John and Yoko drove to Scotland today for a short holiday after visiting Wales. The Beatles were taking a break from the Abbey Road Sessions and this month was for resting and vacations.
The couple left their white Rolls-Royce at home, and instead took their Mini Cooper bringing along six year old Julian Lennon (without Cynthia's permission) and Yoko's daughter, Kyoko Cox who was five.
On the first leg of the journey, to visit his aunts Nanny and Harrie in Liverpool, Lennon realised the Mini was too small to carry the four of them and their luggage. He instructed his chauffeur Les Anthony to bring them a more practical British Leyland Austin Maxi. Anthony then took the Mini back to Weybridge.
They stayed in the small village of Durness, in Sutherland in the Highlands. Lennon had previously enjoyed childhood holidays in the area between the ages of nine and 14, staying at the remote family croft at 56 Sangomore at Sango Bay which he had helped his Uncle Bert to renovate.
Lennon's cousin Stanley Parkes later recalled "John never forgot those times at Durness. They were among his happiest memories. He loved the wilderness. John was nine when he started coming up with my family to the croft in Durness. The croft belonged to my stepfather, Robert Sutherland, and John just loved the wildness and the openness of the place. We went fishing and hunting and John loved going up into the hills to draw or write poetry. John really loved hill walking, shooting and fishing. He used to catch salmon. He would have been quite a laird. In the last letter to me before he was killed he quoted a famous Scottish saying that says 'It's a braw, bricht moonlicht nicht since I last had a word'."
