I've had 45 summer holidays on the bewitching Scottish island of Arran, but not this year
I thought this day would never come, but I need a break from the same trip
It’s not the ferries that have put me off holidaying in Arran this year.
Yes, it’s annoying not being certain whether you’ll get home or not, and I’ve been trapped in the limbo of a CalMac queue for hours. Still, we always make it to our destinations of Ardrossan, Troon or Brodick in the end, so it’s never been a deal breaker. It just felt like the right time for a brief hiatus from the trip that my family has taken annually since I was about five years old.
The primary reason is because my sister has been undergoing treatment for breast cancer. There’s been an awful lot going down, since she was diagnosed back in September.
Although the relentlessly gruelling chemo stage is done and dusted - thank goodness - there’s still radiotherapy, medication and further surgeries coming up, and 2026 is something of a write off, as was the last quarter of 2025.
I think she would quite like to still take the trip, but I suggested we give it a rest. That makes me feel a bit like a bad cop, but it’s actually a relief not to be going.
That’s despite the fact that, as soon as the days get sunnier - we usually go in April or July, to coincide with school holidays - I feel that familiar pull and want to swap Leith for Lamlash.
I suppose it’s a habit that’s worn as deep as the doctor’s bath at Corrie.
Still, not going means we have one less thing to worry about. It’d be tricky to find a date that suits, amongst regular hospital visits to Edinburgh’s Western General.
Also, last year’s trip to the island wasn’t our finest vintage. I fell out of love with the place a little bit, though it’s not her - she’s still beautiful - it’s me.
My husband and I had moved house exactly one week before the trip and it’d been my 50th birthday the day before, and it seemed like terrible timing for a break away.
We had been halfway through emptying the boxes, and our heads were not in the right place. Our stress levels were still up to high-doe, as my late mother-in-law-used to say.
As soon as we were on the island, we were counting down to get back to our new house so we could get properly settled in.
Even Woolies finest caramel tarts or Blackwater Bakehouse’s almond croissants couldn’t ease the restless feeling of being in the wrong place.
Anyway, we were pretty tense all week, though I do have a few good memories.
These include trying Whiting Bay’s new Stonesthrow Sauna, and visiting Lochranza’s Sandwich Station for their giant baps, even if the attendant wasps did make the kids freak out.
As a birthday treat, my other half had arranged for me to have a massage at the Auchrannie Resort. That was lovely.
On one of their adventures, my husband and my nephew saw a school of dolphins, which were so close that they could hear every puff from their blowholes, at a lovely ferny spot at Whiting Bay. Also, it was miraculously sunny almost all week. We had Margaritas in the garden. Hooray for the North Atlantic Drift.
However, despite the glimmers of joy, it’s never a hugely relaxing holiday.
I suppose that’s because we’re the bread - or are we the filling? - in the sandwich generation. And, excuse the alliteration, but it’s a heck of a hectic hoagie.
The youngest in the family is six, and needs a bit of TLC. My mum is 90, and is pretty low maintenance but does require assistance getting anywhere, and the houses we stay in never turn out to be brilliant, as far as being disabled friendly goes. Last year, we had an unexpected sloped and long gravel driveway of doom, with stairs up to the door, all of which she had to teeteringly negotiate like she was Danny Macaskill on the Cuillins Ridge.
They don’t really talk about those aspects of a holiday home, when you’re looking at the brochure. We always struggle to find somewhere without a bit of a mobility assault course challenge in the mix.
My husband does almost all of the cooking for the family, so he is washed out by day five. The teenager leaves a trail of destruction, and mutters about being bored, and, as they have to share a bedroom, the late night arguments between her and the middle child are pretty relentless.
So, it is good to have a year out. We will come back to it afresh, in 2027.
Hopefully, my sister will have completed most of her treatment by then. Maybe we’ll find a better house.
But now, where to go instead? It’ll just be me and my husband, and we do plenty of long weekend minibreaks throughout the year, but we’ve never had an entire week away, just the two of us. For the last 20 years or so, I’ve always subjected him to Arran.
I feel like I’ve neglected the other Scottish islands, like Skye, so maybe that will be the solution.
We’ve never been to Greece, and a visit to Florence is on the bucket list. Perhaps we’ll be brave enough to venture to Tokyo, though I don’t think our budget will quite stretch that far.
This summer, the world of holidays is my oyster, and I will try to resist the pull of Scotland in miniature and its delights. Until next year.
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