A friend was taking me sailing in his boat in the Western Isles.

We took a stiff breeze on a sunny, chilly day with the wind coming on a broad reach from the North, over the Isle of Arran.

We moored at Lamlash. Here everything is so quiet after Cornwall. There are hardly any cars here. The roads are as empty as they were in my boyhood in England in the 1950s. The night sky is beautifully clear with shooting stars.