King Of Bright Water

Gavin Maxwell, the man behind one of our greatest nature stories, found his inspiration and purpose in the Highlands. Mark Rowe explores his life and legacy.

- Mark Rowe

Fifteen miles before that great Highlands highway, the A87, reaches the Skye bridge, a narrow, sometimes singletrack road peels off south. Follow this through forests and high over a mountain pass and swoop down to the water’s edge, where Loch Alsh meets the Sound of Sleat. Keep going for five more miles, past the lonely village of Glenelg. Only then will you come to Sandaig.

Here, tucked away by the shore, a walk of 1.5 miles from the road, you will find two graves. One is marked by a boulder below which lie the ashes of Gavin Maxwell, author of Ring of Bright Water and also adventurer, aristocrat, naturalist, conservationist, secret agent, shark hunter, racing driver, painter and social renegade.

A few paces away, by a delectable burn, is a well-tended second tomb for an otter, Edal. An inscription here reads: “Whatever joy you had from her, give back to nature.” The author and a central member of his cast of otters now rest where once their lives combined for one of the 20th-century’s most endearing and influential wildlife tales.

HAUNTING BEAUTY

The graves lie in a meadow that once housed Camusfeàrna, Gaelic for ‘bay of alders’, which Maxwell appended to his home by the sea. Today, this remains a hauntingly beautiful spot, a sweeping bay sheltered by low cliffs, woodlands and skerries where seals haul out and, indeed, otters forage. Stand here and the book’s title becomes obvious, for burn and sea combine to all but encircle the bay in a ring of bright, sparkling water.