Argyll for me started at the age of 6 when my family moved from Stirlingshire to a hill farm on the banks of Loch Awe.

My early memories of Cladich School and my exceptional school teacher, Mrs Keith, are still vivid. Breaks from lessons were spent guddling and poaching trout out of the burn behind the school. Like the trout, I was hooked for life by this land of wonderful, unspoilt nature and happy, smiling people. What I remember most was the way our family was so warmly welcomed by the local community into which we had migrated; I had so many new friends, young and old.

I marvelled at the freedom Argyll allowed a child. I climbed waterfalls and fished the peaty pools and with my father roamed the moorlands and fished the endless hill lochs. Much time was spent in rowing dinghies on Loch Awe and I learned to sail. Those days spent on rivers and lochs engrained in me a love of the flora and fauna of beautiful Argyll.

Then came the wonderful discovery of the islands, the hidden jewels of Argyll, the well kept secrets of the glorious sunny weather of Tiree and Coll where the majesty of the shimmering sands and sparkling blue sea was breathtaking; where swimming amongst the seals in the waves and exploring the rock pools was mixed with the excitement of helping a local Coll lobster fisherman with his creels and listening to his tales of past and present island life, some tragic and some hilarious. My lobsterman was called Neilie John and he had a 1949 Fordson van with the handbrake attached to the back door by a rope and there was a blackbird’s nest in the glove compartment.

The winds and waters and magical scenery of Argyll inspire romanticism and produced the famous story-tellers of Argyll. The monument to Duncan Ban MacIntyre, the great Gaelic bard who wrote Ode to Ben Doran, stands above the village of Dalmally and there is also the monument to Neil Munro standing beside the road to Inveraray, the writer of serious books like the New Road and John Splendid, but above all the creator of Para Handy, the Argyll skipper of a steam puffer who personifies the pride, humour, doggedness and also the passion of the Argyll person.

Later, when I became a farmer, I was welcomed into a world where Argyll people judged you by what you did and what you could offer rather than by who you were. They had an unusual attitude of tolerance. I always remember the notice above an Argyll family’s hearth: “There are no strangers here, only friends we have yet to meet.” That struck me as a world saving sentence, one to which many national leaders should pay heed in these troubled times.

I had previously worked in the big cities of Glasgow and London, where the notion of not knowing my neighbours by name or at least by sight was a new and strange sensation and when I returned to Argyll I realised the benefits of being part of a society and community which cared about each other’s welfare and did not always look for financial reward for jobs done to benefit others.

It was also a society that revered, to some extent, old age and experience and where the impatient young had to wait their turn but this seemed to me to ensure that every dog would have their day. At any rate, it was a happy society where nearly everyone played a useful part and when I think back maybe that paints a picture of the Big Society which David Cameron would like to reinspire nationally.

As I grew deeper rooted I became more aware of the Scottish culture, particularly the dancing and accordion and fiddle music bands made up of people from different walks of life who shared their talent, probably inherited from  the Gaels of old.

I watched primary industries change the face of the area and saw forestry villages filled with forestry workers who created their own amusements and culture but over the years have watched the local workforce dissipate as the forestry commission put more of their work out to contract and former forestry houses became the homes of people often from other areas of the country.

This is just one of the changes in the windows that open and close. Once upon a time Argyll was heavily populated and the great lochs, especially Loch Awe, used as waterways, first by the hunter gatherers and then by the farmers who followed them.

People in Argyll have always lived on the edge and have adapted well to hostile weather and climate conditions and the hardness of life has fashioned the character which like the scenery is welcoming and open to new ideas. When new windows open Argyll folk are quick to utilise the new opportunities.

Returning to farming, I have so many happy memories of attending auction markets in Oban and particularly Dalmally where the conversation or craic, as it is sometimes called, grew merrier and merrier as the day wore on. The barman was referred to as the man from Del Monte as he always said yes!

I witnessed many years when prices were so disappointing that those in other industries might have turned off the lights and walked away but these Argyll farmers would always treat success and failure in terms of yesterday and tomorrow. Like Kipling’s poem “If” they would ‘meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same’.

In 1999 to my great joy I was elected to serve the people of the Highlands & Islands in the new Scottish Parliament and living in Argyll & Bute, the most southerly constituency of this wonderful region I could at last do something positive for the people and land I had grown to love. My main aim is and always will be to support our local firms, our individuals and our families and to reinvest in Argyll’s roads and ferries and front line services.

Jamie McGrigor

Jamie McGrigor is the Conservative Party’s candidate for the Argyll and Bute seat at the Scottish Election 2011 which will be held on 5th May.

The photograph above shows Jamie McGrigor at a meeting in Lochgilphead.