East Rhidorroch Lodge is about eight miles from the small fishing town of Ullapool, in Wester Ross on Scotland’s north-west coast. If you take a small detour about five miles along the unmade private road that leads to the Lodge, you’ll discover Rhidorroch House, a rather grand Victorian pile, and like us be disappointed to be told politely by the owners that this is not where you are staying. Let’s just say that (a) the Lodge is basic and (b) those with a predilection for stuffed polecats in glass cases and moth-eaten stag heads on the walls will feel quite at home.

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Photographer: FLORA HANITIJO

The convertible thing is relatively new to me. It’s a badge of honour in the car enthusiast world to look down on soft-tops. After all, with convertibles structural rigidity, light weight and handling finesse are sacrificed at the altar of seeing and being seen. Which perhaps more than anything speaks to the limited relevance of any of these dynamic qualities in the real world.

I think it helped that the first convertible I ever drove (perhaps five years ago) was an ancient VW cabrio belonging to my then girlfriend. It was red with a white vinyl roof, an erratic electrical system and an unshakeable smell of something like mildew mixed with a dead body. And it was hugely fun to drive. Things that in a car with a fixed roof would have been massively irritating (a radio that would play only one station, for example) simply added still more character. Somehow convertibles are able to transcend the limitations of the normal cars from which they are created, I think because each trip with the top down, no matter how mundane, is elevated by wind in the hair and a general sense of being more connected to the world outside.

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