The Kintyre Peninsula, which hangs at the western tip of Scotland, is not very north, but it is surprisingly remote. By car, you have to get on and off and the journey ends by looking at the Kilbrannan Sound on the shore you drove three and a half hours earlier. There is a better way to do this, via two ferries and a trip to Arran, but you miss the boat and may get stuck. So it remains relatively inaccessible, so I guess Paul and Linda McCartney chose it to get away from Beatlemania. I too have found refuge here for the last 15 years or so, as an annual visitor rather than as a temporary resident, and I love its beauty, its wildlife, its isolation so much that I wonder if I should write at all about it. The McCartneys made, at the Mull of Kintyre, the video shot at Saddell with its large and unspoilt beach, and just above, just after the port where the small ferry from Arran comes and goes, is Skipness. The village stretches along the bay, with a post that peels off and a tiny stick, and, at the end of the road, through two strange iron gates, lies the castle, now cared for by Heritage Scotland. A Victorian cave was looking for a more comfortable stay and made a Scottish baroness replacement with a turret staircase and huge gables with stables. This was severely reduced in size in the 1930s by a fire that killed the new owner, a Derbyshire industrialist, who was attempting a heroic rescue. The fortune was shared in a rather strange way, so his four surviving grandchildren, the James family, make their own while contributing to the whole. There is the farm, with sheep and cattle and a little forestry. there is the smokehouse, run by one of their brothers and his wife, and there is the Seafood Cabin, run by Sophie James, with the help of another brother and her niece and various family members and friends who are coming for the summer season. “As fresh as you want”: lagustines. Photo: Murdo MacLeod / The Guardian Years ago it was really a cabin – an old caravan parked outside the smokehouse where you could get a roll of smoked salmon and a box of pop. Eventually, the caravan was moved down the hill to the large house where it is today, now integrated into a permanent structure, with a kitchen inside, a washing machine outside and a new barn with an oak frame next to the door that provides cover if needed. Most guests prefer to dine outside at picnic tables overlooking Arran, a view so enchantingly beautiful that you have to blink a few times to make sure you do not see things. If the sun is shining, as it does reliably in May, there are Chinese bamboo hats available to protect your neck from sunburn. Rare breed chickens run between the tables, the dogs are free (bowls of water are provided) and a young and efficient waiting staff tries not to fall over them by taking orders. They are all seafood, and locally sourced, home-made and smoked salmon, oysters and scallops from Loch Fyne, kippers from Tarbert, lagustin from Sound and mussels from the wonderful Dougie, a fisherman who sold his catch from a small shop in Tarbert until he retired, much to the amazement of many, but he still runs to Skipnes in his truck for Sophie. “Hidden depths”: mussels. Photo: Murdo MacLeod / The Guardian When we arrived, there was a small queue in the cabin, just outside the lunch trip from Arran. It was just the second day of the season opening, but the cabin has now become so popular that it is busy every day, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., except on Saturdays, their day off. I had one of the specialties, a plate of lagustines (£ 14), because I like them, fresh as you like, served with bread and butter and a pot of green sauce that you get with a samosa in Indian restaurants. The lagustin was sweet and juicy, the sauce and tart and rich and with a wonderful herb finish that I could not place enough. Chervil? It was sour, Sophie told me, one of about 14 herbs they cultivate, mixed in a kind of fortified yogurt, a wonderful light lawn in lagustin surfing. ‘A tasting menu on a plate’: a seafood platter for one. Photo: Murdo MacLeod / The Guardian I followed with the seafood dish for one (16 £), a tasting menu on a plate, with a single lagustin, a single oyster, a white crab doll and a coffee and salmon doll in three ways – hot smoked, cold smoked and gravadlax. A pot of mussels steaming in a not too rich creamy broth with – literally and figuratively – hidden depths, arrived with more bread and butter and pots of mayonnaise and dill sauce for gravadlax. Everything was great, but gravadlax deserves a special mention. It’s a difficult thing to balance, easily too sweet for my taste, and anise is not the most social flavor, but it was great, not only well balanced but with crispy hot seeds – pepper, coriander? – to cut the blockage. Gravadlax deserves a special mention, well balanced with crunchy hot seeds to cut the snack My friends had a roll full of crabs (6 £), which they generously supplied, and mussels as a main course, thick and with yellow flesh (12 £). I drank half a bottle of Sancerre (£ 17), my friends drank a glass of rosé (£ 5.50), a bottle of Arran blonde beer (£ 4.50) and a Diet Coke (£ 1.50). For pudding we had Sophie’s excellent chocolate cake (£ 2.50 per slice) with a mini bath with Mackie’s vanilla ice cream (£ 2). ‘Excellent’: chocolate cake. Photo: Murdo MacLeod / The Guardian The food is great and of good value – the lunch for five with wine and pudding reached 6 126.50 – but what makes it so special and so popular is the scenery. Many worry that efforts to revitalize the peninsula’s troubled economy, through forestry and sustainability, will affect the beauty of this unique place. A local farmer told me that you do not see as much bird life as before thanks to habitat loss and who knows what the impact of the giant wind turbines on the upper hills will be? The community itself is divided, trying to balance economic need with protection for a fragile environment. Tourism gives another answer, or a complementary answer. The Skipness Seafood Cabin has done just that, more popular every year and consistent with it. My only concern is that you can do it right, and get more and more people missing out on what Kintyre fans love: its remote distance, its hidden oyster eyes, its cloudy peaks Arran, the fog that flows inside. from the sea? If he kept Beatlemania away, he could handle the curiosity of the rest of us. Richard Coles’s The Madness of Grief is released by Orion at 99 16.99. 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