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Email PageCreating the Write EnvironmentSUE WILSON samples the creative opportunities on offer at Glencanisp House Writers Retreats in Assynt |
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| THE SINGLE-TRACK road to Glencanisp Lodge leads for about a mile inland from Lochinver, winding through tracts of gorse and heather alongside Loch Druim Suardalain, the hills rising ahead towards the looming double-humped mass of Suilven. There’s not a building in sight, nor scarcely any other sign of human presence: it appears an altogether unlikely spot to find a 14-bedroom, 19th century mansion - but then you round a final bend, cross a cattle grid and suddenly there it is, nestled amid a stand of mature trees, grey stone walls adorned by a venerable climbing rose, lawn stretching down to the edge of the loch. This splendidly isolated, stunningly scenic setting is a key element in making Glencanisp Lodge the perfect location for a writers’ retreat, of which several have been run there by local author and poet Mandy Haggith, since the Assynt Foundation acquired the building – together with 44,500 acres of spectacular surrounding countryside – in a landmark community buyout two years ago. |
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“I’d recently finished a Masters in creative writing at Glasgow University, and had moved back up to the north-west,” Haggith explains, of the retreats’ inception. “After having those two years of intensive camaraderie on the course, I knew there was a danger of starting to feel quite lonely and isolated quite quickly. But rather than having to go to the cities to find that sense of community, I was partly looking for a way to generate it up here. At the same time, I know what a hugely inspiring environment this is, and I wanted to share it with other writers.” Clearly, that aforementioned “creative hub” is well under way, with other ideas recently floated including some kind of writer-in-residence schemeUnlike the variously themed Arvon writing courses held at Moniack Mhor near Inverness, most of the Glencanisp retreats so far have been entirely unstructured. They run from Sunday to Saturday, and how you divide that time between communing with your muse and gleaning inspiration from the surrounding landscape is entirely up to you - although the Sutherland weather will likely ensure a goodly proportion of writing. |
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| The exceedingly modest fee for the week not only covers all meals – breakfast and lunch on a help-yourself basis, with a three-course dinner cooked for you each evening – but a single room for each participant. “I did quite a lot of informal research, talking to other writers about retreats and courses they’d been on,” Haggith says, “and that was the key thing that kept coming up: having a room to themselves would be a real treat. It’s a long way for people to come, and I think that aspect adds an extra incentive. “I was also very keen to keep the cost down, as most of the writers I know are living more or less in penury, and thankfully the Assynt Foundation have been really supportive right from the start, primarily by letting me hire the building on a non-profit basis. From their point of view, the retreats are a new local enterprise that’s helping to form a creative hub in the area, and attracting new people to come here.” |
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The visitors’ book from previous writing weeks contains a succession of glowing testimonials – all eloquently composed, of course - to the combined creative benefits of breathtaking scenery, faraway remoteness and undisturbed time. (There’s no mobile phone reception at the Lodge, although wireless internet is available.) Even without a car – Lochinver being accessible by public transport – the finest of walking country stretches in almost every direction, and if you do have wheels, umpteen beauty spots beckon within a few miles’ drive, from dramatic waterfalls to pristine white-sand beaches. For the more ambitious, a climb up Suilven is often a highlight of their stay, or there are the varying challenges of the three other celebrated mountains within the Assynt Foundation’s domain: Canisp, Cul Mor and Cul Beg. |
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| In an exception to the retreats’ non-structured rule, one held last month was themed around the poetry of Norman MacCaig, well known as a lover of the Assynt landscape. “That was kind of an experiment, but it worked really well,” Haggith says. “We had guided walks around some of the places MacCaig wrote about, with one of the local Rangers, and there was something really special about reading his poems in the exact spot which inspired them, as well having someone on hand who knew all about the environment and the local wildlife.” I was at Glencanisp during the fullest, lushest flush of the northern Highland spring – primroses and violets everywhere, rhododendrons flowering in a panoply of colour, trees and grass showing every verdant shade of green, interspersed with the gold of riotously blooming gorse. While it’s hard to imagine a better seasonal stimulus for those creative juices, retreats have also been held in the very depths of winter, during early January, by all accounts to highly productive effect. Often fired by New Year resolutions, participants have reportedly relished the confinement imposed by the fiercer weather, writing away all day in their respective rooms before gathering for dinner, then whiling away the rest of the night around a roaring fire in the amply proportioned drawing-room. |
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