It was like cycling straight into an oil painting: into a canvas of sea and mountains, islands and shore, into a rainbow of colours as far as the eye could see. A brassy sun hung in an enamel blue sky; the turquoise sea shimmered underneath, lapping on to dark rocky outcrops and islands overlooking Fleet Bay, two sides of this canvas framed by brown-mauve hills to the north. The foreground glinted with dots of shorebirds fishing on the edge of the tide: gulls, wagtails, waders, and black and white flashes of oyster catchers kleep-kleeping in alarm at the sight of a small boy careering towards the sand, shouting, ‘Come on, Auntie Netta! Race you to the beach!’

The young woman skidded to a halt, her fingers pumping the brakes of her sit up and beg bicycle, the wind whipping strands of red-gold hair across her eyes, blinding them from the seascape for a second. She paused to drink deep the precious scene for it had been carried with her into exile so many times, tucked safe at the back of her mind in reserve for dreich Yorkshire evenings.

The picnic to Castlehaven and Carrick Sands was always the high point of her holiday back home in Stratharvar; a precious ritual. Who would be first to catch sight of the shoreline and the barrack-like towers of the huge ‘cow palace’ at Corseyard, or run around the walls of the Viking fortress? It was always Gus who was first to scatter the brown Ayrshires from their grazing as he tore across the green machars.

Netta wheeled her pushbike slowly over the humps, scouring the coastline to see what had changed since their last picnic a year ago. Thankfully there were no jagged stumps of wartime coastal defences to spoil the beach, no barbed wire and fences with KEEP OUT signs thrown up on other coasts when fear of invasion was real.

‘Come on, Auntie Netta, you’re such a slowcoach!’ yelled Gus as he turned impatiently. His aunt was not in her usual hurrying mode but plonked herself down on a grey boulder while he skimmed pebbles over the surface as she had taught him on her last visit. There’s no rush, she thought to herself, we have this day all to ourselves to explore together. This is our time.