Transcription of an extract from ‘A Winter on Tiree’ by Isobel Wylie Hutchison. Originally published in Blackie’s Girls’ Annual, 1924

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Born in 1889 in Kirkliston near Edinburgh, Isobel Wylie Hutchison became a respected film-maker, author and poet. While travelling in the Hebrides in 1920, she decided to spend a winter on Tiree. However, due to the vagaries of the weather and the mail-boat, it was a month before she reached the island.

She found lodgings in Ruaig and became involved in the life of the local Primary School. Her love of plants prompted an experiment in bulb-growing which presaged the Hebridean Bulb-growers Association by thirty years. Her subsequent travels took her to Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Alaska and the Aleutian islands.

A fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, she was awarded the Mungo Park Medal in 1934 ‘in recognition of outstanding contributions to geographical knowledge through exploration.’ She wrote several travel books including ‘North to the Rime-Ringed Sun’ and ‘Stepping Stones from Alaska to Asia’, and four volumes of poetry.