The fusion of American-French fashion in a Scottish island setting is not one
I’ve come across before, nor likely to do so again.
There are five large bedrooms at Jura
Lodge, all en-suite, four on the first floor. The fifth is on the second
floor, the highest building on Jura, which also houses a shower room,
games/music room and an enormous living room and kitchen flooded with 19
different sources of light. And candles.
The fridge first saw working life in a Brazilian cafe in the 1950s. There is a
huge ceramic Belfast sink, kitchen table for 10 and I write this in a chair
entirely made from deer antlers and hide overlooking the Isle
of Jura distillery .
The living room consists of two enormous leather sofas, two leather chairs and
a couple of deer hide stools. One wall is lined with mounted antlers, there
are more in the central light fitting and lamps. And light floods into the
wooden floored room through five big aspect windows.
The lodge is the vision of American-French Bambi Sloan who has a horror of
anonymous luxury hotels and wanted to create a retreat in to escape urban
life. She's succeeded. There is no internet on Jura, and no mobile
reception. Phones only arrived 30 years ago. There are 200 residents and
5,000 deer. There is one shop, one
pub/hotel and one school, all in Craighouse.
To get to Jura, we took the Caledonian
MacBrayne ferry from Kennacraig on the mainland to Islay - then drove
across Islay in the dark to a three-car ferry to Jura. We arrived very late,
but Catriona, the housekeeper, had left a lasagne for us and a bottle of
wine. The island is, as Orwell said, "un-get-atble."
Jane’s fish bar arrives outside the lodge shortly before 1pm. She drives over
from Islay every Wednesday lunchtime and there are eight of us in the rain.
The city type in front buys a bunch of samphire, an entire salmon - and all
the scallops, the sod.
We settle for two glistening sole and a crab for dinner, a total of £9. A
sprig or two of samphire takes it over the tenner mark. The rain keeps
falling as we head home, past the Royal Bank of Scotland van that also calls
once a week.
In the Jura distillery, nothing stops. Lights burn through the night. In the
morning, a big estate car arrives with the number plate D1 URA. The morning
distillery tour is just finishing up and they emerge, eight visitors,
dressed in identikit chest high waterproofs as they head off to go dolphin
watching. All except two Japanese girls waiting for the island’s only shop
to open, forlornly, as it only opens until 12.30pm every day.
You have to know what’s happening, how it works here.
From the top window turret, I watch a fishermen through binoculars in the
inner islands, his boat going in circles as he chases the fish. A truck and
4x4 have reversed onto the narrow cob and take in lobster pots. Brave
driving,
After the flurry of excitement, all settles down. There’s another distillery
tour this afternoon, the building the centre of the island’s business. The
visitors will learn of the distilling going back to 1820. But in fact the
plant has closed several times during that period, only reopening in 1963.
