Pure Dead Brilliant

Is the rather bizarre slogan belonging to Prestwick Airport.

Wikipedia describes this as "a phrase peculiar to the people of Glasgow," yet to me it sounds a bit like the verbal equivalent of the London 2012 logo.

Anyway, it's a fitting description for my weekend in one of the UK's most remote and idyllic spots: Saddell, on the scrotum-facing side of the Kintyre Peninsula. (The Mull of which is a car park made famous by Paul McCartney and Wings, the Professor explained to us.)

In the end there were eight of us in the castle: myself, a professor of physics, a musician, a senior British diplomat, a cardiac surgeon with a macabre sense of humour, an early-modern historian, a foreign office official, and, if the logbook is to be believed, a spectral hand. (The latter generally kept a low profile, though I could have used the extra wrist-power in my ping pong duels with JBH.) All but me and the hand remarkable overachievers and one-time members of Oxford University.

On the night of our beach fogata our company was also joined by a lone seal whose snout rose briefly above the surface every four minutes or so. We were providing ample marine-mammal curiosity fodder that evening as we collectively launched a bunch of oriental Glo-Lanterns that the Professor had purchased online.

Once alight the flame fills the white, condom-esque sheath with shifty molecules and the increasingly tumescent lantern begins to ascend, at first gracefully, but upon catching a stream of air at a seagull sort of altitude, moves up and away at remarkable pace.

These things are immense fun, but the prevalence of tall buildings and low airliners around my flat in London means that I won't be able to re-live the thrill of watching them soar away from Saddell's battlements without attracting substantial liabilities.

"Keep children away from the launch area," the leaflet in the pack counselled. There was nothing about very drunk people however, nor about the dangers of attaching the lanterns to fishing line in an attempt to turn them into attractively luminescent kites. (V likes to recount how she and her schoolmates used to capture fireflies and attach a piece of string to them....)

We had imagined we'd see the burned out carcasses of sheep in the fields around Campbeltown airport the following day, but it was one of our own that came closest to a charring experience. Once honoured by the Queen for his diplomatic services to our nation during the war in Sierra Leone, Nick very nearly became a random victim of one of our Glo-Lantern/Kite hybrid prototypes.

Campbeltown's tiny airport has the longest runway in Europe (3049m) It is certificated to accept the Space-Shuttle should it need to make an unplanned landfall in Europe, and used to be home to a squadron of B52 bombers. (Here we are coming in to land in the BA Twin Otter.)

In '94 an RAF Chinook crashed nearby killing all 29 passengers and crew, including senior RUC officials and some intelligence personnel.