The Auntie, the painting and the Youth Hostel
The Auntie
My mother was born and raised in Glasgow, the youngest of four. My grandfather was a manager in Yarrow's shipyard on the Clyde and Gwen and his wife (my grandmother) was a highly unique woman who held views far ahead of her time, particularly in terms of the Christian Socialist movement, literary scholarship and education; left-wing for sure, embracing challenges a given. Those qualities she passed on to their second child, my aunt Joan Tebbutt who was born in 1910; this is a story of Joan from the 1940s, of someone who was far removed from being a typical ‘auntie’.
She was an accomplished mountaineer and rock-climber who climbed many of the classic routes with some of the leading men in the Scottish Mountaineering Club such as WH Murray, JHB Bell, Douglas Scott. Add to that a deep love of hills, skiing, winter ice-skating, sailing and wild swimming and you get the picture. Understandably she never married, but dedicated her life as an artist to teaching first at St Bride’s School in Helensburgh, followed by many years teaching calligraphy in Glasgow School of Art - while painting.
Loch Ossian Youth Hostel
In a letter sent to me in 1999, this one-off auntie had written to me these words below, when in her early 80s as she reminisced about that wonderful hostel…
“One mid-winter’s night in early 1942, I found myself to be the sole resident of the Loch Ossian hostel. The Corrour station-master was the official warden at that time and he had given me a shirt-full of warm kindling from beside his own oven to keep me warm over the mile-long walk to the empty hostel and there to light the hostel stove. The night brought with it the creaking sounds of cracking loch-ice accompanying my winter sleep.”
“In the morning, at Corrour station, a leisurely north-bound engine with two carriages astern offered me a lift’ (yes, a lift!) to the head of Loch Treig, from where I planned to walk west over the bealach to Steall Hostel beside the Water of Nevis. The lift was magnificent, me on the footplate while the men shovelled coal into the blazing furnace. Opposite a break in the fence leading onto a mountain track, they stopped for me to clamber down the engine steps onto the frozen track; I waved my companions off on their remote northern journey and set off to the west…”
The Painting
Joan continued the re-living of her active mountaineering days by telling me of how she returned to Loch Ossian Youth Hostel the following winter (1943) to paint the snow-laden view from the track in a water-colour which she then gave to me; the gift of that painting prompted an immediate response from me and I promised her that one day I would take it to Loch Ossian hostel, a ploy with passion and purpose. For that’s surely where it truly belonged.
Sadly my ploy took over ten years to come to fruition, the prompt coming from Joan herself, reminding me of my promise of so long before. From her care-home room she had tried to phone me twice one weekend - to no avail (I was out walking, yes - in a ‘wild place’). A postcard followed on which she wrote in a now-faltering calligraphic hand.
“I’ve tried twice but no answer; are you rehearsing, digging, asleep, in jail, limbo, love, or capacitated?” Her health nearing its end but her sense of humour was still very much alive.
That card prompted my action - I knew I needed to do it as soon as I could, but for other reasons (regretfully) it took a good few years for me to play my part in the story - after Joan passed on.
The Nephew
So I booked to stay a few nights at that same (very ‘eco’) hostel in October 2023 with that ploy-promise: ‘to carry the painting back to where it truly belonged’.
Some very helpful emails from Jan Robinson, one of the hostel wardens followed.
The Warden
In fact it was Jan’s delightful enthusiasm that spurred me on to my ploy. I love all wild places and Loch Ossian SYHA is a classic, where one can feel totally separate from the rest of humanity, amidst the mountains and lochs, near the erstwhile home of Ken Smith down the same rail-line (‘the hermit of Loch Treig’) and the solitude which is so far distant from feeling lonely….
So I was on my way, carrying a large bag full of water-colour, from Helensburgh Upper station to Corrour. It’s then a mile to the hostel but even before 300m on the track you begin to feel alone with the elements and memories and dreams….
On my first evening I walked back a little way towards Corrour station, holding the painting in my hand to see exactly where Joan had sat to produce the final thing; here are two images….80 years apart.
1943
2023
About her Loch Ossian painting, Joan had written - “I spent so long looking at the view, absorbing the precise details of the colours, contours and contrasts, that I never needed to look at the painting again, for the whole thing was imprinted on my inner eye ‘which is the bliss of solitude’. I never knew that, after swotting Wordsworth at school in Glasgow, I’d find the truth of those words dawning so many years later…”
About her Loch Ossian painting, Joan had written - “I spent so long looking at the view, absorbing the precise details of the colours, contours and contrasts, that I never needed to look at the painting again, for the whole thing was imprinted on my inner eye ‘which is the bliss of solitude’. I never knew that, after swotting Wordsworth at school in Glasgow, I’d find the truth of those words dawning so many years later…”
That very painting now
lined common room wall by the stove of a place that is truly magical. Even for older folk, that slow mile is such a worthwhile journey to reach heaven.
Jan with Paul outside the hostel in October 2023. That very painting now graces the wood-lined common room wall by the stove of Loch Ossian hostel –a place that is truly magical. Even for older folk, that slow mile! is such a worthwhile journey to reach heaven.