14

Donald Fraser opens the door. ‘We usually sit in the kitchen,’ he says, leading the way.

An appetising aroma of baking greets us there – Donald's wife Sue is baking cakes and offers me one straight from the oven. Mmm.

Donald's livelihood used to be farming, but he gave that up years ago. He says that farming cattle at Guisachan didn't appeal to him and, when the bottom fell out of the beef market in the 1980s, he sold the herd to concentrate on the holiday trade, building chalets behind the trees and converting the nearby stable block and farm steading into cottages for tourists.

Now he's about to set out on a great adventure. Outside, a marquee has been set up on the lawn. Their daughter is to be married on Saturday, 200 guests are invited, and then Donald is off to sea. ‘I'm a serious sailor,’ says he.

Donald, fortyish, sturdy, is going to sail round the world in a boat he built himself in a shed. He built the shed too. A friend from the village will crew her. She's already made her maiden voyage via the Bay of Biscay to the Med, where Donald will board her for the voyage.

He learned to sail dinghies at school and, when he progressed to Sandhurst and a career as an army officer, boats came into that too. He was attached to a team maintaining and sailing yachts for the armed services, based at a diving school on the Solent. Why would the army need yachts? ‘Character building,’ he says, ‘part of the training.’

They looked after themselves well. There was the odd trip to Cherburg to bring back a few crates of duty-free French wine – all part of the training, of course.

His boat is a 39-foot steel-hulled vessel named Spirit of Affric. A naval architect drew up the plans and the steel plates were cut to size by computer and trucked up to Tomich where he put them together, learning the craft of boatbuilding as he went along. The timberwork and fittings were cut from larch and oak trees felled at Guisachan. So a piece of Affric sails the seven seas.