Aitchison regularly spent holidays on Arran with his family during the 1930's and his visual memory became well stocked with images of the landscape - the distinctive silhouette of Holy Island and the outline of Goatfell, Arran's highest peak, have recurred with great frequency as landscape setting in his paintings.

In 1970 Aitchison returned for the first time, since childhood, to scatter his Mother's ashes and when his brother retired to Lamlash in 1990 he continued to visit until Raymund's tragic death in a fire five years later.