Reconnections

Borenich is a tiny graveyard perched on a knoll and with views to Schiehallion a few miles west and Loch Tummel, just to the north.  There are only two gravestones and a little iron cross, though there are some recumbent stones. I couldn’t get the gate open so I didn’t go in, but I could read the gravestones, both with Stewart names engraved on them.  I went to visit after meeting Cathy Laing, who was born a Stewart, told me about the place on North Uist at the patchwork quilt meeting at Taigh Chearsabhaigh. Chrissie Kate Stewart, Cathy’s grandmother, signed her name on the quilt and her family, who were travellers, had strong connections with Borenich.  Isabella Christie taught down the road in Kinloch Rannoch and in Lochmaddy, at first sight completely unlinked places but it seems not.  There is a website about Borenich with lots of information about the people who lived there in the nineteenth century, when it was a reasonable sized village (www.borenich.co.uk).  Now there’s one farm, many piles of stones in the surrounding fields, a graveyard with a visitors’ book and the feeling that this place was connected in ways now long forgotten. 

Mistle thrushes were feeding on the anthills in the dry grassland where these harebells were still in flower, just.