The perfect day

In September, 1977, my wife and I traveled to the UK. We purchased BritRail passes that, in addition to giving us unlimited travel on railroads, allowed us to take ferries to neighboring islands.

We somehow wound up on the tiny Isle of Bute in the Firth of Clyde off Scotland’s west coast. We stepped off the boat in the village of Rothesay which, during Victoria’s reign, had been a major tourist destination but had long since faded into obscurity, and procured a room in a B&B owned by a Mrs. D. H. Mowatt overlooking the bay.

The sky was gray, the wind was chilly, it was drizzling intermittently and there was absolutely nothing for two 25-year-olds to do or see on Bute. We had lunch in a greasy fish and chips joint on the town’s only shopping street. At Mrs. Mowatt's suggestion, we took a mini-bus around the island and realized we were the only tourists; all the other passengers were elderly natives taking the bus just for the ride and to enjoy visiting with each other, swapping gossip in their thick Scottish brogues. They, like us, disembarked in Rothesay where they had boarded an hour before. We spent the afternoon in a penny arcade where we won ceramic mugs honoring the Queen’s twenty-fifth year on the throne.

That night we went to a talent show at the local school where an ancient woman with a Florence Foster Jenkins voice sang “Sweet Rothesay Bay” a song that had been popular in Rothesay’s glory days in which a native who has left yearns for his home, and the crowd sang along.

Back at Mrs. Mowatt’s we met an Australian couple who had been married the same day we were (December 27, 1975) and drank brandy with them in front of a crackling fire.

It was, and we realized it even then, a perfect day. 

Rothesay was like Brigadoon, a mist-shrouded magical town that seemed to have appeared out of another time and place.

We took the ferry back to the mainland the next morning along with memories of Sweet Rothesay Bay we’ll never forget. For years I carried Mrs. Mowatt’s business card in my wallet to remind me of that day and I still have it in the brass box at the top of my closet where I keep the things I treasure most. 

Years later, after we had begun collecting travel posters, we ran across the above poster in a Soho shop. It remains, by far, the most expensive poster we've ever purchased but we didn’t even haggle with the dealer – we had to have it. It is somewhere between 80 and 110 years old. For years it hung above the fireplace of our Connecticut house and today it’s in our Florida den, a room I rarely enter but whenever I do I’m transported for a moment back to that one perfect day in Sweet Rothesay Bay. 

If you’d like to hear “Sweet Rothesay Bay” click the link below to a youtube video featuring an extremely cheesy lip-synched rendition by the Alexander Brothers that was shot in Rothesay. (And yes, that's a palm tree in the background. The isle of Bute is in the gulf stream so, in winter, the weather rarely dips into the thirties but, on the flip side, the average summer high is only around seventy.) Because it's sung in Scottish Gaelic, I'm printing the lyrics directly below the link.

Sing along and may you, wherever you are reading this, have a perfect day.

Sweet Rothesay Bay

Fu' yellow lie the cornrigs, far down the braid hillside; 

It is the brawest har'st field, alang the shores o' Clyde, 

And I'm a puir har'st laddie wha stands the lee lang day - 

Amang the cornrigs of Ardbeg, aboon sweet Rothesay Bay.

O I had ance a true love, now I hae nane ava; 

And I had three braw brithers, but I hae tint them a'. 

My father and my mither sleep i' the mools this day - 

I sit my lane amang the rigs, aboon sweet Rothesay Bay.

It's a bonnie bay at morning, and bonnier at noon, 

But bonniest when the sun draps and red comes up the moon. 

When the mist creeps o'er the Cumbraes and Arran peaks are gray, 

And the great black hills, like sleeping kings, sit grand roun' Rothesay Bay.