A story in the ‘Tales from Thin Places’ series. With music if you so desire

Originally published as one of Discover Scotland Magazine’s Strange Tales From Thin Places. Listen to me reading this along with a dozen or so road-related tracks on 60 North Radio at 7.00pm on Friday 3 March, or streaming on Mixcloud now. Link here. Full playlist at the end of the story.

I should say, for the avoidance of doubt, that my second wife is not called Jasmine, nor is she American…

The A9 is a road beset with tragedy. Battlefields, murders, the inevitable crashes. Blizzards which claimed the lives of stranded motorists, pedestrians run over…and past Inverness, as you head into the more remote north-eastern corner of Scotland, towards Wick and Thurso, the road itself becomes treacherous, full of deceptive hairpin bends, climbs and downward spirals. Death and the risk of accident hovers over almost every mile of the route.

The Berriedale Braes in Caithness has been earmarked for improvement for generations. Now it has actually happened, with £9m spent on making that desperate combination of corkscrewing bends and hair-raisingly steep drops safer. The spectacularly scary hairpin has gone. Smooth curves and safe ascents and descents are the order of today. And I will never see the ghost car again. I hope.

There are ghost cars in other parts of the country, most notably in Skye, on the road between Portree and Sligachan. Numerous folk report being forced off the single track by the approach of a vehicle which then just…vanishes. These stories started in 1941 and continue today. Local legend says the car is – and this is oddly specific – a 1934 Austin 7, owned by a minister driven mad with guilt after he ran a child down on the road. He killed himself. And now he haunts the road, warning motorists to take care.

As for Berriedale, I can only tell you what I saw, and what I have since discovered. I was driving my decrepit Vauxhall Nova south one November afternoon about 15 years ago, heading to Brora from my rented cottage, up a forestry track near Dunbeath, to meet a man who wanted to commission some work for his restaurant.. It was just getting dark, mid-afternoon in winter Caithness,  when I began the tortuous 13 per cent Berriedale descent. 100 feet down for every 13 forward. A calm, fine day it had been, not icy, no rain. That Highland winter twilight, the gloaming. I was very slowly and cautiously spinning the steering wheel, doing perhaps 10 miles per hour when suddenly, a car appeared around the bend and loomed directly in front of me, heading straight towards me. I was sure a collision was inevitable. 

It was a Volvo. I’ve always been good at car recognition. All those childhood journeys playing ISpy with my sisters. One of the big old 240 Estates, its radiator instantly identifiable by the diagonal line. And the badge saying Volvo, of course. That seventies brown, the colour bathroom suites were if they weren’t avocado. I had always wanted one of these massive beasts, legendary in the 70s and 80s  for their strength and reliability. The driver…but there was no driver, or none that I could see. And then there was…the car was left hand drive, and peering over the wheel, a terrified-looking face, bespectacled, white, gazing right at me. I wrenched my steering wheel to the left, and thank God, there was one of the gravel escape roads.

I turned, furious, to look for the careless foreigner, because obviously that’s what he was, a tourist with a car built for driving on the right. But the car had gone. I reversed out of the soft gravel and resumed my journey. Calmed down. And I thought no more about it. For oh, 10 years or so.

Much had happened in that decade. I had moved from Brora to Glasgow, and I had largely given up the fishing, the salmon fishing that had taken me often from Dunbeath down to Helmsdale and then inland along the river at odd times of the day and night. Well, I say angling. It was poaching to be honest. An honest way of occupying one’s leisure hours, or at least it seemed so to me at the time. To supplement one’s income. And just to eat. And there was something about fly fishing I loved. The meditative precision. The sense of oneness with your environment. The control. The battle. The money and the food. I was a struggling artist then, selling watercolours to tourists, or trying to. Later, in Glasgow I took a job designing brochures for one of those instant print shops, and then opened my own design company. It did well. We moved into internet design early, and flourished. I had a family by then and at last we had some security. So of course I got divorced. New woman. And  a better car. A Volvo. Not a classic 240, right enough. A nice XC90, eventually. A model of car, they say, no one has ever been killed in. It was certainly comfortable.

Anyway, one summer about four years ago my second wife, Jasmine, who is American, asked to see some of my old haunts in the Highlands. I had some spare time so I suggested a weekend’s road trip north, up to Helmsdale, to see if the glorious La Mirage cafe was still there, maybe stop in at the crazy fairytale that is Dunrobin Castle, head up to Dunbeath and beyond to Wick and Thurso. John o’Groats. The edge of Scotland. And maybe I’d take my watercolours and do some painting. I hadn’t painted for a long time.

We spent a pleasant afternoon in Golspie, having overnighted previously Dornoch, with its marvellous distillery and beaches. And then, having booked an AirBnB near my old stamping ground at Dunbeath, we headed northwards on the A9, up the Berriedale Braes.

Slowly, very slowly, because there were a couple of vehicles ahead of us. A local Toyota HiLux pickup, battered, bruised and belching diesel fumes, and, after it roared furiously and dangerously past the painfully slow vehicle in front of it, what was evidently a tourist. A Swedish tourist. With that tell tale ‘S’ sticker on the back of his…brown, Volvo 240. I momentarily registered the number plate as odd. Just six letters, like a very old British registration. The blue European Union panel. He sped up as we approached the very worst hairpin. Foolishly, I registered. That was daft. And then he slammed on his brakes. I was too close, and couldn’t stop myself in time. We ploughed right into the rear of the car. Jasmine screamed.

Even very old 240s are solid beasts, if they haven’t rusted. The modern XC90 is huge and heavy and designed to take every punishment that can be meted out to it. But there was no screech of metal on metal,  no crumple and bang as airbags exploded. Instead, the ABS clattering, we sailed straight on into the corner, and I was going slowly enough to avoid the people carrier coming the other way. The old 240 was nowhere to be seen.

I looked at Jasmine, and she looked at me. I carefully ascended the rest of the hill and as we made our way to Dunbeath, I said to her; Let me tell you a story…

When we arrived at the Airbnb, an old crofthouse, the owner was waiting for us. A spry old gent in Barbour jacket and tweed bunnet, festooned with salmon flies. He was vaguely familiar. He explained that he used to run a small fishing supplies shop in Helmsdale, mostly for the toffs and celebrities with their expensive beats and Champagne picnics.

“Ah,” he said, “I remember you. The painter. Up in Fergus Mowat’s old house. The poaching painter. You used to head up towards Kinbrace, didn’t you, of a pitch-black night? Caused much amusement. Still at it? Either of them?”

“Och well,” I replied, “a bit of scribbling, you know. But I haven’t touched a fishing rod for years.”

“Just as well, maybe,” he said. “Some of the River Helmsdale Beats are  unlucky. The one you used to fish, thinking nobody could see you? We all could of course. We all knew. Turned a blind eye. Never told the fellow who leased it every summer. Wealthy fellow. Swedish. It was a pity what happened to him. The sooner they sort that road out, the better…”

You can listen to the full story read by me with the following tracks available here. The audioletter is broadcast on 60 North Radio each Friday at 7.00pm.

David Lindley — Mercury Blues

Bruce Springsteen — Pink Cadillac

Gillian Welch — Pass You By

Bob Seger — Roll Me Away

Canned Heat — On the Road again

JJ Cale — Call Me the Breeze

John Fogerty — Hot Rod Heart

Lana Del Ray — White Mustang

Lucinda Williams — Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Vince Taylor and His Playboys — Brand New Cadillac

War — Low Rider

Richard Thompson — I Ride in your Slipstream

Fountains of Wayne — 92 Subaru