PROFESSOR DAME SUE BLACK, FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGIST AND AUTHOR
Where is it?
Stromeferry on the shores of Loch Carron in Wester Ross.
Why do you go there?
It takes me back to easy, lazy summer days as a child when there was not a care in my world. It still feels like a different world where people are kinder and where time is in no great hurry to pass. Why would you do something today if you could do it tomorrow?
The warm blanket of calm gives your mind permission to go back in time and remember, to come forward to the present and consider decisions to be made, and then float off into the future to dream.
How often do you go?
Nowhere near often enough, but so little changes that it always feels like coming home. I don't want to live there again, though, because I am afraid that I might start to take it for granted which I did as a child. I need it to stay special.
How did you discover it?
My family moved there when I was five in 1966 and I left when I was 11. My parents ran a seasonal Victorian hotel (called Stromeferry Hotel) and I spent my formative childhood years enjoying utter freedom, blissfully distanced from a commercial world.
What's your favourite memory?
I have so many, but as children we used to love it when the RAF pilots were performing low-level flying exercises along the length of the loch, almost skimming across the surface as they sped down the Strath and headed out to sea.
Because the hotel was higher up on the lochside, we would stand next to the wall and be almost at eye level with the pilot so that he could wave and tip his wings. It was so exciting.
Who do you take?
Nowadays just my husband Tom. It is the kind of place that you go to sit and think and just be.
What do you take?
Midge repellent.
What do you leave behind?
The rest of the world – just for a few hours.
Sum it up in five words.
Peaceful. Unchanging. Breathtaking. Familiar. Home.
What travel spot is on your post-lockdown wish list?
I have a hankering for Iceland again. I got a little bit of a taste some years ago and I loved its utter lack of conformity.
Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black is published by Doubleday, priced £18.99. The author is at Bloody Scotland, as part of this year's online festival, today, at 12pm and at Wigtown Book Festival on September 30 at 5pm. Visit bloodyscotland.com and wigtownbookfestival.com
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