The Caledonian Canal.

A full account of what happened to Bonzo can wait for now … perhaps indefinitely; enough to say that he was on duty again soon after John took us back to Gatwick for the journey north.

Inverness Marina was, well  ….. much the same as it was a fortnight ago.

Monday 19^th August 2013

The very nice lockkeeper welcomed us at Clachnaharry Sea Lock.

The very nice swing bridge operator kindly stopped the traffic in central Inverness to let us through.

And so it went on, very nice people opening and closing lock gates and swing bridges, taking our lines, smiling and being very calm and reassuring as our boat motored slowly through Highland Scotland. 

Past Caley Marine (where the very kind engineer had fixed my water pump) and on into Loch Ness   .. no less.

Loch Ness was windy and a little rough, so we retreated to Dochgarroch where we dined on Chicken Casserole and slept.

Tuesday 20^th August

Loch Ness Day.

As it was Loch Ness Day, we transited Loch Ness.

Loch Ness is big.

Loch Ness is about 20 miles long, a mile or two across and about 900 foot deep. We didn’t see the monster, but he might have been down there, somewhere.  We motored past Urquhart Castle and on up to Foyers.

Foyers lacked the customary red velvet carpet, revolving door, mirrors and suited men selling over-priced programmes and was pleasant.  We anchored in the shelter of the bay and enjoyed our lunch.

Next stop Fort Augustus.  It was a little crowded. We waited patiently for our turn to pass under the swing bridge, and to transit its 5 locks with 6 gates.  I had a brief technical discussion with the skipper of a rather big blue boat. The big blue boat’s skipper’s daughter later joined our crew for the afternoon and assisted us through the locks.

Later, at the top of this staircase of locks a very nice man not only invited us to raft our boat to his (“Brandy of Troon”) for our overnight stop, but even presented us each with a bottle of cold beer as we passed him our ropes.

Waiting to go up.

Such is the happy life of a canal yachtsman.

Wednesday 21^st August

Loch Oich Day

2 more lochs and a swing bridge.

The nice lady lockkeeper gave Jean a sticky gold star for having her lifejacket on.  I put mine on and she gave me one too.  I thought she had a somewhat motherly charm.

The river and canal up to Loch Oich is beautiful.  Loch Oich is beautiful.

We berthed on a convenient pontoon near the western end of Loch Oich.  We walked to the shop and visited the Well of the Six Skulls.  I wont tell you the whole story, but the plot involves a Clan feud, six people being decapitated, their heads being washed in the well (why?), a monument and a gift shop.  You can probably work out the bits in between, yourself.   I bought a copy of the Guradian. 

After lunch, we went for a walk back along Loch Oich and enjoyed the views.

Thursday 22^nd August

Loch Lochy and Neptune’s Staircase.

Loch Locky is very beautiful but I must protest about its silly name. 

It’s bad enough (for an Englishman) to have to cope with locking through locks between lochs without having to lock into a loch called “Loch Locky”.  Worse still try explaining all this over VHF channel 74 to the Gaelic lockkeeper who wants to know quite where you are. I suspect that even Donald Rumsfeld, in his prime, would have had some difficulty with this, although this may perhaps be yet another unknown unknown.

A loch

Thursday 22^nd was a nice hot and sunny day. Possibly the first really warm day that our intrepid twosomes have experienced this summer.

Jean put on her shorts.

Neptune’s Staircase was a breeze*.

* Neptune’s Staircase is, of course, the highest and steepest set of continuous locks in Great Britain.  What I thought was much more interesting however, is how the lockkeepers look after the resident ducklings.  The problem revolves around the fact that although baby ducks can swim, they can’t fly. If therefore, a baby duck is in a lock when the gates close it will get locked down to the lock below, and thence to next, and so on. This can lead to severe separation anxiety for both mother and baby duck and much sighing by passing tourists.  Anyway, as the lock gates close, clever ducks swim frantically for the gate, leaving some of the less-clever ducklings behind, at this stage mother duck usually returns to guide her errant babies to safety.  Unfortunately, slightly less-clever ducks (or more-clever ducklings) then tend to follow mother duck back into the lock (whither she is going to round up some of her children).  Thus chaos develops with ducks and ducklings rushing in and out of the lock between its ever-closing gates.  To the rescue, the noble lockkeeper who uses leftover crumbs from his lunch (to entice the duckling into one lock) and traditional Gaelic chants (to frighten others out of the closing lock) whilst if, necessary, switching of the hydraulic gates closing mechanism just in time to prevent any unfortunate (and irreversible) crushing of baby ducks.

One of Neptune's locks.

Friday 23^rd August

After a night moored with a view of Ben Nevis and, quite remarkably, having seen barely a single midge all summer, we came down the last double lock to Corpach, refuelled, thanked the lockkeeper and exited into the saltwater of Upper Loch Linnhe.

Ben Nevis

We motored down Loch Linnhe  stopping for the night at Port Ramsay.  Port Ramsay is a gap behind a few rocks on the top end of Lismore Island.  It is well sheltered and very pretty.

Saturday 24^th August

To Oban.

We have now truly circumnavigated somewhere because, Dear Reader, you will remember that we were here last winter with David.

Kerrera Marina hadn’t changed much. It was still quite pleasant and the loos still needed a clean and the rubbish skips were still full, but we like Kerrera Marina, and Oban has a Tescos.

We went to Tescos and also visited McCaig’s Tower (which is even better from the inside and not made out of breeze blocks at all).

Sunday 25^th August

On down to Loch Craignish and the Ardfern Yacht Centre.

The Ardfern Yacht Centre has the “biggest Chandlery in Scotland” (possibly .. or possibly not).  It has pontoons so you can “Walk ashore”  and the showers are free for berth holders.  Electricity is £3.50 per night.

We had a nice walk.

It was a nice hot sunny day.  We had chocolate ice creams.

Monday 26^th August

To Gigha.   We anchored, flubbered ashore and had another nice walk.

A long time ago, King Harkon and his fleet of 100 longboats rested here on their way to the Battle of Largs.  King Harkon knew where his towel was.

Tuesday 27^th August

Mull rounding day.  This involved passage planning.  Jean worked it out.  I worked it out.  We got the same answer. I found this reassuring.

It was foggy as we passed by the Mull of Kintyre so we had to sing louder than usual.   

Eventually we arrived in Campbeltown which appears to be in Ireland.

Frackers and being home without Bonzo

Executive Summary:

Our intrepid couple have arrived home after an epic circumnavigation of The Northern Isles (including Muckle Flugga, no less), to find their house and house sitters well but with no sign of their much-loved but deranged hybrid canine “guard dog” (aka “Bonzo.)

Essential background information:

Although, in many respects dog-like, Bonzo  is not your average German Shepherd – Rotweiler cross, lacking (as he does) normal canine intelligence. Bonzo has however, over the years, proved to be an effective guard dog and to be absent without leave on our return is most unusual.

Meanwhile:

Meanwhile, elsewhere in our county, there are frackers afoot.

Balcombe:

There appears to be a road-side competition in progress near Balcombe.  The competition is to see who can muster the biggest team.  The anti-frackers or the police?

Both sides appear to have similar tactics, these involve gathering on the roadside, talking and parking vehicles.  Every few hours a lorry drives out of (or into) the fracking site and both teams gather in the road to watch it.  The protesters team then try to stop the lorry and the police team try to stop the protesters from stopping the lorry.  As far as I can tell, once the lorry has got though, some of the police team give some of the protesters team a good telling off and in return the protesters either glue themselves together or shout at the police team.  Meanwhile, on sunny days an ice cream van sells ice cream (obviously) to the protesters. The ice cream van has a sign on its window “Against Fracking”.  It is not clear whether police officers eat ice cream or whether the van changes its sign to “In favour of fracking” when selling ice cream to the police.

The Anti-fracking protest

There is also a shop selling souvenirs and a campsite.

Both teams have dogs.

A dog van

Bonzo has a special dog detecting organ in his nose.

Has Bonzo joined the anti-frackers, or is romance in the air?

Inverness, Culloden and home

A quick update:  we’ve made it to Inverness and it’s been raining.

Inverness is in Scotland. 

We moored in Inverness Marina.

Sunset in Inverness Marina

Footloose moored next to us and did some cleaning.

Martin scrubbed our cockpit.

I had a short sleep.

Invigorated after my rest, it was time to get on with the manly task of fixing the engine. 

Unfortunately my efforts rendered a normally functioning engine unoperational.

 Fortunately Caley Marina was only a short bike ride away and rather like Stromness (see “Stromness etc.”) also had a very nice man who did welding and refused any payment for his work.

Saturday 3^rd August 2013

We hired a car and checked out Culloden. 

Reader(s) will remember that The Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 was the last pitched battle fought on British soil, until the invention of league football in 1894. We had a guided walk around a field by a strangely dressed actor, and later Martin was given a rifle to play with by the same man (now dressed in a kilt).  Martin did not wear a kilt, but a Danish man had to take off his shoes and run around shouting a lot. 

It reminded me of passport control at Gatwick.

After two days of sightseeing which included a very pleasant walk near the town of Cromarty, our happy team disbanded for the journey south.

Tuesday 6^th August

Home at last, but where is  Bonzo …………………….?

Erratum:  the author apologises unreservedly for the inadvertent opacity of the basking shark joke (16 July). This joke relies on the juxtaposition of a conceptual guitar case with a pun on the word “busking”.  Unfortunately the author was not aware, at the time of publication, that “busking” was spelt with a “u”. The author regrets any distress or confusion caused by this oversight.

Mousa to Inverness, Fog and Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel

To resume: our intrepid duo (my beloved and I) are locked in epic struggle with, not only the geography of  The British Isles, but  also with reality, the cosmos and, of course, my Use of English.

Friday 26^th July

The trip from Mousa to Fair Isle involved no more than three challenges:

1. Pull up anchor and leave anchorage without running into a newly-arrived cruise ship moored unobtrusively in the fog.
2. Sail (motor) through the choppy waters off Sumburgh Head (a breeze).
3. Find our way into North Haven (Fair Isle’s harbour) in thick fog …. This wasn’t entirely straightforward but we didn’t hit anything.

Meanwhile a rather odd looking seabird, obviously lost in the fog, had settled on our pushpit. It looked (to me) just like a Common Northern European Storm Petrel apart from the absence of white feathers on its rump … and it had a slightly unusual song.  Anyway, this bird was obviously lost but had miraculously hitched a lift from us in the fog.  Recognising immediately that this was Swinhoe’s Petrel and that it had therefore obviously flown (erroneously) all the way from Japan via South Africa to somewhere near Fair Isle, my beloved cooked it a nutrient-rich broth of sardine goulash laced with brandy. The bird tucked into this dish with obvious relish.

Next day we were delighted to hear that a solitary Swinhoe’s Petrel (now known locally as “Doreen”  .. for obvious reasons) had been spotted, trapped and ringed by expert birders at The Fair Isle Bird Observatory.  We understand that one of these expert birders had heard the unusual call of the bird later that night, having attracted it to his bird trap with the aid of his iPlayer  …on which he had a recording of the birdsong of the male of the species … Anyway, he had caught it, ringed it, and released it within minutes. We understand that he only scientific question left unanswered that evening was why this rare bird smelt of brandy.

Enough of Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel.  We (and it .. Doreen) had made it safely to Fair Isle.  (Much more of this exciting tale may one day be available online, but please don’t hold your breath).

 Fair Isle from the north light house

Saturday 27^th July

We had a nice walk followed by an excellent supper at the Bird Observatory.

We didn’t see Doreen again.

We like Fair Isle.

Sunday 28^th July

We set sail for Kirkwall.

Martin met us at the marina. This was nice.

Monday 29^th July.

Our wedding anniversary.

We visited the dig at Ness of Brodgar. Sir Baldric was also there, making a film.

Kirkwall also has a Lidl, so we went there. We didn’t see Baldric at Lidl.

Tuesday 30^th July

We sailed from Kirkwall to Holm Sound next to a Churchill Barrier on Orkney.

This was a nice sunny sail.  We weren’t racing but we did arrive before Footloose.

Wednesday 31^st July

To Wick.

Crossing from Kirkwall to Wick involves leaving The Orkney Islands and arriving in Scotland.  In between lies the infamous Pentland Firth.  This is the “roughest and most dangerous stretch of water in Europe” *.

We arrived in Wick without a drama.  This was a good thing.

Thursday 1^st August

Wick to Inverness is about 70 miles.  This is “much too far”.

“Passage Planning” is important and I think at this stage I should attempt explain something of this dark art to you, Dear Reader(s) and Ornithologist(s).

Passage Planning can be either broken down into a number of Logical Stages or you can simply set off and generally “see how it all goes”.  The RYA recommends the former method. 

These Logical Stages may be summarised by answering the following questions:

1.                  Where are we now?

2.                  Where are we going?

3.                  Why?

4.                  Why not?

… and so forth … I don’t want to get too technical (and risk upsetting much of the population of Fair Isle and the birding community in general, again .. not to mention most of my newly found readers and followers).

Another method of Passage Planning is the “Footloose method”.  This involves asking the skipper of Footloose, what time his leaving, frowning slightly at the reply, and then after a considered pause, agreeing with his plans.  This method is reliable and simple and avoids all that tedious messing about with tide tables, sextants, charts, maps, and meteorological calculations and simply relies on someone who has a track record of “knowing where their towel is”.

Anyway, having found a weather forecast that wasn’t entirely unsatisfactory we resolved to set off at 0400.  We duly set off at 0500, which was of course just as early.

The trip to Inverness had the following key features:

1.                  It pissed with rain.

2.                  It was windy.

3.                  There were waves.

4.                  It pissed with rain.

Eventually we arrived in Inverness.

Apart from the bus station, we really do like Inverness.

* Martin (personal communication, 2013)