Compass Vantage 490-4

Built to travel the roads of the world, now firmly anchored to rotting wooden stakes hammered deep into the sand dunes amongst the towering bracken that has risen and fallen around it each passing year.

The once-blue polyester tie-down strap that is simultaneously protecting and imprisoning it has itself been battling the elements for so many years that the salt-water has rotted even the metal buckles. No longer able to hold fast against the relentless coastal winds thundering past the Small Isles they have been bypassed with plastic rope, which will in turn degrade in the sunlight and break apart, integrating itself into the thick black exposed roots of the marram grass that holds together the very foundations of the ground on which the Compass now sits.

Thirty years ago this traveller’s shelter protected a young family. Securely fastened to the back of a Vauxhall Cavalier it rumbled along the M6 to bucolic campsites in Devon where it offered a safe haven and became part of happy memories lodged deep into the synapses of its inhabitants alongside reminiscences of sandy crisps, frying bacon and the sulphurous incense of matches used to light the gas stove at breakfast.

Sometimes the house that followed ventured further. Very early one dark morning it was towed for the first time onto the cold steel decks of the MS Pride of Calais before warming its tyres an hour later on the smooth French tarmac. It followed the family all the way south until it reached the exotic beaches and cheap wine of Argelès-sur-Mer where it sat alongside hundreds of other temporary, always white, shelters.

Unknowingly the Vantage once made its final trip from across the Channel, towed north behind just two, now older, occupants of B478 MFS. The banquette seats perfumed with sun cream, and furnished with fabrics that mysteriously only exist in such vehicles, had been brushed clean of the collected sands from every beach in Europe. The deflated plastic unicorn and empty, rusty, gas cylinders were stashed in the front locker before the key was lost.

The old Volvo met the M25 and turned right to continue north, struggling against the weight of the duty-free wine it was towing. Leaving the heat behind for the final time it rolled dutifully on as it was led to the sea once more, but this time when it was released from the car it was alone.

It didn’t mind the isolation. Hunkered down between Loch Morar and the Sound of Sleat it seemed like a perfect mooring for a vessel of the road used to such windswept and sandy emplacements. Then, after four weeks, it realised this final duty seemed too long. There wasn’t the usual cycle of excited people leaving in the morning and returning at dinner-time, tired and slightly redder.

The Compass Vantage no longer had any occupants to protect and feed and provide happy memories for. The tyres sank softly into the earth with each rain shower, cracking and releasing the air that was carefully added many years ago at a service station in Châtellerault. Algae took hold in the seams of folded aluminium that had once been meticulously cleaned; blending the shelter into the landscape and making it easier for the owners to forget about it for another summer until the bracken died down again.

The next year, the bracken grew a little higher, into the small holes that had grown around the edges of the wooden floor. Green croziers pushing hopefully against the blackness, only to break through and find curious yellow-filtered light and strange air. The year after that the door to the gas locker fell from its hinges. The missing key wasn’t a problem now.

Fifteen summers later the Compass Vantage 490-4 is happy again because it still has a purpose. Built solely to provide shelter it now has new and ever-changing occupants, mostly of a non-human kind. Generations of mice have nested in the cupboard under the sink. Six-spot burnet moths spend the evenings in the faded folds of the curtains whilst blackbirds nest beneath them where board games were once played.

On occasion the owner of the Volvo that towed it into its final destination at Rubh’an Achaidh Mhòir still visits to smoke and meander through the sunlit reflections that were created inside the 5m long box. When the weather is warm enough that the tiny blue germander speedwell flowers tap against the steadies at each corner he can sit inside and watch families on Camusdarach beach through the same dust-worn window that he once watched his own children through, wondering how long it might be before nature removes this man-made haven from the dunes.