There are two things I absolutely love about travelling – the unexpected and meeting people. In both cases, the more intriguing the person or situation, the happier I become.

Our impending stay in Applecross, Scotland, was temporarily marred by a total lack of accommodation in the tiny hamlet. The brisk proprietess of the Applecross Inn finally relented and offered us ‘John’s place’. There was no explanation of who John was, what his place was like, how many it accommodated or even where John was supposed to sleep while we were slumbering in his beds. Maybe he was staying home with us?

We had no reason to worry. What ensued was simply a hearty example of that famed Scottish hospitality.

John, it turned out, was a quiet, ruddy-faced gent with a cosy olde worlde cottage on the Applecross main drag. When we arrived, the weather was foul and we were enormously grateful for some shelter. All we had to do was knock on John’s door like some long-lost relatives who had been abroad. The door was answered quickly, and we were ushered in. John gave us a quick tour of the kitchen and bathroom, and handed us the keys. Then he tossed on a small backpack, bid us farewell, grab his pushbike and headed for the door. By now there was a crazy howling wind outside, the rain was falling in freezing sheets, and a very dark night was approaching fast. Good God, he wasn’t going out in that, was he? Not on a pushbike! I asked John where he was sleeping that night. He informed us that he was staying at a friend’s place. But where? Surely in the village, so why do you have your bike? Oh, don’t worry, he shouted to us through the wild gale, it’s only a 4 mile ride up the road. And before we could rearrange our jaws, he was off. I watched him from the window, his ruddy face squared up against the wind, pedalling like a fury.

As I write this, I’m trying to remember whether we offered him a lift to his mate’s place. I’m very sure we did and that it was heartily declined, because my overriding memory of John is his nonchalance as he whipped his bike into the wind.

This was not an unusual feat of endurance by a man tossed out of his own house for some pesky tourists, but the natural, very hospitable way of things when you live in the wild, wild west of Scotland.