The excellence of middle-aged women

In which I sing the praises of a group I am very excited to be joining

Here I am enjoying the company of Denise Kelly and Marilyn Trout: former pro cyclists who rode the Tour de France in the 1980s - and also some of the funniest people I’ve ever hung out with

Before I get started I should probably apologise to everyone who’s going to take issue with my definition of middle age. Sorry to those who feel disgruntled at their inclusion in this bracket. And sorry to those – like my parents – who are upset that I include myself in it. (Because, if your offspring calls herself middle-aged, then what does that make you?)

For the purposes of this essay ‘middle-aged’ means anything between 40 and 75. You’re welcome to disagree in the comments.

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Last year my girlfriend and I spent a week on Bardsey Island, off the coast of north Wales. Bardsey – Ynys Enlli, if you prefer the Welsh – is a very special place: an ancient pilgrimage site, where allegedly 20,000 saints are buried; a dark sky sanctuary, and home to all sorts of seabirds you don’t normally get to see. Crucially, from our perspective, it has no mains electricity, no internet, and no phone signal.

The island has tall cliffs on the side facing the mainland, and slopes down to the shoreline on the side that faces the Irish Sea. Our tiny cottage was halfway down this slope, which meant we couldn’t even see the outside world, much less contact it, and roughly halfway along the unpaved track that is Bardsey’s main road. So one of our main entertainments, as we sat beside the front door with our knitting, novels, tea and whisky, was whatever traffic passed between the island’s six or seven houses.

We saw the farmer, one of Bardsey’s few permanent residents, riding nonchalantly by on his quad bike, usually side-saddle, as though he had just leapt onto it to go and deal with some agricultural emergency.

We waved hello to the young couple who were the island’s wardens, who came past with their baby in a pushchair once or twice a day.

We nodded at the friendly clergywoman, on her way between her cottage and Bardsey’s tiny chapel, sometimes with a guitar slung on her back.

We greeted the staff from the island’s bird observatory, who strode about hung with binoculars, notebooks, and two-way radios, into which they spoke excitedly whenever someone heard a corncrake.

And several times a day, we watched with interest as a large group of middle-aged women went to and fro, sometimes clad in hiking gear; sometimes in dry robes. Sometimes they strode purposefully along with backpacks; sometimes they ambled, hands in pockets, as if out to take the air.

They passed so often that it became a joke between all of us.

“Us again!”

“Where are you off to this time?”

“We’re not spying on you – honest!”

It didn’t take long for them to invite us round to their rented house for cocktail hour, and we accepted with the eagerness of two people who had sought out silence and solitude, but remained fascinated by what other people were getting up to.

We got home a couple of hours later, reeling from the strong drinks we had been offered, exchanging notes on the conversations we’d had, and drunkenly agreeing that these were the very best sort of people.