Text 1: When the ferry doesn’t sail, by Isla MacRae

An original contemporary blog.

People on the mainland think living on an island is romantic. It is, until the wind gets above forty knots and the ferry stays in the harbour.

Our boat crosses the sound to the mainland four times a day in winter, a fifty-minute trip that, in good weather, is the most beautiful commute in Britain. Last January it was cancelled on nineteen days. When that happens, nothing comes in. The shop’s shelves empty of milk and bread within two days, the post piles up in Oban, and anyone with a hospital appointment either misses it or travels a day early and pays for a hotel.

Even when it does sail, a winter crossing can be grim. The boat rolls in a long swell, the outside decks are closed, and you sit in the lounge gripping a cup of tea, trying not to look at the man being sick into a paper bag opposite.

Summer is a different problem. The weather is kind but every car space is booked weeks ahead by visitors, so islanders sometimes cannot get their own vans across.

Still, on a calm evening, with gannets diving off the bow and the hills going pink, I wouldn’t live anywhere else.

Text 2: Waiting for the steamer, by Christina Moodie

An original journal written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this journal, kept in 1872, the wife of the minister on a small Scottish island records a week of storms during which the weekly mail steamer could not reach the island.

Tuesday. The steamer was due at noon, and half the island came down to the pier with their parcels and letters, but by eleven the sea was breaking clean over the end of the pier, and we saw her smoke far out, turning back towards the mainland. Mr Urquhart the merchant says she will not try again until the wind goes round.

Friday. Still no steamer. The wind has blown from the south-west for four days together, and the spray reaches our windows a quarter of a mile from the shore. The merchant has no tea, no sugar and no lamp oil left, and we sit in the evenings by the light of the fire. Worse, old Mrs Gunn at the north end is very ill, and the doctor, who should have come over on Tuesday, is on the other side of the water.

Monday. Six days late, the steamer came in this morning. She could not lie at the pier for the swell, so everything was brought ashore in the ship’s boat: the mails in a tarpaulin bag, a barrel of flour, the doctor clinging to the gunwale, and a young lady visitor who was handed up the steps quite green and wet to the waist. The sailors said it had been the worst passage of the winter.

My husband went at once with the doctor to Mrs Gunn. The letters, when at last we had them, were all a week old, and one of them asked whether we should like to come to Glasgow for Christmas.

Using information from both texts, explain briefly how the weather affected journeys to and from the islands.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.