We are away for a few weeks in the Outer Hebrides. More on that in future blogs no doubt. One of the things we have done this week was to go to the visitor centre in Lochmaddy, North Uist. It’s a nice place to go, with a small shop, a café that does excellent soup, toasties and scones, and a museum that is currently exhibiting everything you could want to know about the Scottish ferry company Calmac. It also has a small art gallery and that is what confused me this week.

Most of the floor of the gallery was covered in peat, with some sheep’s wool in frames around the walls. I like to think I am open to modern art installations, particularly the physical ones. I love The Tate gallery, and the Pompidou in Paris. I have climbed inside enormous human forms by Anthony Gormley, and tried to understand the blue pictures of Yves Klein.

But is this art or just a pile of mud? I love peaty whiskies so maybe I should have just rolled around in it to try to get closer to the artist’s meaning. Or perhaps I should have just filled my pockets and taken it back to the holiday cottage to put on the fire.

As we have driven around the islands this week, we have come across many areas of moorland peat that have been cut away for islander use. Piles of peat cuttings are drying in the autumn wind. For me, I have got more from looking at them, situated amongst incredible views and rugged countryside, than I have from this example, sitting in a sterile gallery.

Just to show I am not a complete philistine, here is a Hebridean art installation I do like. It is called “Reflections” by Colin Mackenzie, and has been created to sit amongst natural rocks overlooking the island of Baleshare. It is both dramatic and quirky.

But that pile of mud? Hmmmm.