trophies, including, I remember, a chip off the island of Rockall, far out in the Atlantic beyond St Kilda. Rockall was also the name of a little fox terrier companion on this voyage.  

That night I lay long awake in the bedroom of the little wooden hotel, with its coil of rope handy by the window in case the building should take fire during the night. Some undercurrent of thought was at work which prevented sleep. Pourquoi Pas?, the ship’s name was an inspiration. Why not on foot across Iceland too? In the small hours of the morning my mind was made up, and that walking-tour is one of the happiest recollections of my life.  

One ‘why not?’ leads to another. On my return voyage from Iceland I fell in with two Danes returning from Greenland by this unusual method. (I think Dr Charcot had brought them, for the Danish never call at Iceland en route.) They urged me to seek permission from the Danish Directorate to visit that closed land. And the shut doors of Greenland fell before my motto, an ‘Open Sesame!’ for all things that seemed at first difficult or even impossible.  

In this apparently haphazard fashion I became a traveller. I say ‘apparently’, for I cannot believe that anyone’s life is a haphazard affair. But here is something I have noticed in my own experience. If a traveller is on the right line they will find the trail blazed for them at every cross-road. 

Peak Beyond Peak  by Isobel Wylie Hutchison is published by Taproot Press, priced £12.99.