There were lots of characters at the Blends

About this recording

Colin Sutherland, known to many as Col, owned the Latheronwheel Hotel - the Blends - from 1970 until 1983 along with his wife Nancy. They then ran hotels in Golspie and Tain before Colin returned to Caithness after Nancy passed away.

In this recording, Colin shares some recollections from the Blends, saying: “We concentrated on doing good food and good hospitality.” He also looks back on his time as a police officer in Glasgow, including a couple of unexpected encounters with fellow natives of Latheron parish.

Colin was born at Landhallow, Latheron, and worked on the croft as a schoolboy. “Everyone was in the same boat,” he recalls. “We had no water, electricity or any of these things, no toilet in the house… We went along to the peat cuttings, thinnings, turnips, tattie-lifting, did bits of ploughing for the neighbours and the crofters down the village in Latheronwheel. You had to carry water to the cattle in the morning before you went to school.”

Colin also talks about his admiration for the late Lorna Gunn, long-serving sub-postmistress and registrar at Latheron, and her wealth of local knowledge.

Among other things, he tells of snowstorms; mobile shops; Cardosi’s ice-cream van; the time a fire was extinguished with beer; and an ancestor who was a veteran of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

The photos show Colin as a young man in the early 1960s (a studio portrait by John Adams); and at his home in the former Latheron post office in September 2024.