The following article was first published in One Earth Magazine Issue 14 Summer 1994. It is a shortened version of the pamphlet written that year.

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Since the 1970s the Findhorn Foundation has had custodianship of the island of Erraid, off the south-west coast of Scotland, which is lived on and maintained by a small community of members. The Foundation is also custodian of a house (Traigh Bhan), used as a retreat centre for members, on the neighbouring island of Iona. The following is a personal account by Richard Coates reflecting on the bus trip which every Saturday for many years has been a the lifeline between the Community at Findhorn and members going to, coming from or based on the west coast.

Sitting here in the lounge at Traigh Bhan, I find myself musing over the Erraid/lona Bus Run, the weekly drive from Findhorn to the west coast and back. I have done my share of these drives over the last sixteen years and, through them, have experienced great joy, much beauty, lots of adventures and the blossoming and passing of many wonderful friendships.

Many things have changed in those years. Our vehicles, the roads, the number of drivers and the ferries. When I first came to the Foundation l worked in the Transport department. So, as well as being a driver, I was also intimately involved in the servicing, preparation and, sometimes, recovery and repair of the buses. Two buses did most of the runs in those days: Bluebus was a blue Ford Transit fifteen seater; Brother Henry, the first new Mercedes bus we bought, was a white, twenty-two seater. He joined the Foundation in March 1978, just a month after I did. Bluebus ran on petrol, vast quantities of it, and was very fast; Brother Henry ran on diesel. He was a delight, fast (for a diesel) and easy to drive. This bus got badly smashed up twice on this run, before finally going to the great scrapyard in the sky. We also had a large car called The General, an Austin 1800, which was used when there were only a few people going out. My first assignment when I joined the Transport department was to “Get the General through his MOT” – not an easy task, as he seemed t0 have no brakes left at all. But we made it through, eventually, The General and me.

Over the years we have used many buses, mostly new Mercedes. The small ones were Heather, Easby and Rose, the large ones were three different Henrys, Hamish and Frances. Some of the bigger ones had power steering, some not. We had one called Hamish built with an extra fuel tank, as we often had difficulty finding petrol stations open at the times we needed them. The ‘Road to the Isles’ service station at Fort William used to close at 6 pm in the winter. One week, the driver rang me at 1am on the Sunday morning to say that, due to ferry problems and after twenty hours on the road, he had finally reached Inverness but was out of diesel with nowhere open to refuel.

OE 14 Leaving for Erraid&IonaNowadays we carry fewer people and put all the luggage inside. In those days, a fifteen seater carried fifteen people, and all the luggage was put on an enormous roof-rack, covered by a waterproof (on a good day) tarpaulin. On more than one occasion I remember glancing in the rear-view mirror and seeing a backpack disappearing into the distance, necessitating a recovery excursion. Because it’s expensive to buy supplies on the islands, our buses also carried all the food for Traigh Bhan and some for Erraid. We would also throw on half a dozen straw bales to fill up the bus. It was quite common to have someone sitting on one of these, a box or a backpack between the seats, especially if they were unexpected late arrivals at 5am on a Saturday morning. These days, we are much more careful about safety and quite rightly so.

New Roads
The roads have changed a lot since then. The first stretch to Inverness used to wiggle through Auldearn and through the middle of Inverness itself, which is now a pedestrian precinct. Lots of minor improvements have happened down the Loch Ness road. One night in the winter of 1982, great piles of earth slid down the hillside, on to the road along by Loch Lochy, and we had to slalom in and out of giant molehills. That is the stretch where they have since built a fast, wide, straight new road down by the loch. For several years, the road from the Fishnish ferry to Craignure, on the isle of Mull, was a mud track running through a forest, until the metalled road we use now was built.

Old Ferries
The ferries have improved as well. The first ferry at Corran, just beyond Fort William, used to be a six vehicle boat, in the middle of which was a giant turntable. The operators had to get the vehicles balanced just right, because before they started off they would release a couple of catches and two men would push the whole car-deck around to face the opposite direction, so we could drive off forwards on the other side. This first crossing, though short, is across a difficult bit of water. Under certain tide or wind conditions, the ferry often stopped running. Then you had to drive back to Fort William, take the road along Loch Eil and up the other side of Loch Linnhe. This is a narrow, twisty road, but an absolute delight in May or June when the rhododendrons are prolific. Another variation is just to drive from Fort William straight to Oban and take the big boat to Craignure (this is more expensive and you have to book in advance in the summer).

On the six vehicle Mull ferry (Lochaline-Fishnish) you had to drive on and reverse off – great fun for holiday-makers, who would get their caravans and trailers knotted up trying to back off! The worst conditions I can remember here were on one occasion when the wind and current were so strong that the ferry engines were unable to hold the boat onto the jetty for long. We had to reverse on at Lochaline and the boat then approached Fishnish above the landing stage. As the current pushed us past the sloping concrete road, the captain dropped the front ramp and two vehicles quickly nipped off. Then the boat had to circle round again to let off the next two. It’s an interesting feeling, in a twenty-two seater bus, to have your front wheels on land and your back end on a boat which is being pushed sideways by a gale. (In case any of you are wondering whether to cancel your upcoming trip to Iona or Erraid, l am referring to the days when the boats were much smaller and less powerful than they are today, so panic not!)

Slow Down – Smile
The Kingairloch road between the two ferries on Mull is very pretty, but the road is narrow for the big buses – not much room to put a wheel wrong. There are lots of little dead-end roads or tracks to explore, leading down to farms or villages with fascinating names like Kinlochteagus or Laudale. One such cul-de-sac worth exploring is the road which runs south from Pennyghail to Carsaig. Here you will see some wonderful waterfalls on the way down to the sea. At one place the ‘powers that be’ have installed a public telephone right beside a large one, so you can hardly hear anything at all! Another variation to drive is the ‘north loop’ which runs under ‘the Burgh’, the line of steep, west facing cliffs running up the west coast of Mull. Here you can encounter rocks in the road that have rolled down off the cliffs and you need to ignore the grass growing in the middle of the road.

Whenever I hit the first bit of single-track road in the area known as Morvern, between the two ferries, it always takes a few minutes to readjust myself – I have to ‘tighten up’. On the wider roads there is always a bit of leeway, but not here. I experience a peculiar sense of satisfaction when driving along these narrow single-track roads. When you pull into a passing place and wave a hand of ‘Thank you’ to the person coming towards you, there is a contact that does not happen when  you drive on other roads. lt’s as if the universe is saying, “Hey, slow down, there’s another person. Smile, Smile: Good morning. How’s your adventure today?” When both drivers time it perfectly, so that one sweeps into the passing place just in time for the other to pass and nip out again without having to slow down too much, there’s a warm feeling of satisfaction. Even though you don’t know the other driver, you have shared an experience, a trust. You have bonded with another person. At moments like this, I think, “Things are right with the world”, and, “Only God can stage-manage things like that!” On one or two occasions when I have been in a hurry because we have had to get to the jetty by a certain time or not get home that day, I have found that, with a little prayer and concentration, every time I met someone coming the other way, they have dived into a passing place and we have sailed on unhindered. How well life works when I trust and can get myself and my fears out of the way!

OE 14 Loading the busIona is a great tourist attraction and many people visit in the summer. The one or two almost empty buses that run across Mull each day in the winter, increase to nine or ten full buses in the summer. If you meet a large bus coming the other way in July or August, you may meet nine more behind, so don’t get too impatient. In the Western Isles, don’t get too impatient, period. We used to estimate times for jobs or journeys on Erraid and then add X% for the ‘Erraid factor’.

The weather is always changeable: snow, fog, rain, sun, ice, wind – you can experience the lot in one trip. At the same time, on the same day, weather conditions in the eastern part of the country can be completely different to those in the west. You can take the windy road down Loch Ness and suddenly hit a blizzard or black ice and then come out of it just as fast. As the seasons change, so too does the light. Some days in December, most of the run is in the dark. It’s not dawn until FortWilliam (100 miles into the run) and then it’s getting dark again by 4 pm when you get back there, under the shadow of Ben Nevis. It’s just wonderful experiencing the dawn come up behind you, and gently spread its glorious colours upon the sky and landscape into which you are driving; then on the way home, to see the sunset colours behind you in your mirrors.

The Power of Prayer
On the return journey, if the traffic is heavy on the Loch Ness road, you can turn south at Spean Bridge, and drive back through Newtonmore and Aviemore and over the mountains through Carrbridge. This is slower, but pretty, and well worth doing in September when all the heather turns bright purple for just a couple of weeks. All the tourist shops in Scotland carry a postcard showing the mountain heather in such a glorious colour. I always thought that the colour had been exaggerated in the printing process, but for those two or three weeks in September, it’s true! Another option is to turn right at Fort Augustus and come back along the south side of Loch Ness. This is slow and windy, but a nice change. But drive carefully – we lost one of our buses in a ditch on this road.

You’ll see lots of animals along the way – cows, sheep, deer and many birds of all sorts. ln the spring the lambs need watching carefully. Many get killed by vehicles, before they’ve had a chance to learn road sense. When the weather is snowy, the deer come down out of the mountains to find food. lf you come around a bend, with nothing under your wheels but snow and ice and suddenly find a herd of deer just standing there, staring at you, you’re likely to rediscover very quickly the art of ‘Speed-Prayer’. Mind you, life at the Foundation is about rediscovering prayer isn’t it? Something that I have adopted over the years is to visualise an invisible field of energy, the height and width of the bus, moving along 30 – 50 metres in front of us – to clear the way and to warn animals, birds, insects and other people of our approach. Every so often on the drive, I mentally reinforce it and it seems to work.

Uncle God and Treats & Eats
One Saturday I got a ‘phone call from Giles Chitty, who had broken down on the Grantown Road. He’d been tanking along at 70 mph (112 km/h for those who don’t think in Fahrenheit!) when all of a sudden he’d realised that there was no connection between the engine and the wheels. He’d stopped, and as they pushed the bus onto the grassy verge, one of the double back wheels had gently moved out and fallen off, half-shaft and all. This could have happened at 70 mph (or even worse, at 112km/h). We have always been well protected, with Uncle God up there, beside the driver. There have been a number of crashes over the years, some of them serious, but I don’t know of anyone with injuries worse than cuts and bruises, even though buses have turned on their sides, hit big rocks or trees, ended up in ditches and some have been total ‘write-offs’.

In the seventies and eighties, when Foundation folk were poorer, the driver gave each member £2 extra for the week when they were dropped off at Traigh Bhan. That would actually buy quite a few pints of milk (or cans of beer or chocolate bars) in those days. The last shop at Fionnphort always led to a mad scramble for ‘Treats, eats and Old Holborn tobacco’. When I lived on Erraid for two years (from 1981-1983) visitors knew to bring gifts for the natives – ‘Scotch and chocs’.

We used to take a picnic with us. The driver would pack a box containing a couple of loaves, butter, a big chunk of cheese, loads of fruit, bags of nuts, fruit spread, dried fruit, tubs of peanut butter (we had more Americans then!), three flasks (tea, coffee and herb tea), all of which was for the passengers to munch on during the trip. Then you’d have to fight everyone off the box so that a few crumbs were left for those on the return trip. The only vestige of this practice which survived into the recent past was Stan Stanfield’s big bag of Trail Mix which he always took with him.

The cafes, restaurants and pubs we stopped at varied over the years, depending on drivers and the desperation of the passengers. Michael Dawson, among others, would not survive the trip without a stop for tea and a scone. A lot of these were pee breaks rather than tea breaks. It was usually a waste of time for any driver to say, “Make it quick folks, a cup of tea and a pee. We have ferries to catch – fifteen minutes please.” Half an hour later, with everyone munching on their bacon roll, Danish Pastry or full cooked breakfast, it was useless clinging to the illusion either that this is a vegetarian community, or that folks’ stomachs give a fig about the Caledonian-MacBrane ferry timetable. On other occasions, we’d race to reach Inverness before 5 pm so that passengers or the driver could hop off and buy some good, cheap underwear in Marks & Spencers.

Just Beautiful
After spending the week on Iona and writing this, I drove the bus home. My passengers included one of the CAP (Community Apprentice Programme) groups, one of the intakes of newer members. As always, driving these people to Erraid and back got us involved with each other in a way that doesn’t happen elsewhere. As we got on the bus, there was a sagging tyre. l have never had a flat on ‘The Run’ but we changed it, and took off on the ‘north loop’ around Mull. Just beautiful. Part of the way round I realised that I had misjudged the time and that we would be pushed to catch the ferry. There are often people on the bus who need to be back in Inverness to catch a particular train and they are concerned about the time and traffic. But, my friends, there are even more serious matters than catching trains. For example, what if one of you is on KP (Kitchen Patrol/clean-up) at the Foundation that evening? This was serious! So we motored down the east coast of Mull at speeds that I dare not divulge (not even in Fahrenheit!) and arrived on the jetty just in time to see the ferry on its way out. But, as has often happened, the captain spotted us, came back in, lowered his ramp and on we went. We were only one minute late, but we would have had to wait another hour for the next boat.

Going back to the early days, the drivers weren’t paid anything, they just liked the drive. I always said, “What more could I want for than a full tank and the most glorious parts of Scotland to drive through for a day?” I love ‘The Run’. I love the adventure. I love this country. l have struck up some of my most special friendships with people while waiting for ferries. When you’ve nothing else to do, why not open up, love people and share a beautiful adventure with them for a few hours?  (PS. In case you’re dying to ask, I have never had an accident on ‘The Run’!)

[In Summer 1994] Richard Mark-Coates is a Member of the Findhorn Foundation and Focaliser of the Education Group. He lives with his wife Pia at Station House, in Findhorn Village.