Cast Away

Island life worked out well for us for a few weeks last year, so I'm tasting it again. This time Arran, for a few days with old 'friends in the north'. We walked to the nearest restaurant on the map and found ourselves in a strange parallel universe. Someone has spent millions of pounds establishing a luxury holiday complex ("resort") of hotel, spa, lodges, "retreats" (?), several restaurants, internal link roads, branded resort vehicles, children's play complexes, pools, activity areas (archery?!) and much more

The contrast with the run down farm land, unpaved tracks and derelict barns surrounding, and even interspersed among, the crisp, angular, anonymous architecture of the resort buildings is extreme. It was impossible not to think of dystopian sci-fi movies where the 'perfect' town turns out to be the coercive creation of some evil megalomaniac, or even a virtual world, populated by the avatars of people wearing headsets in decaying rooms in a run-down, real-world city. We remarked that the only think the place lacked was white pocket fences

Of course, I should have taken a picture, but I was too spellbound. Tomorrow, we will find tracks and waterfalls and beaches and woodland. It will all turn out to have been a dream