The Photo That Changed Me: childhood memories of Scotland

Lifestyle and culture specialist Heather Steele has spent her career telling stories – but a box of family photographs sparked a more personal one.

Some of my earliest memories involve throwing up in the family car. It would usually happen somewhere along the twisting road around Loch Ness. And then would come the indignity of changing into new clothes on the side of the road – more often than not having to fashion one of my dad’s rugby shirts into a floor-length dress.

My dad’s family is from the Isle of Skye, but we were based in the south of England, meaning any visit required a pre-dawn start, a 12-hour drive, and plenty of service station and Little Chef drop-ins along the way. It was always worth it for the first glimpse of my granny’s house, Trien, with its windows accidentally arranged to resemble a wonky face, greeting us as the car curved around the loch it looked out over. Hugs and hellos done, we’d spill into the kitchen, where there’d be a pot of mince bubbling on the Aga, quickly reheated for our arrival. This was a routine that signalled the start of the summer holidays or the beginning of Christmas.

Although I’ve never lived there, the Isle of Skye off the west coast of Scotland feels more like home than anywhere else. The village of Carbost – best known as the home of Talisker whisky – is where my late grandfather grew up. When I was a child, there were two houses – a croft and a cottage – still in the family. On opposite sides of the single road through the village, they were lived in by my great aunt and great-great aunt. We’d spend hours in each, melting in front of blazing fireplaces and cramming down my 97-year-old Aunt Peggy’s homemade scotch pancakes.

Even as a child, I used to love scanning the mantlepieces and rummaging through boxes of black-and-white family photos, trying to spot likenesses in the faces of children from decades past. Their clothes and hair colour might have changed through the decades, but the settings rarely did: the front doors of both houses were an ever-present backdrop to family photos, as was the loch. Those same doorsteps would later become the spots I’d have a packet of cheese and onion Walkers crisps and – if I was lucky – half a can of Irn Bru for lunch as a child.

My parents moved around a lot when I was young, so it was my grandparents’ homes – on Skye and in Grimsby – where I put down roots. Trien felt like a constant – the site of midge-bitten summer evenings and countless Hogmanays. My grandpa died two weeks after I was born, so we never met, but for as long as I can remember, my dad’s had a silver-framed photo of him tending to his sheep on the snow-covered farm, his sheepdog looping around him as the magnificent Cuillin hills tower behind him. He and my granny built Trien on his family farm in the 1980s and she lived there for more than 15 years after he died. As the owner of the village shop (where I’d hang out in the back, pretending to be a shopkeeper) and the only petrol pump for miles, she knew everybody and was always entertaining.

The kitchen and dining room of the Trien I remember is the same as the one in the ’80s family photos I so loved to look at in those boxes. Food was always a focus: no one has ever come close to rivalling my granny’s colossal Yorkshire puddings; she’d make homemade haddock and chips on Fridays; and her lentil soup was a lunchtime staple. And it wasn’t a trip up north unless you almost knocked over the torn-open carton of long-life milk that was eternally on the kitchen counter, next to her B&H Superkings.

As well as its world-famous whisky, food has become one of the main reasons people visit Carbost. Even Nigella Lawson recently took to Instagram to rave about her first visit to the ramshackle Oyster Shed (rightfully so, the team’s hot-smoked salmon and chips are a marvel). Café Cùil is a Hackney export that’s doing amazing things with the Scottish larder. Michelin-starred The Three Chimneys in Dunvegan was a Skye highlight when I was growing up, but we never visited as it was considered too fancy for our family gatherings. We finally went on the day of my granny’s burial, and it was a fitting send-off with a menu of local delicacies (fat scallops, sweet langoustines) that reminded us all how special this island is.

I still try to return to Skye at least once a year, even though no family members live there anymore. Instead, I’ve taken all my favourite people to visit this beautiful part of the UK, and never miss an opportunity to stop by the cemetery to wave to the long line of Steeles who are buried right along the shoreline of the loch. I have another plan to honour them: I have Rightmove alerts on all three houses, waiting for the day one of them pops up and I can beg, borrow or steal to bring it back into the family.

I loathed kilts and tartans growing up, mainly because my granny loved putting my sister and me in matching dresses whenever people came over for one of her famous dinners. This year, I splashed out on a Shrimps kilt. Times change, opinions shift, but landscapes and memories endure. The shoreline of Skye’s coral beach still glitters, and Trien still stands proud on the hill, even if the trees my grandparents planted have grown tall around it. Whether my Rightmove plan works or not, I will always return, because it’s the place I feel drawn to most in the world – and I will always have that dusty box of photos to pore over.