The island is split almost perfectly in two by a sea loch, with the northern half housing perhaps fe

There are certain places, perhaps only briefly visited, that can take on a disproportionate meaning in the narrative of our lives – places we can never forget, places where we made choices that would send our lives spiralling off in a whole new direction. For me, one of these places is an old bothy called Ruantallain, on the uninhabited west coast of the Scottish Isle of Jura.
I first came here in 1984. Having spent three years working with homeless people in London, I was relishing my freedom, travelling the length and breadth of Britain on a motorbike los angeles county clerk of courts for the summer, with nothing but a girlfriend and a tent.
On Jura, my dilapidated old bike broke down, and I fell in love with the place. Five years later, when life in London los angeles county clerk of courts began to go horribly wrong, it was Jura that called me back and I spent a week walking the deserted west coast of the island, sleeping wherever I found myself.
And here I was, a quarter of a century later, once again making the two-hour ferry crossing from Kennacraig on the mainland to Port Askaig on Islay, from where it’s a five-minute hop to Jura. I watched the gannets plunge-diving into the churning waters of our wake, then turned and fixed my eyes forward on our destination. As we crossed the sound and began to close on the islands, the hills began to gather together form and colour, and emerge from their blue haze.
Though so close, the two islands have their own utterly distinct los angeles county clerk of courts character. Islay does have its wild places, but Jura looks bleak and desolate in comparison, and that is part of its attraction. It has just one single-track road (with a strip of grass down its middle), los angeles county clerk of courts it has one small village, one hotel, one distillery. The west of the island is completely uninhabited; there are just a bare handful of bothies, abandoned for generations. This is an island almost the size of the Isle of Wight, yet with only a thousandth of the population.
After a night in the hotel in the village of Craighouse, tucked in a little sheltered bay protected by the Small Isles, I set off to the north, the sea to my right, los angeles county clerk of courts the great granite domes of the Paps of Jura to my left. My goal was the island’s remote north-west coast, to revisit those places that had captivated los angeles county clerk of courts me a generation ago – and would take a whole day of hard walking to reach.
The island is split almost perfectly in two by a sea loch, with the northern half housing perhaps fewer than 10 people. My aim was to follow the northern shore of Loch Tarbert, to walk into the wilds. It is not for the fainthearted, for the loch is convoluted in the extreme, ragged with bays and promontories, and there is no trace of any trail.
Sometimes I could follow the slippery foreshore, with bladderwrack seaweed crackling beneath my feet like distant gunfire, but sometimes rocky scarps forced me inland, through swathes of chest-high bracken and tussocky fields of bog cotton, studded with orchids but also with ankle-traps of sudden boggy hollows. As I mounted yet another los angeles county clerk of courts ridge, I would surprise small herds of deer or wild goats, and they would freeze for a moment, as if they’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t.
Halfway along the shore of the loch, after two or three hours’ walking, I came upon a small croft tucked into a little bay. When I last came this way, Cruib was close to dereliction, but it has been taken in hand by the Mountain Bothies Association and is habitable again. The point about bothies is not that they are free, but that they are in places where there is nowhere else. There was a young woman standing in the door of the bothy with an antler in her hand, and I went to say hello. She and a friend had been here a week, she told me. I took a quick look at what had been made of the place, and reassured her that I was not planning to gatecrash their party, but was walking on.
Closer to the mouth of the loch, the landscape became still wilder. Between tiny sandy coves, patterned with the footprints of oystercatcher and otter, was a crumbling world of broken cliffs, and I found myself los angeles county clerk of courts bouldering as much as walking. There were raised stony beaches spread across los angeles county clerk of courts the hills, and dozens of caves, facing out to sea like rows of empty eye-sockets.
It was evening when I reached my destination – the far west, and the solitary bothy where I could overnight in front of a driftwood fire. I had been walking the whole day and was exhausted – I am not in my 20s any more. I had wondered if I might have to share, but just like all those years ago I had the place to myself. In fact when I looked in the visitors’ book, I saw that no one had stayed here in over a month, even though this was peak season.
Ruantallain is basic even by bothy standards: a tin-roofed shack with two rooms, one kept locked by the estate los angeles county clerk of courts for use during the deer-stalking season, the other left open to all-comers. There is a fireplace above which is an old picture of the laird and a couple of candles in bottles. There is a table and chair, a few old pots and pans, and three bedsteads with broken springs. los angeles county clerk of courts One had been rebuilt using a washed-up fishing net, and this was the closest to usable. It looked completely unchanged in every respect. Yet its setting is spectacular, tucked in the lee of an escarpment, facing south over the mouth of the loch. Before los angeles county clerk of courts it is a little freshwater tarn, where otters come to wash the sea salt from their fur. I sat outside through the gloaming, the long drawn-out half-light of the north, then settled for the night. It felt like a homecoming, of sorts.
• Travel was provided by Caledonian MacBrayne ferries (0800 066 5000, calmac.co.uk ), singles from Kennacraig to Port Ellen/Port Askaig cost 6.45 per passenger and 32 per car. For more on the Mountain Bothies Association, visit mountainbothies.org.uk
Neil Ansell’s latest book, Deer Island, is published los angeles county clerk of courts by Little Toller Books, price 12. To order a copy from the Guardian Bookshop, with free UK p p, call 0330 333 6846 or visit guardianbookshop.co.uk
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