It is a postcard-pretty farmstead which has been converted into a writers’ retreat by the Arvon Foundation. Established to offer “a creative break from routine life, and the company of other writers”, Arvon numbers among its patrons such literary luminaries as Salman Rushdie and Doris Lessing, and has two other schools in Yorkshire and Devon. Courses range from comedy scriptwriting to performance poetry and the art of songwriting.
Guided by prize-winning authors William Dalrymple and Philip Marsden, we had five days to find out how Bill Bryson does it. “Writing about travels,” Malcolm Muggeridge once carped, “is nearly always tedious, travelling being, like war and fornication, exciting but not interesting.” Our globe- hopping tutors, being firmly of the travel-broadens-the-mind school of writing, debunked the old humbug in no time.I had come to Moniack Mhor to cut loose from the purgatory of commuting, to trade the stale stench of the London Underground for the clear, pine- tinged air of the Great Glen and, thus inspired, write the first four chapters of a best-selling travelogue with advice from the experts.But to my shame, at the end of the week I found that I was only 2,000 words better off – 2,000 words of purple prose waxing adjectival about blood-red sunsets over gently swaying palm trees.Writer’s block can strike at any time. But, if at all possible, it is best avoided when you are booked on a writing course Dalrymple and Marsden did their best with me.

WE WERE, it had to be said, a motley crew. There was Jackie, a graphic designer who was studying the art of sheep castration at evening classes; Judith, a one-time famine adviser in war-torn Eritrea; and Tony, an ex-lawyer and now a fledgling New Age mystic They weren’t even the half of it. Three times a year, it seemed the haenyo took a break of 20 days and this looked to be one of them There were always pluses, however. In the harbour, we found a monument depicting three haenyo wearing goggles and with fishing baskets slung over their shoulders. Perhaps the first line of each of the four verses inscribed on a plaque describes their plight “We are such poor haenyo .. We get up in the morning and come back late at night .. We get separated from our families … Wherever we go, people take our seafood …”Two days later, I left Cheju on the overnight ferry to Pusan, South Korea’s second largest city In-gum, meanwhile, was helpful to the end. Among the crowds she found me a student studying Chinese at university in Seoul, Ming-cho.Ming-cho’s English seemed confined to “have you seen Titanic?” but she must have got the low-down about the haenyo.The next morning, we took a taxi to a scruffy beach called Chung-li.

There, a woman crouched by the water’s edge, her small dark face only visible through a hole in her wetsuit hood. When she saw me, she screamed, grabbed her flippers and plunged into the sea. Not the stuff of dreams, I thought, but at least I had seen the haenyo dive.Fact FileGetting thereSince British Airways abandoned its flights to Seoul a year ago, the only airline with direct services is Korean Air, with five non-stop flights a week from Heathrow.For travel before 15 December, the discount agency Quest Worldwide (0181- 547 3322) quotes a fare of pounds 375 on Korean Air, until the end of November; or pounds 301, via Paris, from any of the UK airports served by Air France.Getting aroundDomestic flights are cheap and frequent, and the rail service is good.More informationThe Korean National Tourism Corporation, 20 St George Street, London W1R 9RE (0171-491 1717). Who wants to be a haenyo?In-gum was a sorry that I would be leaving Cheju without seeing the haenyo dive. On the island of Udo, for example, a 10-minute ferry ride east of Songsan, with a population of 2,100 and where 400 haenyo lived and worked, they were “all in the field”.

More and more of the younger generation, like In-gum, was getting educated, then going to the mainland. There, more women, with faces that looked like worn leather, were selling necklaces strung with tiny sea shells All were haenyo. At last, I had found them.Asking questions via In-gum, I found women, mostly in their fifties and sixties, who had been diving for most of their adult lives. Some might go down as deep as 40 metres, most went to 20 metres. They held their breath for up to three minutes, some for five.