Durness is not only in the far north of Scotland, but is in fact the most north-westerly village on the mainland of Great Britain. So definitely a far-away place, though not utterly remote and hard-to-reach: Durness is a well-known and welcome pitstop on the North Coast 500 tourist route.
It has two other attractions that are perhaps better-known: Smoo Cave, a big limestone cave at the head of a pebbly inlet between cliffs, with a waterfall inside; and Balnakeil Craft Village, a former Cold War radar base converted into individualistic art and craft units and workshops for sundry small businesses, where the chief draw is Cocoa Mountain, a chocolate manufacturer with its own swish modern coffee-and-chocolate café. I visited those too, but that may be for another post.
As you can see from this direction-sign in the centre of Durness, near the Spar supermarket, the John Lennon Memorial Garden doesn't get star billing:
In fact it's easy to drive straight past. I didn't spot where it was on the way into Durness, and almost missed it on the way out. This is mainly due to the Village Hall being set back from the road.
It's a modern hall, and there are a series of small gardens between the main road and the hall itself. By 'gardens' I don't mean trees and big shrubs and extensive flowery borders. Durness is exposed to some very bad weather, and all the vegetation in the garden is storm-battered, stunted, and seared by salt from the sea. Here are a few shots.
Much use is made of stone slabs, upright or flat on the ground. Stone is hardier and more durable than plants, of course.
I didn't see the John Lennon Memorial Garden straight away. I walked past it. When I realised my mistake, it came as a surprise. It wasn't at all what I was expecting.
Well, it was nicely designed, and neatly executed, and clearly well-maintained. But somehow I couldn't link these stone uprights, and the pebbles, and the pieces of driftwood, with John Lennon's personality as I had known it when he was alive during the 1960s and 1970s. I dare say the artist had researched his life, and had chosen these things to be symbolic of what Durness had meant to him. But I didn't see the connection.
The information panel offered facts to aid interpretation.
The background here is that John Lennon spent his school holidays in Durness with a cousin whose family owned a croft. The panel suggests that these were the happiest days of his young life, to be recalled in the words of a song later written for The Beatles' Rubber Soul album.
Perhaps it was so. But I find this picture of a carefree, boyish John Lennon at odds with the autobiographical anguish in other songs he wrote, such as Mother and Working Class Hero. I'd previously understood from them that he'd been an unwanted baby, rejected by both mother and father, which turned him into a troubled and very unhappy child, cheated of parental love. Which in turn went far to explain his attitudes as an adult.
Well, perhaps all along he'd had a better time when young; and the pain expressed in his songs was exaggerated. None of this made the Memorial Garden easier to appreciate.
The look on my face says it all, doesn't it? I was puzzled, nonplussed and underwhelmed. And I don't think John Lennon would have thought much of his Memorial Garden either.
But don't let me put you off. If you go to Durness, definitely take a look and make your own judgement.
Next year, 2020, will mark the fortieth anniversary of John Lennon's murder at the entrance to the Dakota building in New York in 1980. It doesn't seem so long ago.
Lennon would have been eighty in 2020. I'm sure he would still be writing songs. He would still find plenty to protest about, for so many of the problems of 1980 remain unsolved, or are even worse than they were.
