Retracing the clergy’s tracks, we clamber over the sting to the huge Gottbaai seashore – Tiree’s longest, and a full 300m extensive at right now’s low tide.

The mirror end promised by Hutchison continues, and huge flocks of birds swoop at their very own reflections, unhindered by the Nomad’s visible and auditory noise.

Happily, nobody is attempting to nest in us. Washboard ridges are smoothed out with some velocity, though the thinnest layer of standing water prompts mild fishtailing from either side because the steer lightens.

The minister’s clown would calmly stroll by way of the assorted burns that criss-crossed the seashore, whereas Nomad, spar and driver had been drenched by water bombs as if every entrance wheel had disturbed a land mine. The japanese finish of the seashore is lifeless clean and agency, and I resist a robust urge to untie all of the horses.

Some name Tiree ‘the Hawaii of the north’, nevertheless it might simply as simply be Scotland’s Pendine or Daytona. It is barely a minute from the seashore’s finish to the tiny chapel, constructed within the 1850s and as soon as residence to a cheerful congregation of 400.

Throughout Hutchison’s go to, it was used as a brief classroom after a schoolhouse fireplace; now it is residence to the artist Matt MacIntyre and his spouse Christine, with the ‘machair’ – the wild, coastal lands – their extensive, inexperienced driveway on which the sand shakes from our tyres.

Along with family and friends, they offer us a heat island welcome, with residence baked items and tea. Christine attended Sunday college right here as a toddler earlier than the chapel closed round 1970; Matt purchased it sight unseen in 1998 as a shell to renovate.

“I cried after I noticed its situation,” he says. “There was sand on the ground, skeletons of rabbits and sheep and previous oars mendacity round.” Now it is a cozy cottage-cum-studio with heavenly coastal views.

However we have now one final obligation to carry out, as Hutchison wrote: “There was a lot pleasure because the waving inexperienced factors had been pushed by way of the door. The tree was carried like a huge child within the arms of three of the older boys and positioned towards the wall alongside the again of the sofas, the place it exuded a scrumptious recent odor of resinous sap within the stuffy little room.”