trottyworld

Wildlife and landscapes

2012-01-27T22:05:00.000Z

The other morning I arose early to try to bag a nice sunrise photograph. What I had in mind was to catch the sun just as it rose above the Isle of Arran, which lies to the east of us. To start the project I put on generous layers of warm clothing then left the house in the cold half-light of the morning. Passing the village bakery at this time the nostrils are assaulted with one of the most enticing smells known to man, fresh bread straight from the oven, but I walked on by and turned up the lane to the golf course, immediately regretting not wearing wellington boots as rainwater squirted up from each step I took across the sodden grass. It was a fine morning but before I could get into a good position overlooking Kilbrannan Sound a dark cloud had raced overhead to spoil the sunrise. The photographic results were hardly worth the effort but in one of the shots I managed to capture Airds Castle, or what little remains of it, in the foreground. As I studied this from my viewpoint on the edge of the rain-drenched golf course I tried to imagine the role this place had played in this landscape. A river of ice had once scraped out the 100 metre deep chasm lying before me and as the glacier receded there would have been a terrific ice cliff here at which the waves nibbled away until eventually every drop had floated away. The sea level would then have been higher than today (there is a line of old cliffs all around the area as evidence of this) but over time this changed, the land itself rising higher to form a new shoreline. Then at some point humans began to settle here, one of whom spotted the craggy outcrop overlooking the water and saw it as a defensible position, from what, nobody knows. After the immensely powerful natural forces that had shaped everything around me, man’s impact here seems very small.

Back home again and the list of different creatures entering our back garden continues to rise. Two rabbits come through from the back now to nibble at some of the more succulent grasses, generally keeping pace with any winter growth, although it has to be said they they seem to prefer next door’s slightly longer herbage to our sodden greenery.

Then a pheasant dropped by and stood at the fence, gazing longingly at the longer grass next door but not quite being able to work out how to get there.

Most interesting is this specimen, strangely reminiscent of Kate, who stacked a trailer-load of wood into a neat pile next to our coal bunker. Memories came flooding back of our winter in the mountains of northern Italy two years ago when we survived on donations of olive wood for the fire and filled our glasses with wine in cartons from the local Lidl supermarket. The smell of the freshly split logs now invades us as we step outside but we must wait many months before we can reap the benefit of the heat energy stored here. Unlike the olive wood, these spruce logs are full of sap and need to dry out for many months before we can burn them.

We are delighted to learn that our youngest son Ben, having just returned from a musical trip to New York, is at last achieving some success and recognition in the world of music, such that we are beginning to lose count of the number of bands he now plays with. Over the next few months almost anyone living in Britain will have an opportunity to see and hear one of them, The Albion Band, in concert, as they are on a huge nationwide tour. We’ll be off to Edinburgh in March to see them but for a sampler and a cracking good sea shanty, click on the player below.

Mooring soon

2012-01-14T09:53:00.000Z

After many years in the planning, things are finally taking shape for visitor moorings to be laid outside Carradale Harbour, making it a place where yachties like us can moor up for the night during the sailing season. My involvement in this has been to use Cirrus’ chartplotter to generate some latitude and longitude positions so that the required permissions can be obtained. In this photo, imagine a line of yachts just right of centre, quite close to the shore, lying between 55° 35.627’N, 5° 27.904’W and 55° 35.664’N, 5° 27.963’W and you get the picture. Having visitor moorings in place will put the village on a par with many other small communities in the Clyde and indeed all over the Western Isles. It is because there are so many places to stop that makes this area so attractive to sailors and word will soon get around that Carradale has moorings, sheltered from the westerly winds, close to the shore so that yachties can pop ashore for a drink or a meal. We can expect a steady stream of yellow-welly-clad visitors to Carradale this summer.

Given some dry weather Cirrus’ lower parts will soon start to get some attention. I have promised her that the many layers of antifouling paint will be scraped off this winter and made a brief start at this job last week. But then decorating inside the house once again took over our lives after Kate disappeared upstairs and began stripping the sad-looking wood-chip paper from the bedroom ceiling, not a job for the faint-hearted. In the end I noticed what she had achieved and had no choice but to join in and apply some layers of fresh paint but then when my back was turned again she had started stripping the walls too. So we decided finally that a complete room makeover was the only option left and each evening now we admire the paint splatters in each other’s hair and are reminded of our house makeover in Yeovil last winter.

On a day off we drag ourselves to the top of Deer Hill, our favourite jaunt from the house, to admire the winter views and smell the winter smells. It is a rare day of almost calm. The sea is smooth with tinted ripples dappling its surface although the air is cool, threatening frost.

Hogmanay

2012-01-05T20:15:00.001Z

A sparrowhawk appears suddenly in our back garden, a sneak attack around our bird feeders which are coveted by its prey, plump chaffinches, blue/great/coal tits and tasty looking blackbirds. The hawk’s strategy is to fly low and fast over the rooftop or around the side of the house so that its approach is hidden… until the very last moment. Perhaps the washing lines strung across the garden from three poles are hunting obstacles, but given this bird’s manoeuvrability in flight they are clearly not a deterrent. Seeing such an animal in our tiny garden and so close to the house, seems amazing and we can hardly contain our excitement. I am standing by the rear window talking on the phone, puzzling the caller with my yelp of delight then my silence as I battle with competing demands – should I try to get a photo or summon Kate so she too can see – then the hawk is gone, away to try his luck elsewhere. Several days later I am again on the phone when I witness a successful attack and the hawk flies off with a dunnock taken from the ground beneath our kitchen window.

Just before Christmas we took a wild walk through forest tracks to the north of Carradale, past Christmas trees decorated with long streamers of dead grass blown there by the wind, when a golden eagle swooped low over our heads, its white markings above and below the broad wings identifying it as a juvenile, something we would never have guessed from its size alone. We both stood awestruck as it disappeared behind some trees, our heads rotating wildly in case it should reappear, but our presence no doubt alerted any nearby prey and the first glimpse was all we got.

The new year has arrived and another visitor, less welcome than the flying raptors, has come to our notice. Late in the evening we hear scuffling noises in the ‘coombe’, a word used here to describe the space inside the house but outside our bedroom walls where the roof slope overhangs the ground floor. This requires investigation so in the morning I don protective boiler suit and dust mask then crawl along the rafters to the spot where we think the noise emanates. There is nothing to see, of course, other than some shredded carpet underlay (our mistake in storing it there) and a few small parcels that DNA analysis might identify as animal droppings. Even without this slim evidence it seems very likely that a wee beastie would want to seek the warmth of our home for shelter and since it would be impossible to make the house completely secure from all species of small mammal, we cease to worry and get on with our lives.

We soon learn that the first days of a new year are an important time here in Scotland. This is a time for visiting friends and neighbours and not a time when we can expect to be alone for long. Suddenly our lives have evolved into a social whirl as invitations pour in and our house in turn fills with visitors. We first met David, Liz and their charming daughter, Sophia, when Cirrus Cat was berthed in Cornwall in 2010 so we were delighted to have them arrive unexpectedly for a visit. Sophia has now grown from a delightful baby into an energetic and indefatigable three-year old to whom every experience is new and exciting. Bedtime stories read by friendly older people, sleeping in a strange bed for one night then waking up in morning semi-darkness in a house where the lights won’t turn on and a kettle of water is being heated on the coal stove because the storm outside has brought another power cut, all this may be a far cry from her normal everyday existence but she is endlessly adaptable and seems to take it in her stride.

The early morning is particularly wild, wind gusts shrieking around the house, rain blasting against the windows and the electricity failed just as I had finished in the (electric) shower, rather conveniently so I thought. We apologise to our guests for the absence of promised hot showers as our stove is now the only source of heat, its flat top only enabling Kate to cook porridge for breakfast and to boil water for hot drinks. By the time our guests leave us there is still no power and unlike the brief 4-hour power failure in last week’s storm, this one lasts all day and through the following night. In the morning we still have no electricity but we know that many of our neighbours in the village will be worse off than us as they rely totally on it for heating and cooking. Reduced to a more primitive lifestyle than we usually enjoy we begin to consider what lies before us. The telephone is silent, mobile phone signals are absent and we find ourselves more out of touch with the world than if we were sailing offshore on Cirrus. There is no television nor radio, no hot water other than what we can heat by the kettleful and as darkness descends on Carradale for a second night, no streetlights illuminate the world outside. Although the storm has abated, every so often there is a squall which brings wind and a shower of rain or hail but in between these the sky is clear and there are stars and a sliver of moon in the sky, our only source of light. It is the inability to communicate that means most to us and our thoughts become ever more fanciful. What if civilisation has collapsed and world order broken down? How would we know? Here we are isolated from the world without any way of finding out what is happening ‘out there’. Whilst we may be able to keep ourselves warm, for the moment, our food supply is limited, more limited still once the freezer thaws out and food stored in it goes bad. Our survival might soon depend upon our ability to hunt and kill animals or to gather shellfish from the shore. Although there is nothing remotely edible visible from our windows, we know there are deer in the forest. But how does one bring down a deer with only a hand axe and a screwdriver as weapons?

The next morning it is stormy and wet again so, still without electricity, we go foraging for food, in the car, to the shops in Campbeltown. The blackout in Carradale is localised, it seems. In Campbeltown there is electricity, lights, warmth in the shops and smiling faces. Civilisation as we know it still exists; world order is intact.

Weather windows

2011-12-17T15:48:00.003Z

As they tend to, the latest storm has moved on elsewhere for the moment and as I write, the air has calmed down just a little back in Scotland. We know this because even whilst away the Internet gives us access to the Campbeltown webcam which has survived the big storm to give us this lovely shot of the Christmas lights coming on behind the harbour. Unlike a few days ago when the surface of Campbeltown Loch was being picked up and thrown about by the wind, rain spotting the camera lens, now twinkling lights are being reflected off the water and the boats are looking snug and safe.

Meanwhile, in Worthing we gaze at the sunset from the window of our Tony’s flat, not a million miles from Kintyre but a rather different skyline to the one we are used to, the one which often has eagles glaring at us from the skies above who I often imagine to be drooling at the sight of prey they see far beneath them. Worthing has a large population of very large gulls which soar overhead then swoop down on chip-wrapper leavings before settling on the rooftops at night. There is also a large elderly population here, not that dissimilar from Carradale really, but here they must be generally less mobile as so many of them are rampaging around the streets in their electric wheelchairs, bouncing up and down the kerbs and risking life and limb crossing busy streets. There are so many of these contrivances that a booming sale and repair market has spring up, bringing new life to the business community. I can’t make out whether it is just my imagination but it seems that a rider’s grim face always appears along with the whining sound of a mobility scooter. Perhaps one should not underestimate the degree of coordination required to pilot one of these chariots, steered as they are via the smallest of joysticks and for an elderly person not brought up on the wonders of Playstation or the Xbox, guiding this machine around pedestrianized streets must represent a significant challenge. So the serious face may be nothing more than concentration, with a touch of blind panic thrown in. I do wonder, however, whether the faces might also be reflecting our disapproval, as if we, the able-bodied, make the rider feel they are doing something antisocial, as if we are saying “You are a menace to us all on that thing!” or “Surely you’re fit enough to be walking!” Perhaps it is just that society hasn’t quite made the adjustment to accept this relatively new form of transport as a part of our lives. Perhaps the first person to ride on a horse also had a grim set to their features that were misinterpreted by those around them.

From Tony’s place we move on to Ticehurst to visit my mother, herself of a venerable age but as yet not having succumbed to the mobility scooter. She has always been a good walker, striding along towing others in her wake, and few people in her own age group have ever been able to keep up with her. Approaching ninety now she complains at her failing faculties but she still wants to get out and about in the countryside whenever she can. It frustrates her that she cannot do this as often as she likes and wintry weather in particular cramps her style. She has made the right choice in living in the most benign corner of the country, weather-wise, a place where rainfall generally comes in fitful sprinkles or sometimes not at all and wind barely ruffles the hair.

Or so we thought…

Yet another of those bizarre Met Office overlaid maps with their threatening amoeba-like blobs of colour tells the story of wind and rain for the next few days. It seems we just cannot escape, no matter where we go. We now need to time our journey home so as to slide between the yellow growths as they shuffle across the country, not an easy thing to achieve. Somewhere in the past, before the advent of amoeba-covered charts, we would have set off blindly and got home safely without the stress that comes from worrying about where the predicted rainstorm is going to strike or when the forecast wind will carry us away. Are we really better off today with the help of all this information?

In the end our journey home proved far more acceptable than the forecast led us to expect. Some rain showers did find us and there was some wind but somehow we managed to avoid anything really nasty. Back here in Scotland the landscape has changed in our absence but our house has survived whatever has been thrown at it whilst we were away. Only the windows bear testament to the storm, spattered as they are with a salty residue, a little bit of Atlantic Ocean transported across Kintyre, no doubt.

We have barely recovered from our journey but can’t wait to get out and about so we can see what effect the onset of winter has had. There are white tops on all the summits now and with ice on the path up Deer Hill, some care is needed. Whilst tradition dictates that we bring a tree inside the house at this time of year, it wasn’t difficult to find a suitable one outside for this picture… and the halo on top came free. So we wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2012.

And regards from Ailsa too.

Storm warnings

2011-12-09T09:46:00.004Z

Once again we are putting ourselves through the torment of a seemingly endless car journey the length of Britain, our legs going stiff from sitting in the car for so long, our eyes straining to see through the spray picked up from the motorway surface and atomised in front of us, our arms aching from hanging onto the steering wheel shuffling it from side to side. Can there be anyone left in this country who derives any pleasure from driving long distances on our roads… apart from Jeremy Clarkson, that is?

The day before we set off the ‘Rest-and-be-Thankful’ pass on the A83 between Inverary and Tarbet was blocked by a landslip, as it frequently is in winter, this time the steep slope beside the road being made unstable by the vast quantities of rain we have been experiencing of late. Minutes before we arrived there the road was again pelted by hail but despite this we did get through safely and by the time we were on the motorway heading south on the outskirts of Glasgow we thought we were through the worst. Then one of the black-edged clouds hovering up in the sky, stuffed to bursting with snow, caught us by surprise, determined as it was to empty its load on the M74 before we could get away. The sky darkens, an icy wind whips up and our wheels are soon making dark tracks through a white blanket covering the road surface. We can tell though that this is more sleet than proper snow as the flakes are splattering wetly on our windscreen (proper snowflakes are lighter so they don’t actually touch the windscreen, they are buffeted away on the wedge of compressed air which rides just ahead, skimming over the roof of the car) but still the lower portion of each car and lorry disappears into spray and our wipers sweep great blobs of sticky white stuff aside. We push on into the maelstrom for fifteen minutes or so until we see light in the sky ahead and we know we have survived the worst the cloud can do. The air warms a little now and we emerge into a dryer world, one just beyond the reach of the cloudburst.

But we still have many miles to travel, we are just starting out, and there are plenty of other clouds up there with our names etched on them so we plod on hour after hour, stopping now and again for coffee, switching places in the car, then back on the road again.

We stop for one night in Coventry then journey onwards to Worthing in Sussex the next day. It is here that our mission takes place, helping to install Tony, our eldest, into a new apartment. Our little yellow car is being used to transport more than just us. Somehow we have managed to squeeze a table and four chairs in through the rear door together with inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags for us to use until we are able to fit out the apartment properly. On arrival there is much to be done to ensure Tony can live there worry-free. We get to meet his neighbours, learn to navigate ourselves to the nearest shops, install his personal effects then take a break to visit son Mike in Yeovil, part of a round tour of our scattered family.

Out of interest, when we are away we like to check on what the weather is doing back home on Kintyre, just to see what we are missing out on. When the south coast of England does receive severe weather the locals make a big fuss over it, going on about how unusual it is, how many years since this temperature or that rainfall. For those of us living on the west coast of Scotland, severe weather is more the norm and what we class as exceptional is more extreme than most people have the stomach for. Kate and I reserve the term ‘exciting’ for these events and when we check with the Met Office we see immediately that just such an exciting event is winding itself up over our area of Scotland. Their colour-coded severe weather warnings overlaid on the map of Britain tell us that the central belt of Scotland, which stretches from Campbeltown to Edinburgh, is being blasted by a storm of truly magnificent proportions. Since moving to Carradale we have already experienced several of these storms and we have great confidence in our ‘wee hoosy’ in its ability to stand up to storms of this severity. Being so far away when this one hits means that things are completely outside our control anyway but nevertheless it still leaves us with a feeling of disquiet. There will almost certainly be a path of destruction carved across Scotland in fallen trees and damaged roofs and this time all we can do is take comfort in the thought that if we were at home then there would be little we’d be able to do either, apart from lose sleep listening to the wind howling past outside.

Rhonadale ramble

2011-11-20T13:54:00.003Z

It takes no more than a dry day with maybe the promise of some sunshine to get us pulling on the walking shoes, making up some sandwiches and planning some sort of a walk. We must remember though that it is winter now and the shorter days mean we need to take things more seriously – spare clothing, a torch, hats and gloves travel with us now.

Rhonadale had in fact been winking at us for some time; we were just waiting for the right weather. Sufficiently close to seem easy, sufficiently far away to be a challenge, this roundabout tour of the Carradale glen would take us on a hillside traverse broadly following the border between the forest and the lush farmland that has brought people to this place for so many centuries. But first, a small lesson in terminology. We live in Carradale, one of a number of ‘dales’ in this area of Scotland, a place where one might expect the word ‘glen’ to be more normally used. We have the Norsemen who once lived here to thank for this since the King of Norway once ruled the Scottish Western Isles and left more than his DNA to the generations that followed. Locals today tend to ignore the tautology and refer to the broad green valley through which the twisting tongue of Carradale Water flows as ‘Carradale Glen’, as if the Norsemen had never set foot here at all, but we who walk here for the first time try to visualise the place as it might have once been, wild and largely untamed.

The Forestry roads allow us to complete a circuit of the valley without excessive height gain or loss but at the cost of some considerable mileage as these roads follow every contour of the land. Much of the timber here shows the results of recent gales which have battered the area, fallen timber lying untouched and showing clearly the direction the wind followed. Above the treetops though, the cleared land is providing a habitat for the Peregrine Falcon, several of which we could see soaring above us, scanning the land for small birds which are their main prey. We are fascinated to watch their tail feathers which in soaring flight are held tight together then they are suddenly fanned out to act as a brake when they need to slow down or change direction. This is the speed-freak of the animal kingdom whose 200 mph dives give their prey little chance. By contrast another raptor, the buzzard, has a hunting strategy which is quite sedate, even lazy. I photographed this one squatting on a bare tree at the back of our house, just sitting there waiting for lunch to amble beneath him.

After some miles our forest road comes to an end without warning leaving us no option but to trek across recently felled woodland, a difficult and dangerous undertaking, to reach the farm below us from where we can cross Carradale Water over one of its few bridges. ‘Off-piste’ walking is not easy anywhere around where we live and progress slows as we stumble through the mesh of fallen branches and stumps, slipping and sliding, until finally we are alongside the barbed-wire fence which protects the forest from incursion by sheep. Clambering over (there is no other option) we are now on rough moorland and can descend rather more easily to Brackley Farm in the valley bottom. It slowly dawns on us though that we have only now arrived at our furthest point from home and our legs are already complaining, quiet murmurings of discontent which become louder with each step.

The sun at last emerges from cloud cover but lies low above the hills, casting long shadows though still warming our faces as we march homeward. We realise, as we contemplate the distance we still have to go, that with this walk we might have bitten off a little more than we realised, more than we were prepared for. Our legs shout more and more loudly with each step. Aches and pains brought on initially by the netball and badminton we have recently each begun playing in the Village Hall reappear now and resolve themselves into thigh-stabbing twinges as we progress homewards. Perhaps it was too much to expect that we would simply be able to pick up the sport where we left off so many years ago and not suffer the consequences.

But all the aches are forgotten when Kate spots these gorgeous specimens on the roadside verge, a tiny white cap, barely half an inch (two centimetres) tall, peeping through a bed of moss.

Then another fungus, blue and spiky edged, almost hidden amongst the leaf debris and grass and growing out of something decaying beneath.

Somehow we find the energy to open our front door and run a hot bath to drop our legs into to ease the aches and pains. Not for the first time we reflect on the pleasure we get from pushing our bodies around the mountains of our land. Many years ago when I used to come north to Scotland with friends to romp over the mountains around Glencoe we used to have a saying, ‘Pain is pleasure’, a strange way of expressing the joy we all felt after a good day on the hills.

Remember, remember...

2011-11-05T19:03:00.003Z

On the 13th April 1570 a couple living in York, England, gave birth to a son who in later life was to attempt to alter forever the course of history of his country, a man who in failing to do just that ultimately achieved immortality, for his name if not for himself. Sadly, perhaps, he was to die a few months before his thirty-sixth birthday without ever knowing that sometime in the future his name would come so readily to the lips of every English man and woman and that his deeds would be celebrated each year with a festival of fire, fireworks and fun. I refer, of course, to Guy Fawkes, or Guido as he liked to be known, a man who became famous for failing, in 1605, to set off a charge of gunpowder beneath the Palace of Westminster in London.

Guy Fawkes may have been unknown until the moment of his downfall but what is clear from recent events is that he is making a comeback today in the shape of masks being worn in cities all over the world by protesters in need of anonymity. His stylized face has become an international symbol for rebellion and were it not for the manner in which his body was disposed of (quartered and distributed to the four corners of the kingdom) one might be fearful of him turning in his grave at the thought of the royalties he is missing out on.

Having both been brought up with ‘Guy Fawkes Night’ as a part of our lives, Kate and I arrive at the first November of our life in Scotland with little understanding of the significance of this event to the people who now live around us and to others like them who live in the more northern parts of the kingdom. One has to delve into history a little to understand and appreciate that it was only two years before the gunpowder plot, in 1603, that King James VI of Scotland acceded to the English throne thus also becoming King James I of England, immediately announcing his intention to unite the two realms and give birth to the concept of Great Britain as we know it today. Guy Fawkes, as well as being a fanatical Catholic, had no love for the Scots and it was his and his fellow conspirators’ intention to assassinate the king (together with most of his government) and place the king’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, on the throne instead. Fawkes’ capture, trial and execution are now amongst the most well documented of historical events and almost from the moment of his death Londoners were being encouraged by Act of Parliament to celebrate the king’s close escape by lighting bonfires, a custom that continues to this day even if the cause being celebrated is lost in time.

The union of England and Scotland might have been in the mind of King James but at the time it was far from popular elsewhere in either country so despite his intentions it was not until 1st May 1707, in the reign of Queen Anne, that full union between the two countries finally came into being. All this is water under the bridge now, of course, but with an understanding of the historical perspective it is far easier to understand why the story surrounding Guy Fawkes is less likely to be celebrated here in Scotland. At the time of the plot the two countries may have been separate ‘states’ but most who lived in Scotland would have regarded the goings on of an absent and far from popular monarch down south in London as largely irrelevant.

All this having been said the village of Carradale is not slow to seize an opportunity to light a celebratory bonfire or to set off a few fireworks. We don’t need the excuse of a close escape from assassination for this, merely a group of schoolchildren with home-made lanterns keen to venture out in the dark in the safe company of the rest of the village.

The stars had been blazing away in the clear sky for some hours by the time the participants were all gathered at the primary school, lanterns were lit and held aloft, then the skirl of the pipes announced the start of the procession across the village to the playing field where things were starting to get underway. An enormous pile of wooden pallets, kindly donated by Jewsons, was soon alight and we were queuing for hot soup just as the pipes started again, this time to coincide with a spectacular firework display, funded courtesy of the Kintyre Windfarm Trust. There may have been some English people present who looked expectantly for the effigy atop the bonfire but somehow this was not necessary for the occasion and the absence of Guy Fawkes took away nothing at all from the event. Maybe we were just celebrating the beginning of the winter season – who cares anyway.

Despite the cold of the night we felt bathed in warmth from the company of villagers like us who have chosen to make this place their home. When we finally steered ourselves the short distance back home, half a moon was staring at us from above, lighting our way like a searchlight though hiding the galaxy of stars behind it. The air was still and it was quiet once more, the wildlife going back to sleep again, glad it was all over for another year.

Windows too

2011-10-29T18:05:00.003+01:00

Our lives in Carradale have been brightened by changes to our house, alterations we never expected to have done so quickly. This is largely due to us being used to a world where engaging tradesmen is a slow process, where even getting someone to come round and estimate can be tiresome and from there onwards you are forever waiting for the call that tells you they are about to start. In our part of Scotland we are discovering that things happen rather differently. Without fail, all our tradesmen have been enthusiastic workers who turn up on time then just get on with the job, barely even stopping for a cup of tea. Sometimes the only indication that they have arrived has been the thump of their ladder on the roof while we are still struggling to wake up. It seems the only impediment to their work is the weather but this has to be pretty grim by most people’s standards before they stop working and take shelter.

Windows now fitted into our sloping roof at the back of the house transform the landing at the top of our stairs and the new window in our ‘Tiny Room’, our spare bedroom or workroom, creates a bright room where before there was darkness as well as giving us a fresh view out from the back of the house. Alex, Willie and Jim all worked impressively hard in atrocious conditions, a cold wind blasting in from the west bringing with it showers liberally sprinkled with hailstones - and this was the better of the two days! It has to be admitted that before everything could be made watertight there was some slight ingress of water but this is not a big issue – we sailors are used to this. The new room is Kate’s room, a place where she is safe in the knowledge that she can spread out her ‘personal things’ there without fear of interference from any of my ‘man-related’ things. My collection of these, drill, angle-grinder, bits of pipe, etc., are currently migrating towards the garden shed.

Just for the moment though we have to park our re-organisational skills as we are prompted by our diary to embark on a long journey south in our own car, its first venture outside Scotland and indeed its very first contact with a motorway. Although Kate and I share the driving, a distance like this is something of a challenge for our small car. However we decide that using it will enable us to make visits to our scattered family without having to put too much thought into the planning so ‘Daffy’ is duly loaded up and off we go.

After an overnight stop in Leicester we are soon deep in the Hampshire countryside looking for a yurt [a portable, bent wood-framed dwelling structure] in which we spend three nights celebrating the birthday and retirement of our friend Gerry. Our yurt was called ‘Beechy’ and was one of six similar ones nestling in the Meon Valley that twenty-four of us honoured friends occupied for the weekend. This was a new experience for all of us but we were pleasantly surprised by the cosy interior and once the wood-burning stove was alight it was amazingly warm. The whole weekend was superbly organised by Gerry’s husband Rich in his own inimitable style, convivially relaxing, a great time spent in the company of many new friends, a few old ones and a dog called Sam.Everyone, except Sam, contributed to the catering arrangements which meant that we fed and watered ourselves well, perhaps a little too well, and the weather was kind to us too, a blast of warm continental air arriving just as we did and not a drop of rain falling on us.

The same could not be said of our return journey to Scotland, however, during which at times we found ourselves navigating almost blind along heavily trafficked roads hidden under dense clouds of spray. The previous day whilst stuck for hours in almost stationary traffic on the M25 it struck me that motorways share many of the characteristics of a prison; from the moment you turn onto the approach slip road you are completely trapped, unable to leave until the next exit comes along, until you have done your time. Any free will you think you might have is completely subrogated for the duration of your sentence. The only tolerated behaviour is driving in one direction at a similar speed to everyone else, stopping is not allowed, no matter what happens, and if like me and thousands of others you have been given a long sentence then you just have to serve your time, sitting behind the steering wheel shuffling forwards an inch at a time wishing you were somewhere else. Under these conditions it is small wonder that our baser urges emerge for none of us have committed any crime to put us in this place. Yet bizarrely we voluntarily incarcerate ourselves time and again without a second thought. The motorway experience has become an accepted feature of modern life, to be suffered in silence without complaint.

Our release from this prison finally comes as we cross the Erskine Bridge just west of Glasgow and turn along the shores of Loch Lomond. Suddenly we are surrounded by hills all tinted shades of brown and gold, until the rain starts again and the landscape disappears into the haze and is lost to us. 1,460 miles of driving since we left home and there is little that beats switching off the ignition outside our own front door.

A day out with Ailsa

2011-10-17T17:27:00.004+01:00

We first met Ailsa soon after moving to our house in Carrradale as she is a frequent passer-by in the company of her owner, Betty, and immediately we fell in love with this affectionate animal. Unless, of course, you are one of those who believe in not ascribing human emotions to pets and other animals, in which case you would have to say that Ailsa is irrevocably drawn towards humans and would stay forever with someone who treats her right, which in her book means being fed and having her thick coat tussled and ruffled regularly. Get the behaviour just right and sooner or later you are treated to the full tummy exposure where she lies supine, head back and eyes half closed, in a position we humans would only describe as expressing sheer contentment.

So, borrowing Ailsa for a few hours one afternoon I set off down to the burn then across the playing field towards the path up Deer Hill. I am looking forward to the chance to stretch my legs up to the summit of our local hillock from where Kilbrannan Sound can be viewed from end to end and Arran’s dark mountains spread across the horizon. Walking in Ailsa’s company provides just the excuse I need. This is a route she follows almost every day so her lead is soon off and we traipse across the village football field to a gate which opens onto the forestry track, then onto a narrower path rising to the left steeply through mixed conifer and deciduous woodland. This part is a section of the Kintyre Way, marked with carved green posts and well maintained, the tough grass underfoot being regularly cut back and drainage channels kept cleared to reduce erosion. But despite this being familiar ground for her, Ailsa is strangely reluctant to follow me and seems totally unmoved by my calling her name. She stands looking at me as I walk on, as if to say, ‘Well I don’t think much of the way this walk is going just now. You really have no idea how to go for a walk, do you?’ Rather than follow my lead she galloped off in an instant when she spotted a family using the swings in the playground so that I had to chase her and apologise for my lack of control of the animal. What am I doing wrong? Perhaps there is more to this dog-walking lark than I thought. Here we are marching along enjoying the scenery, the fresh air, feeling the wind on our faces, the rough ground underfoot, the sun on our backs, surely this is enough to please anyone. What more could a dog possibly want?

My voice is getting hoarse from calling her name, to no effect, and I may be imagining this but it rather seems that her facial expression, or the canine equivalent, is registering something close to boredom, possibly verging on disgust. Then I recall Betty saying something about stones and it slowly dawns on me that Ailsa is a Golden Retriever whose natural inclination must be towards, well, retrieving. I cast about and bend down to pick up a rounded stone, of which there are plenty to be found, and immediately there is a transformation in Ailsa’s behaviour. The moment the stone is in my hand she bounds up to me, tail wagging and mouth open (could this be a smile?) then she rushes on ahead before glancing back at me to check that I have finally twigged what this is all about. I toss the stone ahead of her, exactly the right thing to do, for straight away she bounds up to it, skids to a halt and picks it up in her mouth, briefly juggling with it to get her teeth safely around it, then marches on again up the path, no longer following me reluctantly but now taking the lead with her head held high and her hind quarters gyrating magnificently behind her. Ah, so this is what we do then. It has taken a while for me to catch on but now at last I have grasped what walking this particular dog is all about.

Eventually she slows a little so I can catch up then quite casually she places the stone on the ground and looks away, as if temporarily distracted, so that I can reach down and pick it up again. Once again this is the trigger. She springs to life and barely waiting for the throw, she is off at speed up the path, chasing the stone even when it bounces off into the heather to one side. She uses her front paws to dig away at the undergrowth until she can grasp it in her teeth then bounds away, this time choosing the deep drainage ditch beside the path where water from yesterday’s rain still gurgles and bubbles. Perhaps the water cools her down, for this must be exhausting work, or maybe she has developed a thirst after all the exercise. I can see that this creates something of a problem for her as with the stone in her mouth she cannot use her tongue to lap up moisture and she is not quite ready, at this point, to surrender the stone. Perhaps she even realises that I might not be inclined to go ditch-diving after her for the sake of one stone. I look away briefly then notice she is drinking vigorously from the stream and I assume, therefore, that another stone will be needed if correct dog-walking behaviour is to continue. I cast about for something suitable but then I notice her climbing up out of the ditch with a stone in her mouth. On inspection I realise that this is the same stone as before and she must have placed it somewhere safe so she could take a drink then reclaimed it afterwards so that the ‘walk’ can continue in the proper way. She at least knows exactly how to behave, even if I don’t.

I know it is wrong to use the word ‘game’ but I don’t think we really have anything more appropriate in our vocabulary. I cannot help but feel, though, that this is not a game for Ailsa, it is the real thing. It is what life is all about – retrieving and carrying stones thrown by humans. By trial and error I establish that stones are her ‘thing’ and throwing sticks evokes slightly different behaviour. The chase is the same but instead of picking up the stick Ailsa lies down and begins to chew on the end, clearly a complete contrast and gauging from her tail’s activity I would say an inferior pastime too. For dogs like Ailsa, only stones will do.

Suffice to say that with all the splashing about her coat is soon soaked and since she makes no distinction between clear, fast-running and still, muddy water she is soon caked in black stuff right up to her armpits, so to speak. Her energy, though, is boundless just as long as the supply of stones keeps coming and I struggle to keep up with her as she charges on ahead. She knows exactly where to turn at the final rise to the summit where we rest awhile, both our tongues lolling, and catch our breath. We are almost equally mud-splattered now as we gaze out at a view which is partly concealed behind the light mist that swirls around us. ‘Deer Hill’ may be how it is known locally but we both know that the Gaelic name, Cnoc nan Gabhar, really means Goat Hill, although the hoof-prints around us in the peat are of deer just the same.

Then, casting about I realise that we are stone-less – she has dropped the latest one somewhere along the way – and heather and peat have covered any surface lying stones here. I rise to begin the descent and once again she gives me that look, the ‘Well?’ one that she does so eloquently, as if the obvious doesn’t need to be said. So I grovel about to unearth a small stone and we are off downhill together once more. Ailsa dashes off into the heather and when she disappears from sight I begin to realise that I might easily walk on ahead and leave her behind out here in this wilderness. I need to think like her to discover where she has gone so I listen to the noises around me. There is the wind softly rustling the heather and then there is something else too, running water, a burn bubbling beneath, cutting its way down to the bedrock, a ditch fit for a water-loving dog perhaps. And there she is, paws fully immersed, loving every minute of it and tempting me to join her. Muscles straining she heaves her bulk up beside me and lollops away downhill, back below the treeline towards home.

The finale takes place in the small burn just beyond the bottom of our road which the rains have swollen with brown peat-stained water almost deep enough to swim in. Ailsa knows exactly what to do here. She runs ahead and is standing knee-deep in the water before I catch up, gazing up at me with that same expression, the one that says ‘Come on then’. On the bank she has carefully placed the latest rounded pebble ready and she is waiting so that I can perform my part, tossing it into the deepest part of the burn for her. Does she know that in human terms this is where she cleans off the mud from her thick coat, where she takes a bath so she is fit to be brought back indoors again? Who knows, but she emerges from the burn a shade or two lighter in colour albeit dripping wet. Whilst knowing exactly what happens next, the doggy shake, I cannot allow her to wander off so I bend to attach her lead as quickly as possible. The inevitable happens, of course, and the shake comes just as I am standing close, thus transferring most of the water from her legs to mine but this is a small price to pay as I have enjoyed her company enormously for the last hour or so.

We say farewell back at Betty’s house after a good towel down, for Ailsa. The look she gives me now is a different one; I sense that perhaps I have passed the test and she is giving me some sort of approval rating. Maybe she’ll even take me for a walk again some time soon.

The Day of the Shed

2011-10-15T14:29:00.006+01:00

The long-awaited day has arrived, earlier than expected as it happened. The two cheerful young men from Beaver Timber Co. had it all done in couple of hours. Thanks lads.

Fungus time

2011-10-07T21:13:00.003+01:00

Spring and summer have both come and gone and the season I have really been looking forward to has finally made it to Carradale. Along with some wild weather, Autumn brings us a profusion of colours which transform the hillsides, dripping reds and browns from every tree bough and changing the character of the Highlands. Then in a quieter way new growth emerges from the ground in the form of mushrooms and toadstools in all shapes and sizes. Fungus thrives in the damp places along our forest paths, feeding on fallen logs, invading the peat moss and even sprouting amongst the grass in our back garden. There is a full spectrum of colours but these growths are fleeting objects which can dissolve to nothing in the course of one day once they have released their spores into the world. Whenever the weather allows we rush outside to try to capture their brief lives in photographs, to preserve forever what nature chooses not to. This page shows off just a tiny part of the Carradale fungus compendium, delicate things that I must leave others to give names to.

Against our wishes we are driven indoors when the gale arrives and torrential rain thunders down, an exciting but all too frequent event over the last few weeks. I reluctantly turn to my second choice pastime - exploring the mysteries of the house we live in, going through a process, familiar to many, of uncovering the work of previous house owners, learning about the changes they have made, what has been covered up by successive layers of decor and what lies still hidden beneath floors and behind the fitted cupboards. It seems inevitable that years of history will manifest itself in the fabric of a building in such a way as to subvert any refurbishment project or at least to undermine the timetable yet somehow this is something that is never given due prominence on TV property improvement programmes. It is not a question of uncovering poor workmanship, more an issue of the time it takes to discover how the elements of a house have been put together so that they can be unpicked without causing too much damage.

One of our domestic objectives is to provide electrical power to a garden shed which will be delivered and erected next week, my workshop space in the garden. So, having nothing better to do, I begin crawling around our roof spaces where I uncover a rather stout but unconnected length of electrical cable which meanders about the place and which disappears from sight beneath our bedroom floor heading in a purposeful way towards the front of the house. It no longer carries any electrical current – it must be a relic of a time when our domestic water was heated by electrical immersion – but I can perhaps make use of the cable if I can locate the other end which is hidden somewhere in the structure of our property.

Inevitably in this type of exploratory operation, the time comes when one just has to get destructive; there is nothing else for it, no other way to get to the inaccessible space I need to peer into. Perhaps I could rip up the bedroom floor to see what lies beneath but with laminate laid over our solid tongue and grooved floorboards this is not a happy option. In any case there is an alternative, to approach this space from below by making holes in a ceiling on the ground floor. It is at about this point that I discover what used to be a corridor or passage leading from the front of the house into what used to be a small back kitchen. This route was sealed off many years ago so that the kitchen could be redesigned and enlarged and the only evidence now is in the walls of our small broom cupboard beside the stairs in the centre of the house, It is hard to imagine, in a small house such as ours, a different layout of rooms from what we see today, but clearly this was once the case, I cannot argue with the evidence of my eyes.

I am covered from head to toe in plaster dust by the time I have successfully located the missing end to my cable but am satisfied that we can make use of it and do not have to thread another cable through the house.

As the sun pops out, once more we grab our waterproofs and don our walking shoes for another blast of exercise and fresh air, of which there is still plenty flying about. Does it matter that the rain showers come and go regularly as we ascend to the top of Deer Hill? Do we care that lying water quickly penetrates our shoes and soaks through to our toes? Do we meet any other walkers out braving the weather? No, no and well yes, surprisingly, we do meet one young couple, Londoners, who are staying in a cottage previously inhabited by their grandparents but since retained by the family as a holiday home. Shifting mentally between the landscapes of Southwark and Carradale takes some doing, we know, and they did have an air of puzzlement about them as if Kintyre was still sinking through into the deeper parts of the brain. It does take a little time.

Ducking out

2011-10-03T10:31:00.003+01:00

In Carradale the one big event by which we residents can mark the passage of the seasons is over for another year, thus heralding the end of the holiday season and the slide towards winter. I write, of course, of the annual Duck Race, an event which brings the whole village together in one place to celebrate nothing less than the voyages of hundreds of small yellow plastic toys down a short stretch of Carradale Water. Pointless though this activity may seem, the event brings with it the kind of excitement normally reserved for a big football match or possibly an episode of Strictly Come Dancing (I speculate) as we all stand on the river bank cheering on the one we have chosen and named for the occasion. The organisers must have heaved a sigh of relief as this year we were blessed with superb weather, lots of sunshine and conditions underfoot along the river that needed only stout shoes and not, as so easily could have been the case, wellington boots. For twenty two years now (so I am told) this event has been a feature of village life, a way to raise church funds but also a social gathering par excellence. That it should take this bizarre pastime to bring us us all into one place at the same time is strangely British, I fear, but no less welcome for that.

Kate was unable to enjoy the day with me on this occasion as she was away in England visiting family. So there I was striving to complete the tiling around our new multi-fuel stove so that I could use it to take the chill off the evening, at which point it suddenly struck me that I was alone in our house here for the first time since we moved in. Maybe it was this that made me become reflective, to begin thinking that despite now being well into our third post-retirement year, something keeps peeping its head over my mental horizon, a slightly worrying thought that niggles away at me just when I ought to be relaxed and carefree. I am aware that the source of this comes from my working life for the years leading up to retirement which was, like that of many, a pressured, self-driven existence. This was not something I was particularly aware of at the time but it had become very much part of my mental landscape just the same. My working days never simply took care of themselves, they always had to start with a plan, sometimes concocted many days ahead, and then this measured afterwards against what had been achieved. If a day did not end with the satisfaction of progress being made towards its goal then it felt like a day wasted, one that ended with a real sense of disappointment. Worse than this was the fact that the goal still hung there with less time now to achieve it, pressure creating more pressure.

This was the treadmill which I walked, daily, and for so long that the behaviour had disappeared into my character; it became a part of my very being. It is as a result of this that today I do not find a state of relaxation very easy to achieve and despite no longer needing to, I find myself setting goals which I later measure against what I have done on the day. So why is it that I am still this way, more than two years after having to be? Why is it that, as our friend Paul would say, I still have ‘ants in my pants’?

Part of the answer to this may lie in what Kate and I have done with our lives since retiring, most of which is recorded in the pages of this blog. We have sailed extensively and travelled nomadically around the shores of the British Isles. We have lived abroad for a time, refurbished and re-decorated a house, then just this year moved north to God’s own country to do more of the same again. We have set ourselves targets and then driven ourselves towards achieving them, not against our wishes, I hasten to add, but nevertheless behaviour like this does not comply at all with the retiree stereotype; it looks more like we are still working! In our post-retirement lives there has always been something to do next, something to plan for, a journey to make or a task to perform.

We enjoy being this way, not fitting the mould is the way we think about life, it is what we are comfortable with. But what next? For the first time since retiring we have settled in one place, Carradale, a place we love and have no intention of leaving. We are beginning to live differently from the way we have lived over the last two years, a more settled existence. For the moment there is still plenty to do here, the jobs are queuing up for some months ahead – there is decorating to do, we have a new shed on the way and we are soon getting some roof windows fitted which will transform our tiny back bedroom into a workroom Kate can take over. But what is niggling away at me is whether I am equipped mentally for what is peering at me now, an end to our target-driven lifestyle when all the jobs are finished and all we have to look forward to is ‘normal’ life.

As I see it now, one of two things could happen. Either our whole personalities will change, the ‘ants in the pants’ will run away from us creating something new, something more in keeping with the populist view of our status, or else we will throw ourselves into new things, driving ourselves on into new adventures ever more bizarre and unlikely. Hmmm, I wonder which it will be.

Beinn an Tuirc

2011-09-20T18:20:00.003+01:00

Deep inside the forest a long clearing between the trees continues ahead of us following roughly the same line as the rough forestry track that brought us here. Although the sun shines brightly and there is a fresh breeze blowing, here in the forest it is still and shaded so last night’s rain drips from the vegetation. We continue upwards, struggling through a thick blanket of sphagnum or peat moss, like walking on a layer of wet sponge. Growing through this is a coarse reed-like grass which reaches up to knee height, each blade being topped with a cluster of water droplets, so that as we pass by, our feet sinking into the spongy surface, the water transfers easily from the grass to our clothing making our legs wet and heavy, the cold seeping right through to the skin. Having climbed this far we can only press on upwards, slipping and sliding in the damp, stepping over hidden gullies where the water runs even more freely and stumbling over broken branches and small pink mushrooms. Somewhere up ahead we can see the wind-farm towers on the summit ridge beyond the forest although these remain illusively distant, teasing us on.

We started out later than planned, following the Kintyre Way almost from our doorstep out of the village and along the shore path to Torrisdale. A line of cormorants stands at the water’s edge catching up on some late season sunbathing so we try not to disturb them as we negotiate the rocks behind them.

We are at sea level but our plan for the day is to ascend Beinn an Tuirc, the highest summit on the Kintyre peninsula standing 454 metres (1,490 feet) above us. It is close enough for us to begin the walk from our front door but the route is far from clear, no signposts point the way, so we must follow the forestry roads then do the best we can from there on up. The sun beats down as we ascend and the scenery opens up behind us, more and more of Arran’s mountains coming into view. Then we plunge into the dense forest where the air is motionless and all noise is sucked away by the trees. Between them there is deep shade, an impenetrable tangle of branches and moss-covered roots. Go only a few metres in and the trees swallow you up so you become disoriented with the uniformity around you, unsure which way to turn even to retrace your steps. We stay in a rough clearing between the trees, plodding ever upwards in the hope that sooner or later we will reach the upper edge of the tree line. Our legs are soaked below thigh level; we have reached the point where our feet cannot become any more wet so it matters little how deep are the streams we cross. Each foot is pulled from the spongy moss with a sucking noise, the effort sucking our energy away and we have only our grim determination and the thought of lunch on the summit to keep us going.

At last we scramble out onto the open hillside where the going becomes a little easier. It is still very soft under foot – the amount of water lying trapped in what passes for soil here just beggars belief – but we pause to orientate ourselves and identify just where we have emerged from the forest in relation to our summit. We set off again, steeply upwards to where we can see sheep browsing the upper flanks of the mountain, finally gaining the summit trig point where the panorama is stunning (the wooden sign marked ‘Viewpoint’ is rather superfluous). To the north-west beyond the wind-farm towers the Paps of Jura nudge the skyline and north of these are larger summits, maybe Ben Mor on the Isle of Mull or possibly even Ben Nevis further away still. South there is the faint outline of Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland and over across Kilbrannan Sound to the south-east we can make out the shape of the Mull of Galloway. East of us the Isle of Arran is spread out from end to end just like a map with fluffy clouds hovering over it and north of this there is Bute and Cowal. What a view!

The fresh wind is tempered by the sun’s heat but despite the stunning view this is not a place to hang about. It is mid afternoon and we have to choose a descent from the summit. There is no easy walking terrain hereabouts, no footpaths or waymarks to follow and to return the way we came is not appealing. So the choice is between a long walk over rough country along a ridge above Torrisdale but from which there is no clear descent path, or else we can follow the wind-farm service road, a longer roundabout route that leads onto a forest track lower down the valley above Saddell Water. This is the route we choose, but it is a long march, and we know that we may be faced with a steep and dangerous descent yet and then finally a long walk once we do get back to our coast road.

The shadows are lengthening now and our legs are beginning to shout back at us as we pound along the forest track towards the sea. “No more”, they say, but as we round a corner we surprise a small herd of deer from their browsing and this encourages us on. Large birds of prey, buzzards we think, hover over the deep wooded valley to our right but our route stays high above this following the contours of the hillside. Then suddenly there is a sign we recognise, a waymarker for the Kintyre Way placed beside a track leading off to our left. This is a surprise since we know we are not on the present KW route but we follow the signs just the same and soon find ourselves descending a freshly made path through an area of felled timber then across a burn and back into the forest itself. By following a series of flags attached to trees this finally leads us out of the darkness onto the very forest road we had used earlier in the day. We have discovered, by chance, a Kintyre Way diversion in the process of being built which has worked for us as a short cut back into Torrisdale. Great relief brings new energy to our legs for the last few miles back home. Our aching limbs are testament to perfect day - visibility as good as it gets and sunshine to boot. Before long this land will change into autumn then winter colours – this one tree is ahead of the pack – and we are now looking forward to the whole lot following suit.

Storms and fire raisers

2011-09-16T19:44:00.006+01:00

Peering down through the conifers from the footpath above our village it strikes me just how isolated a community we are, something not unusual in Scotland where towns and villages can be located many hours travelling time away from a big city. So many live this way that the whole economy is geared to accommodate this. The fact that services in the many remote communities cost more per individual to provide than in a city is accepted as part of what living here is all about. To avoid population drift away from the countryside the Scottish government actively encourages re-population of the Highlands and Islands – to do otherwise might result in many of these communities stagnating and dying altogether – so we live here confident that we are not going to be forgotten.

We do not, it is true, live on an island but the length of the Kintyre peninsula does put us in a similar category to those who do. We are newcomers to this life but we are slowly learning the tricks needed to get around some of the difficulties that our remoteness creates. Running out of basic foodstuffs like bread and milk, for example, has to be anticipated. We keep a few cartons of milk in the freezer and our bread-making machine keeps churning out the loaves when we need them. So long as we remember to stock up with the right sort of flour when we do a supermarket trip and to buy extra milk, all is well. We keep stocks of what we need in the house and then make lists of things we need to buy to make the our shopping trips more productive. That, and also learning where to buy what we need from the limited choice available locally, is important but if it is real choice we want then we must be prepared to travel to Glasgow. Good research on the Internet will tell us where the shops we need are located.

As I write this the wind is hooting down the chimney above our newly-opened up living room fireplace which waits for Robert-the-stove-fitter to come and install a compact multi-fuel stove. With the high winds and rain we are experiencing this is not the time to be climbing up on a rooftop so we must be patient. This is the second severe storm we have experienced since we moved to Carradale. Back in May, when the tree buds were just bursting and small leaves were beginning to form a blast of air came in from the west, gusts well over eighty miles an hour and salt-laden too, all of which caused widespread damage, not so much by knocking trees over (which it did) but by ‘burning’ the young leaf growth before it could get going. The effects of this, brown wrinkled leaves still clinging to the trees, have been with us all summer like a premature autumn.

This latest storm arrives after days of rain, heavy rain, which elsewhere might cause flooding and distress but here it merely disappears into the ground and runs away. In May we lost our electric power for several hours and again this time the lights flicker but they stay bravely on through the worst of the storm. It is unwise to venture out of doors when there is tree debris flying about and driving along wooded lanes carries a risk, however slight, of meeting an uprooted tree on its passage to earth, so we gaze from our windows as the trees bend before the blast and swathes of rain lash down. Unlike in May, the trees now carry a heavy leaf burden. In another month the trees will release their leaves but for now they still cling on to each one, against all the odds and irrespective of the harm this may cause the tree. Twigs snap and fly away downwind, whole branches are broken off but this eases the burden on the trunk which clings on to the shallow soil using every root and rootlet. Most violent are the gusts which drop on our house as it nestles low beneath Deer Hill. The glass in our windows creaks to these onslaughts, every blade of grass in the garden is flattened smooth and water briefly flows uphill in the gullies. It is exciting to watch from inside and the house is used to it - it doesn’t complain.

After a few days the storm passes away somewhere else, a remnant of hurricane Katia so we are told, and we get the telephone call we are waiting for. Our stove fitter arrives armed with pipes and brushes to sweep the chimney then insert a steel flue liner and connect this to our stove. My part in this is ready - the stone slabs for the hearth I have been engaged on fitting over the past few days are smooth and level – but we watch in horror as his brushing dislodges an enormous pile of soot which descends and heaps up on our new hearth. On quick reflection though we feel far safer knowing that this lot is not still hanging up there out of sight.

Our excitement mounts as the day when we can light up comes ever nearer. Even though we still have to tile and finish the fire surround we cannot wait any longer. We decide we need just the right important local person for first firing of the stove and who better than our neighbour Betty, who like us is a fan of a good coal fire to keep her home warm. We point her at the stove and seconds later the flames are licking up the chimney (it works!) and soon the warmth is filling the room and seeping through the house, just what we need for the winter ahead.

Life around Carradale

2011-09-03T17:14:00.003+01:00

Just a few miles to the south of our village lie what few stones remain of Saddell Abbey, a monastic settlement established in the twelfth century by monks coming from what is now Northern Ireland. Permission to build the abbey was needed, just as it would be today, and the story goes that this was granted by none other than Somerled, a powerful figure in the history of Scotland who after a significant battle in 1158 declared himself as the first ‘King of the Isles’. As such he ruled an independent kingdom which was subservient neither to Scotland nor indeed to the King of Norway whose influence was still strong in the Western Isles at this time. Although Somerled’s kingdom was short-lived his blood line still continues because as many as half a million people alive today can, according to the evidence of their DNA, claim him as an ancestor.

Although this is disputed by some, Somerled’s remains are said to be buried somewhere on the site of Saddell Abbey, something that gives these crumbling ruins something of an aura, despite their condition. The monastery did not survive to the present day, its fate is lost to history, and over the last two hundred or so years the site has been used as a graveyard, the gravestones peering out from every corner, even from within the bounds of the building remains themselves. Much of the stone from the original abbey has now gone, to be used in other buildings such as Saddell Castle where local tales tell of the bad fortune that this brings to those who stay there. Fortunately for the owners this does not appear to prevent holidaymakers coming to stay here, indeed they appear to make much of the tale to add to the cachet of the place.

Kate and I arrived here on our bikes after negotiating the five miles of road from our village, this being the horizontal distance we had to travel. The length of the journey, however, gives no impression of our movement in the vertical dimension. Both the beginning and the end of the journey are at sea level, as indeed are several other spots along the way and the problem is that each of these places are separated by high ground over which the road winds its merry way totally indifferent to the plight of those who try to ride a bicycle on its surface. To negotiate steep hills on a bicycle we change into our lowest gears but the fact is that the same amount of effort is required to ride uphill regardless of the number of gears a bike has. Then if the gears are too few in number and the hill too steep then there will come a point when the rider’s weight simply cannot push hard enough on the pedal to rotate the wheels and move the bike up the incline. This is a scientific fact few are aware of simply because they don’t cycle along the lanes around Carradale where most of the hills fall into this category.

Our real motive for visiting Saddell was to visit not the abbey but the beach which, aside from its outstanding natural beauty, was the setting for something even Somerled might have found entertaining. This short strip of sand and pebble, dominated by the well maintained and classical features of the castle, was once the backdrop for a video made to accompany the UK’s best selling single of all time, ‘Mull of Kintyre’. In the song accompaniment is provided by the Campbeltown Pipe Band who were seen in the video marching along the Saddell shoreline beside the sea and being joined by Paul McCartney singing and playing his guitar. In subsequent verses of the song they are joined by local schoolchildren, many of whom may now be adults still living in the area – the song was released in 1977. In many ways the beach location would have been an obvious choice since it possesses so many of the vital ingredients needed – it is easy of access by road but secluded enough to remain undisturbed during the filming; it has the tall castle as a backdrop, a proper one with battlements all in good repair; there is spectacular scenery in every direction. It lacks, however, the most essential ingredient which is that the beach is not actually located at the Mull of Kintyre.

Having been to the Mull, of course, we know why this would not have been suitable for the video. It has no beach, it is a remote, inaccessible and windswept place often surrounded by fogs and it has no Disneyland-like castle to use as part of the backdrop. So perhaps history can forgive the deception. After all Saddell is on the Kintyre peninsula, so many would say it is is close enough to be authentic, and very few will ever know the truth anyway.

Home at last - job done!

2011-08-29T16:49:00.005+01:00

Our delivery of Cirrus Cat to her new home was complete after we finished our passage of the Crinan Canal and then a day later tied her to a pontoon in Tarbert Harbour. What we started back at the beginning of July, launching the boat from a boatyard in Cornwall and sailing her anticlockwise around Britain to the west coast of Scotland, is now finished. Job Done!

On reflection, this was never going to be the most relaxed of sailing trips for us, largely because we always knew that the distance we had to cover was considerable, further in fact than we had ever previously sailed in one season. It was, first and foremost, a boat delivery trip and this was always in our minds. For this reason the trip never really became totally relaxing, it always had a more serious side to it, that of getting Cirrus close to home before the end of the sailing season. Setting off in July might have made the trip seem a little more pressured than it need have been but it did give us a wealth of new sailing experiences and a feeling of immense satisfaction over what we have achieved.

So was it worth it?

Well there were certainly a lot of fun moments and we do always feel very comfortable on board the boat – it is our home from home – so at no stage did we feel like giving up. What was most enjoyable was revisiting so many of the east coast harbours, places we visited in 2009 and many other places we have known for much longer. Once again we made friends along the way and met a lot of very charming people, preserving our good impressions of those that live in or around our coastal communities. On the downside, we did a little less sailing than we would have liked, making more use of the engine than we prefer to do because of the need to press on when the weather allowed us to do so. Along the way, as luck would have it, we managed to miss out on the best of the summer weather because by the time a heat-wave did arrive in the south of England, we were further north where we found cooler climes. But despite all this, yes, it was worthwhile doing the trip the long way round and we are secretly quite proud of what we have achieved.

Having now moved from boat to house we find ourselves having to re-learn old skills and to cope with the strangeness of things. Flushing the loo without operating a pump is a strange experience and watching television is an art we have seem to have lost somewhere along the way (we never could see the point of having one on board the boat). We struggle to find programmes that interest us enough to keep us in our seats. Outside I observe that the birds which visit our garden are puny specimens compared with those that soared past us at sea although they do make up for this lack of size by energetic movement undertaken at high speed. We are fortunate that the sea is not far from us here and it takes only a few minutes walking to put us back in a more familiar environment, amongst the rocks off Carradale Point where a gull sits patiently digesting its last meal. As I scramble about over the sun-kissed lichen I notice a sea urchin waving its tentacles at me from just beneath the surface and I bend low to take its picture before spotting the yellow sponge-like creature cuddling up to it. These are the colours of nature at its best.

Cornwall to Scotland days 47 to 50

2011-08-24T07:22:00.002+01:00

Day 47/48 – Our little adventure around the British Isles is almost over. We feel now that we are rapidly approaching the point at which we can say “That’s it, we’ve done it”. One issue still outstanding, however, is the small matter of deciding where Cirrus Cat will live permanently now that we have brought her to Scotland. Carradale Harbour (for those who don’t know it) is tiny and not suitable for us but there are plenty of other choices, marinas or moorings, to consider. Our brief couple of days back home have given us an opportunity to draw up some plans, even to begin thinking about where next year’s sailing season will take us.

It has been lovely to pop back to Carradale and meet up with our neighbours after so long away. Our outdoor life must have left us looking quite healthy – there have been a number of comments on this – and once again the warmth of the greetings is just great. Most surprising to us, who expect to do everything on the boat ourselves with little or no help from others, has been an offer of assistance from Brian and Audrey to help us with the locks on our transit of the Crinan Canal. This is no mean offer since most of the fifteen locks are operated manually by a vessel’s crew and the whole experience is a physical one, particularly for two people. It gets easier and quicker the more helpers you have, particularly if someone can go ahead and prepare the next lock before the boat leaves the last one.

After only one full day at home, mostly taken up with taming the garden vegetation before it overruns the house, we set off again, driving to Tarbert to take the first of only two buses to return to Dunstaffnage. This misses the most spectacular part of the journey, the views from the west coast of Kintyre, but it gets us back on board by mid afternoon and just before another brief rain shower lands on Cirrus’ decks.

Day 49 – We start our twenty-five mile passage to the start of the Crinan Canal just before the top of high water. Timing here is quite critical because our route takes us through the notorious Sound of Luing where twice a day the water rushes first one way then the other at speeds which our boat finds hard to match. The trick here is to arrive at one end just as the tide begins to sweep our way, southbound, so that we are squirted through the narrow passage like water in a hose pipe. In reality this is a poor analogy because this land was shaped by giants and the Sound is at least a mile across at its narrowest point. Being in the middle of it we get no impression of the rate at which we are being carried along as the only evidence is the whirlpools which form on the surface, driven by upwelling currents as if one of those giants is waving his hands about far below us. The depths in the Sound vary from sixty to less than ten metres and in one spot an underwater hummock rises to within less than three metres of the surface. All these irregularities can produce dangerous conditions and overfalls, especially when combined with the giant winds which frequently blow here. Once again timing and a good boat are essentials here.

At the southern end of the Sound lie the Isles of Scarba and Jura, between which is the Gulf of Corryvreckan, a place we peer into as we pass by, from a comfortable distance. I try to stand in the way so that Kate cannot see through the narrow gap that causes all the fuss.

The wind has dropped and the sun has come out making it very hot, for a change, as we slip into the Crinan Canal and tie up for the night. It is still and quiet, the noisiest sound being made by the swallows which are out here in force for their evening meal of midges and other flying fodder.

Day 50 – Our Crinan lock operating team meet us at Bellanoch keen and eager to get started. At the first lock they are ahead of us, smiling and waving us in, then they rush ahead to get the next one ready. Brian is on sluices, winding them open to let the water rush into the pound, while Audrey puts her back to the heavy lock gate which slowly closes behind us. These two are canal experts and work together as a well oiled machine. We cannot believe the rate we are moving through the canal. Surely this must be a record passage time?

We have to rein them in for a lunch stop at Cairnbaan then it’s off to Ardishaig for the last few locks before we exit the canal there and wave them farewell. Many thanks for all your hard work guys.

Tonight we are swinging to a mooring at Otter Ferry on Loch Fyne. It is cool here now and overcast, threatening rain but as yet it holds off. This is a sheltered, secure place to spend the night, to rest up after all our lock-related activities.

Cornwall to Scotland days 44 to 46

2011-08-20T08:56:00.005+01:00

Day 44 – Suddenly there is a new urgency to our movement westwards through the canal. Using the internet we have access to weather forecasts for the days ahead (we can see the future) and there are some strong winds ready to impale themselves on the west coast of Scotland over the next few days, nothing spectacular but enough to cause us to react by moving forward our plans to exit the canal. We start early, motoring the length of the repetitively named Loch Lochy, then navigate the final man-made stretch of canal to the top of Neptune’s Staircase, an engineering masterpiece in the form of a flight of eight locks built back-to-back. In one swoop this transports us sixty-four feet (some nineteen metres) downhill towards the sea, all at the expense of a bit of muscle power as we tow Cirrus from one lock to the next, repeating this eight times in all until we arrive at the bottom. All along the way we are besieged by tourists whose cameras click and whirl (I know digital cameras don’t do this but I have an active imagination) as they photograph us and every movement of our strange craft - viewed from above our catamaran’s decks look like they belong on an aircraft carrier. Behind us the dark clouds build, finally dropping their load after we are safely berthed at Corpach, the sea lock exit of the canal.

Day 45 – Once again we are up early, so early that when we emerge the morning mist is still hiding everything, but at least we are able to lock out and catch our tide down Loch Linnhe.

We motor on past Fort William as the mist gradually dissipates leaving just long scarves of white through which the mountains occasionally peep.

At the Corran Narrows the sky ahead has changed from grey to blue and there are ripples on the water but not enough wind to encourage sailing so we decide to do some exploring under motor, to weave our way behind the isles of Shuna and Lismore into the Lynn of Lorne. Islands and islets are dotted everywhere here as if scattered like seeds, dark, weed-covered rocks poke above the water, some having protective pillars erected on them, others crouching low and barely visible whereas all around there are grand mountains which sweep downwards to the water’s edge then continue out of sight deep below us. We are thrilled to be back here at last, in an area which we now regard as home.

Then, still in the Lynn of Lorn just before making a turn towards Dunstaffnage Marina where we intend to stop for the night we pass Rubha Fionn-aird, a low promontory with rocks lurking out of sight beyond the land which have caught out the skipper of the yacht ‘Tenacity’, a boat which had emerged from the canal with us earlier in the day. Taking a short cut here the yacht has run aground with the tide falling around it. A lifeboat stands by but the crew are not in any danger as the weather is benign. It is a long wait for the next high tide but we later learn that they get off safely, although not without some damage.

When we are safely berthed we make a quick decision that faced with strong winds for several days ahead we will leave the boat and travel home to Carradale for a few days. This may seem a strange thing to do but free bus travel encourages such behaviour, despite the distance, and it will give us the chance to check on the post waiting for us and to make sure everything in the house is well.

Day 46 – Our bus from Dunbeg is the first of four which, with waiting for connections, takes up most of the day. It occurs to us that this is not a lot faster than the speed we travel on the boat but it is somewhat less energetic; in fact we both have difficulty staying awake on the long ride south towards Campbeltown. We can see yachts in the sea out near Islay and the conditions don’t seem too bad for them but later on comes the rain and more wind so we are happy to have made the decision to make this trip home.

On arriving at the house our front ‘lawn’ is a little hairier than usual with some interesting botanical specimens peeping through the greensward and our front door is just a little difficult to open due to the mail hiding behind it but apart from all these small irregularities, all is well and we are soon relaxing watching TV with Brahms at the Proms. There’s nothing like home. Hot water comes out of the taps without any effort on our part, the floor stays perfectly still even when it is windy, it feels spacious inside and everything outside is green green green.

Cornwall to Scotland days 41 to 43

2011-08-16T17:15:00.003+01:00

Day 41 – Summer has come to the Highlands. The air is clear, the hills are all in sharp focus and Kate is trying out our inflatable dinghy. Bought last winter and carried all the way from Plymouth rolled up in a bag on Cirrus’ stern we finally get a chance to pump it up to see if it floats and also to find out how easy it is to row. Typically, small inflatables come with a pair of very short oars which are held captive in specially designed rowlocks. They are less like oars and more like a pair of spoons but ours do perform reasonably well despite this.

We had spent the morning motoring along the short section of canal that leads into the vastness of Loch Ness, avoiding the weir on the south side that feeds tons of excess water into the River Ness, and steering well clear of even greater hazards, the hire boats. Exhibitions of astonishing boat handling incompetence go hand in hand with these vessels as families whose only previous experience with anything that floats is a rubber duck in the bath tub are given the keys to a small ship in which they are expected to negotiate locks, moor to pontoons and then navigate across the small sea that is Loch Ness. We hear of an Italian family who take their hired motor cruiser under a swing-bridge without waiting for it to open and successfully shave off the top part of the boat – windscreen, aerials, navigation lights, etc. – without apparently coming to any harm themselves. Whatever short training the hire company gives them fails to include basic rope handling, how to steer in a straight line, what to do if the wind is blowing hard, when to use the bow-thruster and when not to, the list is endless. Any close encounter with a hire cruiser is potentially damaging to us so we make a point of staying well clear.

But maybe the incompetence is infectious for on our first night in Loch Ness we anchor on a sandy ledge in Urquhart Bay close to the castle but far enough away to avoid the tourists. The wind cannons down the length of the loch from the south-west but we are sheltered here, just the occasional random gust finding us. There are, of course, no tides in the loch so we anchor in two metres with just enough chain paid out for this depth. Mid-way through a balmy afternoon on board we suddenly notice that Cirrus is drifting away from the shore and we rush outside to discover that our anchor had failed to pierce the layer of weed and on the first gentle tug it had slid across the bottom and dropped off the ledge into deep water. It is now hanging straight down beneath the boat, touching nothing as even this close to the shore the bottom is seventy metres below us– oops! We gradually winch the weight of chain and anchor back on board then start the engine and motor back in to reset it, firmly this time, then we set a depth alarm on the echo sounder so we will not be caught out again.

Day 42 – We sail off in the morning, tacking up the loch against another fresh south-westerly breeze, as far as Foyers, famous for its spectacular waterfalls and on the agenda of most tourists, it seems. We moor here for our second night and go exploring around the lake shore where tiny patches of rounded pebbles nestle between the trees which lean out over the water as if the land is too crowded for them. This knobbly old beech tree is so ancient that some of its branches have grown back into the tree again making a mockery of the standard pattern of tree growth. Back at the boat the wind has shifted slightly so our mooring is a little bumpy but by dusk it calms down as it does every evening here, the night becoming quiet and still.

Day 43 – Our time in the Caledonian Canal is limited by the eight-day licence issued to us at Clachnaharry so we get up early to do some serious motoring, to cover some more of the fifty nautical mile length and negotiate some more of the twenty-nine locks. For a change the wind is very light but it rains sporadically for most of the day so we stop for the night just before the Laggan Locks, one hundred and six feet above sea level and at the highest point on the passage. One very good reason for stopping here is the presence of the Eagle, a floating bar and restaurant which winks at us until we drop by to sample its wares.

Cornwall to Scotland days 40 to 42

2011-08-14T07:50:00.003+01:00

The gloaming in Burghead, a west facing harbour on the east coast of Scotland.

Day 40 – Burghead Harbour gives us a superb night’s sleep in total peace. No traffic noise, no grinding of fenders nor squeaking of warps, no wind to rattle the halliards, just peace until the gulls start laughing in the early hours. But this doesn’t matter as we are up at half past five and away by six before the sun has even got out of bed properly.

Six am also coincides with low water and, as every Burghead fisherman will know, there is not a great depth of water outside the harbour at this time. We had thought to creep out quietly so nobody would notice but there is one local man up and about and anxious for our safety even at this hour.
“You’d be better leaving it a half oor as there’s nae much water ootside.”
There is little we can do to reassure him other than to confess that catamarans don’t need more than a thimbleful of water to keep them afloat. Whether he believes this or not we cannot tell but he wishes us a safe journey anyway and we carry on regardless.

Of course he turns out to be correct about the lack of depth just outside the harbour but Cirrus takes all this in her stride and stylishly slides out with just inches under her keels. The man’s presence at such an early hour and his concern for us touches us deeply just the same, confirming our warm thoughts about Burghead.

Just outside the sails go up and we begin the final twenty seven mile passage to Clachnaharry lock, the start of the Caledonian Canal. The sea is as smooth as it gets, just a slight roll of swell left over from yesterday, and the sky surpasses itself providing us with an ever-changing drama that no camera can do justice to.

Lighter wind than expected means we have to use our engine for a time since our arrival at the Canal entrance must coincide with high tide but within a few hours we are moving into the narrow channel at the head of the Moray Firth, with Fort George on our left and Chanonry Point to the right. It is still early but standing on the beach here is a large group of people, dolphin watchers. This place is famous for its dolphins, big ones, hungry ones. They congregate here for the salmon which pass by en route to their spawning grounds upstream, the fish being forced to pass through the narrows right under the noses of their predators. The fish bring the dolphins, the dolphins bring the people.

We, of course, are just passing by but nevertheless our boat gives us a grandstand view. All around us in the water are these magnificent creatures, fins rising to the surface here and there, difficult to spot as so often we are looking the wrong way as they broach. A group of three beasts surface to breathe just feet away from us and then suddenly there is a big disturbance as one hurls itself out clean of the water, its whole body visible just for a second before diving cleanly, disappearing from view. The watchers on the shore go green with envy at us being so close to the action while we simply drift along serenely under sail, silent save for the ripples in our wake.

We pass beneath Kessock Bridge (and an ‘Independence Day’ sky) to arrive at Clachnaharry to find the lock open and a welcome from the same man as when we arrived here two years ago (he remembers the boat). In the interval he has charity-shaved both his beard and his head hair, he admits coyly, but he is as talkative as ever, keen to explain the workings of the canal we are about to pass through. Little changes here though. The canal water is fresh but still a rich brown colour as the whole system is fed from peat-enriched streams which drain the mountainous countryside. We berth to a pontoon after the first lock lifts us three metres above the sea. Tomorrow we will rise higher, locking up towards the level of Loch Ness.

Day 41 – Having made the transition from salt to fresh water there are several boat-related consequences that we need to bear in mind. Firstly, fresh water is less buoyant than salt, meaning that Cirrus now sits lower in the water. I am intrigued to see whether the difference is noticeable to the eye so I peer beneath the stern to check the water level against our nacelle, a known load line. The stern just kisses the water now whereas in salt it is just clear of the water. So that proves that theory then. It is always comforting when science and reality actually agree on something.

Floating lower in the water means that our keels will be closer to the bottom but we decide that once we reach Loch Ness tomorrow this will be of no significance. The chart shows that this loch has depths of two hundred metres, something even our new echo sounder won’t be able to tells us about as the numbers only go up to ninety-nine.

What is also happening down beneath us, I sincerely hope, is that any salt-dependent weed or crustacean living on Cirrus’ bottom will turn up its toes and die, leaving us lovely and clean again. We may well acquire some new wildlife before we reach Corpach at the western end of the canal but once we transition into salt again, this too will pass away. In theory.

As we move inland across the country the scenery becomes more dramatic and the vegetation more luxuriously green. Suddenly we are in the heart of the Highlands, a place we have sailed the length of the country for, the place where we have made our home. To our eyes it all just looks right, natural, big and beautiful.

So why did we choose to sail the long way around Britain from Cornwall to the west coast of Scotland? Familiarity is the main reason, familiarity with the harbours and anchorages on the east coast which has given us most of our sailing adventures in the past. This brings us a sense of comfort and also one of nostalgia. We started our retirement by exploring this side of the country and fell for the charm of its rugged little ports, the muddy creeks of the south and the cold clear waters further north. It has lost none of this charm since our first circumnavigation, indeed if anything we like it more than ever now.

Cornwall to Scotland days 37 to 39

2011-08-11T20:10:00.003+01:00

Day 37 – Far, far away from Cirrus, where she hunkers down in the corner of Peterhead marina so that the howling northerly wind sweeps above her decks, lies the toilet and shower block. The journey from boat to shower is an arduous and dangerous one, but nevertheless rewarding in the end. From the first step out from under the shelter of our sprayhood and onto the pontoon, balance is crucial as the wind is trying to gets its way, trying to flick the unwary off the edge and into the water. The journey starts with the rain on your back so you sort of float down the pontoon, an easy stroll, too easy perhaps, to the first corner where a right-angle turn puts the rain on the left cheek and immediately splatters the inside of one glasses’ lens with fine droplets. Blinded in one eye the journey continues and two turns later the rain is on the other cheek, the other lens, so that by the half way point vision is seriously impaired, a dangerous position to be in given that there are four more turns to come with mooring lines to trip the feet and that the wind has become more gusty, catching and pulling at the clothing. Finally the ramp to the shore arrives and providing the shoes don’t slip, beyond this is solid land and the ‘services’ block. The door opens inwards and with the force of the wind behind it the handle can barely be held but being sucked inside here at last is safety and warmth. Force the door closed and all is quiet, time now to pause for breath then to begin removing the layers of dripping clothing so that the warmth of an endless shower can penetrate the bones. This is not the time to dwell on the return journey when the rain will be full on the face, the body leaning against the wind. No, those thoughts are pushed aside for the moment. For later, much later.

Reality is not quite this bad. In any case for our third day here in Peterhead we have some sunshine at last, still with the north-westerly wind but the sun brings warmth and brightness too. We set off walking along the shore, beating into the wind, towards the delights of the town and some shopping, anything to get ourselves away from being cooped up inside. Always heavily reliant on fishing, Peterhead has the appearance of a town in decline, but only on the surface. The port provides important facilities for the oil industry just offshore and the grey stone from which the town is built is misleading and no reflection on the real wealth of the place and the people.

After much searching we manage to find Park Lane and Kate sets off to explore, sure that if she looks hard she will find similarities with the Park Lane in London. The Hilton, perhaps, just behind that blue door.

Day 38 – Rugged and tough though we are when it comes to sailing (not really), Kate and I will not ordinarily put out to sea when it is raining hard and when the forecast promises a day with more of the same. But today we have made an exception partly because we feel we have spent more days than we care to in Peterhead and partly because although continuous rain is forecast, the wind is just about perfect for us to sail around Rattray Head and then west up the Moray Firth. Which is how we come to be berthed in the little village of Whitehills tonight sitting amongst all our dripping waterproofs listening to the rain still pattering against the windows. Our thirty five mile passage we did in record time with the wind behind us all the way so we shouldn’t complain really, but then this also happens to be the one wind direction where we get no shelter from Cirrus’ sprayhood. However even with five and a half hours of heavy rain falling on our backs we still both felt we had done the right thing. It is all a question of mind over matter, telling yourself that were it not for the rain we would enjoy being out on the sea sailing, enjoy the view, the wildlife, etc. We pass Troup Head, a wild looking lump of exposed cliff and even through the rain, cannot believe our eyes. The ledges are lined with equally spaced white blobs - nesting gannets, each one a precise distance from the other, the gap being determined by the distance a gannet can stretch its neck to annoy its neighbour. We love these beautiful birds, so streamlined, so powerful, so elegant.

Day 39 – Working our way step by step westward along the Moray Firth our next stop is Burghead. This is an uncomplicated working harbour now almost deserted but for a mixed assortment of boats lined along its walls. No pontoons here so we tie up to another yacht and let the afternoon sun stream in through the back of the boat. Yes, real warmth at last! The harbourmaster here is very laid back and will do anything for us, it seems, even giving us the key to the ‘executive’ toilet so that we don’t have to use the public one, and he charges us apologetically, far less than any other harbour we have visited to date.

We stopped here in 2009 and right behind us in the harbour is the very same boat, Catriona M, that we photographed in June that year. It is in exactly the same place, so naturally we take another picture. This gives a clue to the pace of change around these parts – but why would you change anything? The place is a hidden gem. It is about as far from the concept of a modern marina as you can get in terms of what facilities it offers but at the same time is is a peaceful haven that lets us come in from the sea and gives us shelter and makes us feel welcome.

Cornwall to Scotland days 33 to 36

2011-08-08T17:56:00.002+01:00

Day 33 – As ever the weather keeps us guessing no matter whether we are in port or out at sea. Today started brilliantly – a fresh little south-westerly breeze, the air sparklingly clear and the sky full of stripes of cloud with pale blue gaps between them. After three days fogbound in Arbroath followed by some heavy rain yesterday evening, it feels like a new world order has been imposed, one that favours sailors on the east coast of Scotland. So off we go, all the sails we can muster spread out to push Cirrus along as fast as possible.

The coastline is stunning, wave-worn natural arches in the red sandstone cliffs, the same cliffs that when we were here two years ago we happily walked along amid a spring flower display second to none, past the village of Auchmithie, the true birthplace of the Arbroath smoked fish known to the world as the ‘Smokie’, then onward across Montrose Bay. All is exciting, the boat is going well with her clean bottom, there are porpoises and possibly another whale sighting to keep us amused and we can visualise making great distances, perhaps even Peterhead, sixty miles in one hop. Then the wind dies. It just seems to evaporate. One moment it is there and the next we are left with vaporous whispers that do nothing towards pushing Cirrus through the water. Nothing else has changed, not the sky, not the clouds, just the wind.

So Stonehaven it is for the night, thirty miles further north along our way and a prettier harbour one could not ask for. As the only visiting yacht we get pride of place tucked in alongside the harbour wall where we bounce gently in the slight swell. The harbourmaster strolls over to meet us with “Port Security”, his golden labrador retriever, an animal that just wants to make friends with everyone, and we adjust our warps so that when the tide falls there is enough slack to allow the boat to descend and not be left hanging. Then it is off for a wee stroll around the town before settling down to our supper. The town is bigger than it looks from the harbour and it has shops which cater for a tourist trade as well as those for the locals. It has a bluff exterior which disguises its charm, not that different from the inhabitants themselves, in fact.

It has been a relatively short day at sea for us but for some reason we are both feeling more tired than usual, as if the previous foggy days have sapped something out of us. The sunset does not disappoint, however, and we hope that this bodes well for tomorrow when we are due to press on to Peterhead.

Day 34 – We sit and watch a lone heron standing on the Peterhead marina retaining wall being mobbed by gulls which have taken a strong dislike to it. As each gull swoops down the heron evades it by rotating its head and dipping its long neck, a strangely comical manoeuvre for what is normally such a statuesque bird. But despite having a powerful beak in its armoury the heron makes no attempt to use it for self defence. Then as the evening draws in, so does the weather – a light mist and then torrential rain – but we have completed our east coast journey, or so it feels, as beyond the next corner (another left turn) we will start moving west across Scotland and then on to the Western Isles.

It was an unexciting day at sea for us, motor-sailing into a light wind, often too far from the coast to see clearly what we were passing, and we were anxious to get tucked into Peterhead harbour before the weather became less benign. Iain and Richard were our ‘greeters’ on arrival at our marina berth (they were in fact waiting for Iain’s dinghy-sailing children to appear) and the kettle was soon on for a cuppa inside Cirrus’ comfortable saloon. An hour later, in the warmth of their company, we were still discussing everything from the merits of Scottish independence to the recession. Ahead of us now are several days of strong northerly winds. Or to put a different spin on it, ahead of us are a few days lounging about in port, exploring the town and making friends with the locals.

Day 35/36 – The first of these days we spend almost entirely inside Cirrus’ spacious interior listening to the rain as it lashes against the windows driven by a fresh northerly breeze. In June 2009 we waited in almost the same position on the same pontoon whilst the northerly wind blew itself out. We were waiting for the change in the weather that would signal a safe passage around the next big headland, Rattray Head, our most scary yet which loomed large in our imagination then, like a terrible ogre waiting to pounce on us should we try to pass. In the end it proved to be a gentle pussycat, barely showing us a ripple or a swirl. The trick, we now know, is to leave Peterhead Harbour at precisely the right moment, either at or just before the top of the tide, and this almost guarantees arrival off Rattray just when the sea has paused between its southward rush and its northward movement. Slack water means less waves across the shoals that extend out to sea from the low-lying headland. Slack water means a happy boat too.

From inside we gaze out at the youngsters in their Topper dinghies who swerve about under the watchful eye of the sailing club rescue boat. They are fully wetsuited so barely notice the rain and in any case they seem to be in and out of the sea on a regular basis as part of the fun of it all.

The wind has not diminished at all the next day but our ambitious plans to set off exploring Peterhead are dampened by more heavy rain slicing horizontally across the marina. We become introspective and notice that the egg box which we bought in Lowestoft boasts a slightly raunchy comment, evidence of the sense of humour of some East Anglian farmer no doubt. We recognise that to have reached the point where we are reading the labels on egg boxes must mean that we are getting a little desperate. There may be nothing for it but to dress up in full waterproof gear and to venture forth regardless of the rain.

Cornwall to Scotland days 31 and 32

2011-08-04T19:52:00.002+01:00

Day 31 – A sizeable remnant of the colossal portion of chips from Marco’s chippy in Arbroath Harbour still lingers inside us as we emerge into the daylight. This morning, the harbour lock gate which is our portal to the sea, is opening late, giving us something of a lie-in compared with recent days. It occurs to us that for five days in succession we have been getting up early and sailing or motoring for six to eight hours on rolly seas then into a new port for the night. We are pleased with our progress northwards but the relentless sailing is beginning to tell on our bodies.

One thing we are relieved about is that last night, at the cost of coffee and carrot cake in a harbour-side café, we ‘found’ a good Wi-Fi signal and slaked our internet needs, updating the blog, getting a weather forecast for the days ahead, emailing friends and family and so on. This is an important issue for us when we are voyaging on Cirrus, our way of keeping in touch and keeping ourselves informed of family and other news. Along England’s south and east coasts the marinas often provided Wi-Fi connectivity as part of the nightly charge but as we proceed along the Scottish north-east coast with its small ex-fishing port harbours we anticipate things being more difficult. More often we will have to resort to the internet-in-the-café solution, which inevitably means eating even more delicious carrot cake - but we will just have to cope with this.

So we peer out of the boat this morning but we can see little, barely further than the harbour wall. Arbroath sits under a dense fog blanket, devoid of any wind, with a bleating foghorn echoing back at us. Even if we set off motoring close inshore along the coast towards Aberdeen we would see nothing at all for visibility is less than a quarter of a mile. Our GPS chartplotter keeps us informed on where we are at sea but it cannot help us avoid the fishing buoys which are scattered like confetti on our path, each one with a rope underneath to tangle around our propeller. We would need some visibility to see ahead and steer around them. Our neighbours on the pontoon have also got up and are ready to leave (they are heading south) so we stand about with them until we each reach a decision. It is the safe decision. We are staying in port. We declare a rest day.

Once having made the decision we feel an immense sense of relief. The pressure to get up and go is off so we go into full lounge-about-the-boat mode, each of us devouring a good novel for the next few hours. Later we go exploring and discover that the mist lingers over the sea but just inland, no further away than Arbroath High Street, the sky is clear and a golden sun beams fiercely down. Maybe someone is trying to tell us something. Our wanderings around town lead us to discover treasure in the form of a Lidl store, a total rarity in the ports we have visited so far. This provides us with some new carpets for our cabin and a new doormat so, inspired by this, we set to and clean the boat inside and out, tidying and completing some of the little jobs I had been putting off whilst at sea.

Day 32 – Faced with a second day in Arbroath listening to the harbour fog siren hooting away - the visibility has not improved – we ponder upon what else we can usefully be doing and I come up with the idea of cleaning Cirrus’ bottom, this having become lightly fouled despite the expensive paint applied back at the beginning of July. In Arbroath’s outer harbour there is a sandy beach which looks like a good spot so we motor very slowly towards it until our keels bump us gently to a halt. (This entirely intentional manoeuvre is misinterpreted by a local passer-by who asks “Who was driving then?”)

The tide is falling fast so within half an hour I am wading about, brush in hand, in knee-deep water beside the boat. The job doesn’t take long and since I can now reach the drain plug at the bottom of our outdrive leg it seems like a good opportunity to do an oil change. By mid afternoon the returning tide brings rain with it, curiously, so we float off and return to our berth on the inner harbour pontoon.

Our cleaning and tidying activity within Cirrus has revealed a rather disturbing leak of fresh water from one of the pipes feeding the galley sink. What confused us was that we had discovered and repaired a pipe joint leak here some weeks ago but unbeknown to us there was a second leak in a length of copper pipe which runs across the boat from one side to the other. This pipe passes over what we refer to as the ‘nacelle’, the between-the-hulls V-shaped section which is hidden beneath the boat. Inside the boat this shape gives us room we would not otherwise have and gives Cirrus’ hull its terrific strength. The nacelle is hollow, however, and there is no access to the void within it. Our discovery was that the internal leak had drained down into this empty chamber and over time it had filled up with, so we eventually discovered, about a hundred litres of fresh water, water pumped from Cirrus’ own fresh water tanks. Only some mysterious damp spots in our carpets gave us a clue to what was happening (I might add that there is no manual that comes with a boat) and pointed us to the right area to look to start fixing the problem. In order to clear the water from the nacelle a small hole had to be drilled in the internal floor so that a pipe attached to a pump could be inserted. Ten bucketful's later and the job is done, the boat is lighter and our carpets can start drying.

At least they would if it weren’t for the heavy rain outside, soaking us to the skin every time we venture out.

Cornwall to Scotland days 29 and 30

2011-08-02T17:34:00.003+01:00

Days 29/30 – The imperative is movement, to travel northwards while the light winds last. We start from Amble and move across the border into Scotland, Eyemouth, then the next day on again to Arbroath. We are motoring mostly, the wind too light for sailing, and there is a haze about which degenerates visibility, sometimes to only a few miles. We slip through a gap in the Farne Islands, between the inner and outer set, where the tide runs strongly, like two boulders placed in a stream between which the current rushes. Kate poses on the foredeck with Lindisfarne Castle just visible to on our port side but the sky is just shades of grey, lighter or darker, devoid of colour.

Eyemouth is rather fishy and humid. The harbour seals seem bored as they are teased by tourists for titbits of fish. Although we have visited this place several times before and normally enjoy the atmosphere, today we take to our beds early for in the morning is another early start to catch our tide. By six thirty the next day we are heading away from the land, St Abbs Head lighthouse receding into the low cloud and mist. The day is damp and lifeless and soon there is only sea, no land visible, just us and the birds which swoop in low across the sea, coming close and checking us out.

All is not as it seems, however, as beneath us there is much activity going on. These are deep waters now, sixty metres below our keels. The air is full of gannets from the colony on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. They glide across the sea just above the waves, flapping their wings just enough but no more than they need to. Then suddenly we see many of them swirling together just a short distance away from us with countless gulls and other birds too. The gannets are diving one after the other into one patch of sea which tells us there are fish to be had, many of them. But what brings such a shoal to this place? With our binoculars focussed we wait, until sure enough there are black rounded bodies and a sharp fin broaches the surface. Dolphins, we know, round up shoals of fish and drive them to the surface where they are relentlessly captured but the fin is curved, the backs too large and dark. On reflection we feel certain this is a whale, or maybe more than one, a moment of true excitement for us. The birds, of course, see what is happening and swoop in to participate in the feast if they can. Far from being lifeless, the sea here is full, plentiful life and death is happening unseen beneath us while we plod on to our next safe haven.

Rain comes on and off all day but by three o’clock we are safely berthed in Arbroath, tucked in for the night.

Cornwall to Scotland days 26 to 28

2011-07-31T16:50:00.002+01:00

Day 26 – If there is one thing we are learning about on our travels around Britain it is the relative merits and demerits of marinas and harbours. You could almost call us expert, in fact, since inevitably we do compare facilities between one and another. We have a scale of merit, for example, for showers. To score ten points they must be hot, spacious, clean and of course free. We accept that it is unlikely we are ever going to find a ten-pointer but this is nevertheless something all showers should aspire to.

When is comes to the cost of berthing there is very much a north-south divide, the south coast of England being almost guaranteed to be the most costly. One might perhaps expect there to be some correlation between the price being charged and the quality of the facilities, whether these be showers or something as simple as the state of repair of the pontoons but this is not so at all. Many ports seem to base their charges more on the basis of what they can get away with and when you are coming in from a turbulent sea naturally the last thing on your mind is the price of a safe haven.

It is the practice of charging multihulls (catamarans and trimarans) more than other boats that we really take issue with. The justification always given is that these boats are wider than others and therefore they take up the space of one and a half or two other vessels. Very often this may be true but Cirrus Cat, whilst being a catamaran, is not a wide boat. At a little under four and a half metres she is less wide than many modern monohull sailing boats and certainly narrower than most large powerboats. Yet she is a multihull and many marinas will impose the additional charge regardless of this fact.

The most glaring example of this practice we find today in Scarborough Harbour where the list of charges makes it clear that any multihull wider than three metres must be charged at a higher rate. I look around the marina now and can see that most of the yachts are wider than this but having only one hull means they are paying less than we are. My attempts at arguing this point to the berthing master fall on deaf ears, however. We feel unwelcome in Scarborough, pariahs even. It is the most expensive harbour we have stayed at so far this year (charging more than anywhere on the south coast) and the shower and toilet facilities are the worst, by a significant margin. Even after finding a shower that delivered hot water I could only give it one point at best. I would recommend this harbour to no-one In fact I would advise yachtsman to stay away from this port if at all possible. Or maybe they already are - the visitor pontoon is after all nearly empty.

Day 27 – And so, at an early hour, and after pleasant dreams inspired by the delicious sweet potato pie Kate made for dinner the night before, we bid farewell to Scarborough and its hoards of holidaymakers with their needy children and their scruffy little dogs. We turn left out of the port and head straight into some horrible steep waves which toss us around like a cork but the fierce current generating them carries us through quickly, though not before a few splashes of sea had found their way into one of our open hatches. Chastened, we plod on towards Hartlepool in rather more benign conditions. An early start always means a cool start, the day never really seems to get going before ten in the morning, but our arrival at Hartlepool around one in the afternoon was greeted by powerful sunshine making up for what we missed earlier. Motoring along in company with Paul Hardaker, who had a date to keep with the press covering his trip, made a pleasant change for us and gave us someone to chat with on the radio along the way. The wind was not unkind, being just another northerly, but we have had rather too much motoring than suits us. Our ever-reliable weather-forecasters promise that tomorrow will bring a big change, a wind from the south to blow us to Scotland.

Day 28 – Sooner or later this practice of getting up early in the morning to go sailing will seem like normal behaviour. On balance, though, I suspect it will be later.

Having locked out of Hartlepool we are determined to get our sails up and get along without the engine if we can. The swelly sea does not make this easy, however, as it shakes the light southerly wind from the sails and at first we are making little progress. We persevere and after an hour or so there are some ripples on the water which tell us this will be a spinnaker day, and up it goes. By the time we pass Tynemouth, Cirrus is beginning to blast along and we coast through the ship anchorage, dodging left and right so as not to bump into anything big. These are car carriers, which bring new cars into the country by the deck-load, large floating steel boxes with few concessions to beauty.

We sail on with the wind increasing and the sea rising until just before Coquet Island when it is time to snuffle our brightly coloured sail, to control it before it tries to control us. These are like home waters to us, bringing back memories of our first sailing boat, Noggin The Nog, which we used to moor in the river at Amble. Many’s the time we sailed out with our three young children on board to face the enormous waves, maybe the same ones that we rolled through today. We were novices then, knowing no better than to go out when the mist hung over the island and there were breakers across the bar at the entrance to Amble Harbour. In many ways the place hasn’t changed at all – the puffins still wheel around us at sea, little wings flapping madly and feet paddling the sea frantically as they try to get out of our way -although now there is a fine marina at Amble where there was none before.

Paul arrives in port soon after us, tired out after enduring the wind and waves. His is a massive challenge to undertake, to sail alone around Britain, and we have great admiration for what he is doing. He has been great company for us too and Finley’s singing and whistling has been a delight.

Cornwall to Scotland days 24 and 25

2011-07-29T12:43:00.003+01:00

Day 24 – There are no permanent staff in the Humber Cruising Association clubhouse bar so its opening hours depend on a member being around with time to spare and a key to open up. When it does open, as you would expect, the bar acts like a magnet to sailors whose boats are scattered around the No.2 Fish Dock on the long pontoons which make up the marina complex. These are connected to the shore at only one point, however, making it a long walk if you are berthed farthest away. But there is a collection of bikes on a rack near the shore ramp which can be used by anyone and can save a lot of walking. Some caution is clearly advised after a few drinks at the bar because if one wheel were to swerve off the pontoon edge in the dark then the water would swallow both the rider and the bike and nobody would be any the wiser.

It is here in Grimsby that we bump into two other round Britain sailors. Paul Hardaker started from Liverpool in May and like us is turning left at every corner. He and his pet parrot, ‘Finley’, are on a sponsored sail for Crohn’s and Colitis Charity and have experienced all sorts of adventures on their passage - they are only half way round! A week ago, Finley, who is quite talkative, bluffed his way out of his cage and flew off to explore Grimsby but his navigation (or his loyalty) did not equip him for finding his way home again. Paul is very attached to the bird and eventually had to offer a reward for Finley’s safe return so that they can continue their journey together. Paul keeps his own blog at www.paulhardakersailing.co.uk which has video clips he makes as he sails along.

We also meet Jean-Pierre, once a harbour-master at La Rochelle in France, who has sailed his yacht ‘St Kilda’ an incredible distance this year to Morocco, Madeira, the Azores, Ireland, Scotland, finally touching the East Coast of England. He has different crew join him along the way and is now in Grimsby waiting for parts to repair the gooseneck on his boom (technical language, but English) before sailing off to Ostend and eventually home again. Chatting with Jean-Pierre and the current crew on board, speaking French as best we can over drinks in the club bar, we are treated to the holiday snaps of André, whose family live on the Isle of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and the feisty politics of Maryse who has a few sailing adventures of her own behind her.

Our own movements are, as ever, controlled by the weather and we spot a window of opportunity appearing tomorrow which should enable us to sail north again to Scarborough.

Day 25 – The River Humber has these cute little yellow ships which are forever chugging along…. but going nowhere. Or so it seems. They are in fact buoys which mark the edges of the shipping lane but when you pass them by it looks just as if they are motoring upstream on their own. In reality we know they are anchored to the bottom of the river and it is the water that passes them by but somehow they have a sad and lonely look about them, forever on a voyage to nowhere.

It is a relief to be out of the river and away from any possibility of meeting a super-tanker or a massive car-carrier coming towards us and we turn north past Spurn Head towards another headland, Flamborough. Today, by contrast to previous days, there is almost no wind at all at six in the morning and the sea is a shining plate of silver jelly that wobbles only to a faint swell. It is hazy, however, and this thickens into a sea level mist which swallows us up and forces us to strain our eyes forward to pick up the randomly scattered floats of lobster pots which lie in our path. The one we miss is the one that will tangle in our propeller so we are constantly vigilant.

By midday the sun has burnt its way through to sea level and we can see Flamborough ahead but our favourable tide has now turned against us, the water now rushing back southwards past us. Progress becomes slow, like swimming through glue, and the hours tick by. We languish around the deck in the sunshine, a light cooling breeze making life pleasant on Cirrus’s foredeck while the cockpit becomes an oven. Gradually the miles pass by as Flamborough’s eroded white cliffs disappear behind us and at last Scarborough emerges from the haze ahead. Quite quickly, however, a dark line of cloud rises from the northern horizon and just as we are closing the harbour entrance the wind arrives, as if from nowhere, and we quickly pull on our jackets for protection. We struggle the last few yards into harbour and tie up alongside the visitor pontoon, greatly relieved to be in port and out of the icy blast.

Berthed just ahead of us here is Paul Hardaker’s yacht which left Grimsby the day before us. He spends the evening with us on board bringing Finley with him so we can get to know this lovely bird. At first Finley is a little shy but by the end of the night he shows us his best side as he poses for his own photograph.

The northerly wind howls in the rigging all night. This really was a small window which we have grabbed to move ourselves a few miles along our way.

Cornwall to Scotland days 22 and 23

2011-07-26T12:09:00.003+01:00

Day 22/23 – The alarm goes off at 0530hrs and we both struggle towards consciousness and the realisation that we have to get up, to get ourselves out of our cosy warm bed to go out into that cold world outside. It is quiet, thank goodness, which means that there is little or no wind blowing. In an ideal world we would want wind, of course, but only so long as it is going our way. For the past four days it has blown steadfastly from a northerly direction so having no wind at all is a welcome relief from this, perfectly acceptable for us. We are about to embark on a passage around a long stretch of coastline which has no safe havens for us to pop into, no ports offering a guarantee of safety should we have need. We must cover a distance of ninety three nautical miles (these are slightly longer than the land ones) around the north-eastern shoulder of East Anglia then head off across the Wash to a landfall in the River Humber, the welcoming arms of Grimsby in fact. With no wind at all this will mean motoring the whole way, not ideal, but the trade off for this is often a flat sea. We know, however, it is unlikely that no wind at all will blow – it is rarely still at sea for long – so we have to hope that whatever does come our way treats us gently.

Once underway we realise that there is some wind, a light westerly blowing off the land but outside the harbour there is also a heavy swell coming from the north-east still lingering from the depression that has been driving our weather for the last week. This is now centred over Denmark. So off we go along the coast to Great Yarmouth, which looks like a supply centre for the wind farms – towers and blades are stacked up just inside the harbour like giant Lego pieces, then staying close inshore past Caister and on past the long and uninteresting line of dunes that protect the Norfolk Broads from the sea, always keeping our eyes peeled for the naturist beach which is along here somewhere. We see a man walking his dog, the dog being naked, but perhaps this doesn’t qualify, and the day was turning out to be a dull one anyway, the wind sneaking in from the north-west now, just where we want to go.

From Cromer (lighthouse flashing once every five seconds, even in daylight) we slant away from the coast, plugging on into the waves using sails and engine, everything we’ve got. The Wash is a shallow expanse of sea dotted with wind farms and gas rigs, shoals occurring at random across our path and the deep swell soon being overlaid with short waves that Cirrus really doesn’t like. Like all catamarans she is quite light and cannot drive through the waves like many yachts do and soon we are being tossed up and down till our knees start to ache and our necks are sore. Ten or twelve knots of wind is not a lot (the forecasters call this ‘light and variable’), force three or four if you know your Beaufort, but after nineteen hours of it full in our faces we have both had enough.

Kate: By the grace of strong tides we made it in at about 2 a.m. this morning and I for one am not a pretty sight. Our bones are still humming with the vibration of the engine through the soles of our feet and the waves were dumping bucket-fulls over the boat right up until we entered Grimsby Fish Dock. I dreaded entering the Humber at night – it’s very difficult to see how far off the lights are, ships and buoys. The chart tells you which lights flash which colour and the sequence but when that is complicated by other lights and vessels and you are in the recommended yacht passage, you don’t get the same view as the big boys. Speaking of which – we were entering the fish dock channel when a large monster ship started heading our way. We were near the large ship channel but he came incredibly close, nudged by a tug. The depth under us was less than six metres so we couldn’t believe there was enough water where he was. Malcolm steered bravely on, unable to steer too far away from the ship because of a shoal to port. Believe me, everything is surreal after such a long trip and the magic of the dark monsters. When you go in you call up ‘Fish Dock Island’ on VHF channel 74. The man said, “Come in sir, it’s all clear”. There was a gap, to the left of the gap was a beacon flashing red, to the right of the beacon the large monster ship could be seen wriggling through like a very large lady attempting to pass through a turnstile. To me it seemed like an act of faith to go through the gap to the left of the beacon but Malcolm steered through and the lock keeper could see us and guided us over the radio.

This is the second time in a few days that we have seen tugs steering impossibly ungainly floating lumps around, very skilfully. Kate’s brother Jamie sent us this story from where he lives in Australia:
’Your description of the tug boat skilfully handling a large boat in small space reminded me of the recent Brisbane floods. A very large, and heavy (weighing several tonnes), portion of the floating walk/cycleway at Newfarm, an inner Brisbane suburb, broke away at the height of the floods. It rambled on downstream heading for the bay and freedom. The only thing in its path were the twin bridges at the Gateway motorway. As it continued on its merry way engineers feared the worst. Such a large structure striking the bridge pylons could bring down the bridge. As the saga continued on live television a small, old, tug suddenly appeared and started gently nudging the serpent like structure. It darted backward and forward until it managed to swing the walkway into something remotely resembling a 100 metre long canoe. Having completed this they skilfully guided this through between the pylons and out of harms way. All this in raging flood waters littered with debris including boat pontoons and boats drifting along.
The two tug boat Captains have recently received an Australian award for services rendered. They still didn't grasp what all the fuss was about. They saw the thing on TV and decided they'd better take the tug out, end of story!’

Cornwall to Scotland days 17 to 21

2011-07-24T14:47:00.003+01:00

Day 17 – Faced with the prospect of spending several days here in Lowestoft we checked with the harbour master to make sure we were berthed in the right place. But thirty minutes after having assured us everything was OK he came over to our pontoon and explained that a rather large and very solid looking old ship was about to be manoeuvred past our pontoon and it may be safer if we took Cirrus out of the way for a short time. Of course, an hour earlier it had been calm but by this time the wind was whistling past us so our own manoeuvres were quite exciting, let alone what was shortly to be happening just upwind of us. But if we wanted a stunning example of what a professional tug-master can do, this was it. We felt like applauding after he had shunted the large and ungainly ship through a gap barely wider than the vessel itself and tucked it away behind a pontoon with no fuss or bother at all.

We wandered off to explore Lowestoft and much to our surprise soon found, beyond the ‘standard’ High Street' with its repetitions of shops found in every town in the country, another older model which harked back to an earlier age. Here the buildings are small and narrow by comparison, but varied, Elizabethan timbers jutting out over the street next door to a much later brick tenement. Here we found a shop selling square-rigged sailing ships which could be flown like a kite, a barber's shop complete with striped pole and a place offering computer repairs. Then, leading off between these houses are a series of narrow alleys known as Scores, many of which have steps leading down towards the sea which are enclosed with local flint stone walls. There is Crown Score, Herring Fishery Score, Rant Score and Frost’s Alley Score, to name but a few, all of which would have led down to the original fishing port. Names like this are just dripping history, most of which we will never know.

It was fishing that inspired the construction of many of Britain’s coastal harbours, something that is noticeably diminished today and I have commented before on how many of the small north-east coastal fishing ports have turned towards leisure boating for their livelihoods by laying pontoons for visiting yachts, thus breathing new life into their towns. But since our last passage around the country in 2009 there is evidence of a new industry which is giving old ports a new lease of life – the wind farms. New sites for these, forests of giant ‘windmills’, have sprung up along the south coast, in the Thames estuary and in the Wash and for both their construction and ongoing maintenance or repair this means more boat traffic coming into and out of ports. We noted this particularly in Ramsgate where there were many more vessels going in and out at all times of the day and night. Then in the near future we can expect tidal generators to appear as well, making use of the strong currents around our coasts, the same ones that we try to take advantage of when we are sailing. This will mean even more boat traffic (and also more things to avoid when out sailing). We have the feeling that we are witnessing the birth of a new age, something that is transforming our country, and particularly our country’s coastline, right in front of our eyes.

Just as a matter of interest, there is a generator tower mounted onshore close to the harbour here in Lowestoft which apparently is known as ‘Gulliver’. Does this mean that all such towers have names, I wonder?

Days 18 to 21 – The Royal Norfolk & Suffolk Yacht Club, in whose marina we are now berthed, is an ancient and worthy body. It seems the club was formed in 1859 to try to control the behaviour of yacht crews of the time who took their competitiveness rather too far by fighting with opposing yacht crews rather than trying to out-sail them. Things grew from there and in 1903 the present clubhouse, an imposing local landmark, was built at a cost of £4,500. Today, when entering the clubhouse lobby for the first time one immediately begins to suspect that time has somehow slowed down inside the walls whilst life continued outside at a different pace. There are many startling and astonishingly well preserved features which can only be of great vintage and for which, it is clear, no expense can have been spared. The one that really made my jaw drop is in a place only ever frequented by gentlemen (and I use this word in the very proper sense), the toilet. The urinal is by Twyfords, its porcelain preserved precisely as when it was first minted, and the polished copper cistern hanging above, which bears an engraved club crest, is a masterpiece of Victoriana worthy of the British Museum. I hope I am not breaking any club rules by revealing all in this photo.

There is also an atmosphere to the clubhouse which is clearly enjoyed and encouraged by many of the members, that belongs in a timeless world of its own. Appropriate dress is something that is seen as something important, to the point that our own over-casual apparel leaves us feeling rather intimidated. I don’t have a blazer to my name, I confess, and if I did it is unlikely that we would deem it an essential piece of equipment to have on board the boat. An evening visit to the club bar makes me realise just how wrong I am in taking this view.

None of the above should detract, however, from what is undoubtedly a successful and thriving club which offers excellent facilities to any visiting yachtie, whatever the cut of their jib. This is our second visit here (we stopped here in 2009) and were it not for its remote easterly location, we would make many more visits. Better still, perhaps the whole structure can be transplanted nearer to our home so that we might revel in the timelessness whilst studying the sepia prints of lateen-rigged sailing yachts in days long gone.

Our luck with the wind since Plymouth has finally run out and like a number of other yachts, we are now hunkered down waiting for the fresh northerlies to moderate a little and let us move on. We take the opportunity to shop, to touch up some varnish and to explore the town a little more. One of the nice things about staying in port is the opportunity it creates to meet and get to know others who are travelling about in similar circumstances, others who have committed themselves to a life aboard a boat. David and Trisha have a lovely boat called Lioness in which they have travelled extensively over the last 10 years or so. This year they had set off, like us, to sail around the British coast anticlockwise but back in May whilst coming into Lowestoft Harbour their propeller became tangled on a piece of a rope which caused considerable damage to the engine and gearbox. Extensive repairs have now been carried out but this has held them up and they will not be able to complete their round Britain circuit this year. They are not deterred, of course, and will start again next year hoping for better luck.

We are ready to move on now, fuel tank topped up (since leaving Plymouth our engine has burnt only thirty litres of diesel!) and food laid in for the next few days at least. We have a long passage ahead, across the Wash to Grimsby, and it will be an early start to take advantage of the tide up the coast.

Cornwall to Scotland days 13 to 16

2011-07-21T09:14:00.003+01:00

Day 13 – Two days of living and sleeping on land is about what it takes for us to get our land legs back and for the world to stop bouncing about. Then we return to Ramsgate Harbour to find Cirrus still leaping about wildly along with all the other boats in the harbour, so our legs have to learn all over again. A full gale is blowing now. Even the cross-channel ferries have stopped running, and it takes a lot for them to give up and go home. Catamarans don’t, of course, lean over, but the monohull yachts in harbour are all leaning one way just with the pressure of the wind on their masts, as if gravity has taken leave of its senses. The forecast chart shows that the depression giving us this weather, currently centred over Middlesbrough, will move eastwards over the next few days and eventually things will calm down. When it does then there will be a mass exodus of boats, everyone who has been pinned down in port trying to move on at the same time. Summer gales like this are not uncommon and it may be windy but it is not cold so we just have to sit it out and amuse ourselves, keeping our heads low for a while. It is a good time to sit around and read some of the books we have picked up on our travels. Many marinas have a few book shelves tucked away in a corner somewhere which function as a library operated by an unseen and unwritten set of rules. Travellers simply deposit books they have read and take away those that interest them, no tickets needed, no librarians and no fines.

Day 14 – Still in Ramsgate, we spend the day shopping and tidying up the boat. The strong wind continues to blow and by late afternoon we check the forecast model once again to see whether the wind is doing what it should. The noise in the rigging has not abated and dark grey clouds are still marching across the skyline. We note that by midnight, if the prediction is accurate, it will finally quieten down. It helps us to believe in this.

Day 15 – The morning is quiet, as predicted, with just a light southerly breeze, which is not quite as forecast but is fine for us, for we are moving north. But not before we have some serious waving to take care of. First of all there are Chris and Chris who have come over to Ramsgate armed with white hankies. They nearly miss us there but by the time we reach Broadstairs they have moved onto the pier and are waving away again. At Stone Bay we get a mobile telephone call from Richard telling us where to look onshore so we can wave at him, and there he is, standing on something or someone tall gesticulating madly. We thought we were done then but just as the coast turns east and we start to move away offshore across the Thames estuary there are Chris and Chris again, arms going like semaphore. We collapse on the deck, our arms exhausted from all the flapping about, but thrilled to think that we have had such a marvellous send off for our journey north.

Hours later we are still glowing as we negotiate the complex of channels and shoals that lie in our path en route to Suffolk and hear a message on the radio saying there will be a ‘Controlled Detonation’ of a mine at a position somewhere near the Gunfleet. We rush to the chart to plot the position to find ourselves only ten miles away, but nevertheless at a safe distance. In the end we did not hear the explosion above our own engine noise but Chris told me later that he did from all the way south in Broadstairs.

We had thought we might miss Essex completely this time round but after six hours under a scorching sun, mostly with the engine thumping away but latterly with our spinnaker drawing us along nicely, we are closing Pye End buoy off Walton-on-the-Naze and decide to head into the Backwaters for the night. Two miles up stream we drop our anchor into the mud of Hamford Water just as a seal slithers from the bank and heads off for a night’s fishing. Fairy terns hover excitedly over a shoal of fry and up above us a large raptor glides by, eyes peeled for prey. We cannot identify him for certain but we know the Brent geese who are wading in the shallows and the noisy oyster-catchers who screech by us. This spot is just heavenly and to cap it all, the sun puts on a show for us at the close of the day.

Day 16 – Our aim today is to sail north along the Suffolk coast to Lowestoft, not because we particularly like the place, but more because of the forecast northerlies coming our way in the next day or so. But the peace and quiet of our anchorage holds us like glue and whilst chatting with the seal first thing this morning he did seem to be expressing the view that he liked having us here. Maybe he will wave us off.

We leave around midday, which is before the tide turns in our favour and therefore by definition, early and once across the busy shipping lane which feeds Felixstowe we raise the spinnaker and there it stays for the next thirty eight miles. We fly along with the wind right behind us and once past Orfordness, the tide starts going our way as well so we are moving even faster. We shoot past Aldeburgh doing eight knots (over the ground), people standing on the beach can barely turn their heads quickly enough. Sizewell’s dome shaped nuclear power station appears then disappears behind us and Southwold’s windmill flashes past too. By six o’clock we can see the lone wind turbine that sits on Lowestoft’s pier and we are in harbour by seven, temporary members of the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club with access to their showers. which we make liberal use of.

Cornwall to Scotland days 10 to 12

2011-07-17T07:59:00.002+01:00

Day 10 – All it took in the end was one longish day at sea, with an eight o’ clock start, to complete our passage along the south coast of England and turn the next corner (left again). Favourable winds came our way yet again making this a fast passage, past Dungeness with its multiple lighthouses (the sea deposits more land out into the Channel every year leaving the old lighthouses behind and requiring a new one to be built further out) and past the floating drilling rig ‘Rambiz’ which, once we were past it, seemed to follow us around the coast like it was attached by a long piece of string.

The actual corner of the British coastline came just after we had dodged our way through an almost continuous line of cross-channel ferries going into and out of Dover harbour (a stressful little moment on a small boat). It is a simple matter of following the curve of the crumbling white cliffs to move quietly from the English Channel to the North Sea, a place where at first the water is tinted turquoise by the chalk dissolved from the cliffs then, as we close Ramsgate Harbour, it begins to assume the pale brown colour of the silt from the Thames estuary. Nine hours and sixty-four nautical miles after we left Eastbourne we are tying up to a pontoon and we can finally relax. An average speed of seven knots is fast for any sailing yacht of our size but we would not have achieved this without the fair tide running our way for much of the journey.

We are stopping for a while in Ramsgate taking the opportunity to catch up with a few friends and relations and also to let some wet and windy weather pass us by. We do try to avoid deliberately flirting with inclement sailing weather.

Day 11 – The long sea swell on which we were rising and falling at sea yesterday creeps into Ramsgate Harbour to disturb our sleep. Cirrus surges back and forth making a sort of grunting noise each time one of the mooring ropes becomes tight. Sometimes the motion in one direction is reversed so rapidly that our sleep is disturbed, but only slightly, just enough to produce strange dreams.

In the morning my cousin Chris and her husband, also Chris, cycle over from Broadstairs for a visit and we chat on like long lost friends until hunger drives us ashore. They are both boat and ship fanatics who take a keen interest in the comings and goings of vessels passing through the Dover Straits – and what better place to live for this. They insist on photographing us and Cirrus, so naturally we photograph them too.

By evening we are visiting old haunts in Faversham, first the Elephant then the Phoenix (most pubs here are named after animals, mythical or otherwise), for an excellent evening of ‘craic’ with our friends.

Day 12 – We stay the night with friends Rich and Gerry then meet up again with the same crowd for a long lunch with Richard E. in celebration of his impending retirement. This was originally planned as a ‘Retirement Regatta’ involving lots of messing around on boats in the sheltered waters of the Swale but the weather scuppers these plans by raining for most of the day and keeping us indoors. By evening the the rain has stopped and the sun is out and glinting off the cherries in the orchard back at Rich & Gerry’s place. Rich has to have firm words about pushing over trees with a black sheep called ‘Hot Horns’. The reasons for the name become obvious when you grab him by the scruff of the neck– the horns are indeed surprisingly warm to the touch.

There is plenty of wind about just now, a little too much for us to be venturing out on Cirrus. Through the Internet we are able to access weather forecasts for at least five days ahead and this gives us a possible sailing windows for the coming week so that we can make our next big jump, crossing the Thames Estuary to Suffolk. Despite the variability of British weather these forecasts have proved to be surprisingly accurate at predicting wind speed and direction and giving us warning of the conditions we are likely to encounter.

Cornwall to Scotland days 8 and 9

2011-07-13T19:57:00.003+01:00

Day 8 – The occasional nugget of feedback we get from followers of this blog is always welcomed here on board Cirrus. And we now know that there are those that are following not just our progress but also that of the weather fronts as they move across our sailing area. So the sudden change between yesterday’s weather and today’s - a complete reversal of wind direction, sunny skies to heavy rain, shorts and T-shirt to jumper and cagoule – prompted some alarm amongst our readers, concerned that we were might be swept right back to the West Country again. Fortunately, being an island race for many centuries does have some advantages, not least of which are that safe harbours litter our coasts and keep out the nasty seas associated with some of our nastier weather. Brighton marina is one of these although it has not, as it happens, been around very long. It is a very safe haven and tucked in as we are beneath the ‘Frankie & Benny’s’ and the ‘Pizza Express’ with a floating Chinese restaurant almost close enough for us to reach out for a chop suey, with the marina-based housing development behind this then higher still, a flank of chalky cliffs, we could not be more safe. Although we are still floating on the sea and rising and falling with the tide there is not a gale that could touch us here; but thank you all for your concern.

We take advantage of the day off sailing by meeting with family who live not too far away, this being part of the reason for our passage around the coast in this direction. Our eldest, Tony, pops over to stay on board for a couple of nights and, it being my mother’s 89th birthday, I hire a car to drive to Ticehurst and surprise her. (I will not dwell on the navigation difficulties I encounter on this short journey, the absence of road signs at junctions where they might have been useful to me, although I did speculate that perhaps in preparation for an invasion the signage has been deliberately removed. Have I missed this particular piece of news?) Happy Birthday Mum.

Evenings at the marina are when the starlings return. Great flocks of them come sweeping in, swirling around in a spectacular air display of synchronised flying then dramatically swooping down to disappear beneath the piles of the West Quay where we assume they must roost. They are noisy beasts and once they are gone all is quiet for a brief moment, until suddenly they appear again, as if from nowhere, to perform an encore for us. We feel like applauding, but we restrain ourselves.

Day 9 – On the move again, we wave farewell to Tony and leave port, this time to hop along the coast to Royal Sovereign Harbour. This is not just a man-made harbour, it is a town constructed out of nothing, which lies close to but yet separate from the town of Eastbourne. From the sea (always a different viewpoint) we can compare and contrast the two places. The sea front at Eastbourne is typically Victorian, blocks of four and five storey terraced houses all painted white or magnolia, presenting their faces to the sea. This grand facade is a land of hotels and guest houses with amusements along the promenade that have been entertaining visitors for years.

Turn the head and focus upon Royal Sovereign, a settlement of separate brick-built dwellings with steep pitched roofs done in a modern style. We know, from having been here before, that the marina complex lies at the centre, a network of waterways and lagoons connected by walkways and bridges which lift to allow boats to pass. Unlike Eastbourne, Sovereign looks to the marina, not out to sea. There are even boats offering trips around inside the harbour so visitors can gaze up at the surrounding apartments, brick-built with their little balconies, as they pass by. Beyond this the town’s suburbs start but there are shops galore, supermarkets and all the rest all within a short walk, making this place totally self sufficient, needing nothing from its larger neighbour.

So you can take your pick. There are those that would find Sovereign too much for them, too modern and contrived. Equally there are those who would see Eastbourne as a relic of days gone by. There’s no accounting for taste.

Our wind is off the land now, a stiff breeze which whisks us on towards Beachy Head at great speed. The sea is nearly flat so the sensation of movement is almost absent, only a shushing noise from the stern alerts us to the movement. The lighthouse beneath this grand cliff is a relic too now, no longer does it shine out. It has been replaced by a building high above on the cliff top and its bright paintwork is beginning to show evidence of neglect already.

Here we turn a corner (left again) and motor the last few miles into port, finally passing through the lock into the world within a world of Royal Sovereign.

Cornwall to Scotland days 6 and 7

2011-07-12T13:33:00.003+01:00

Day 6 – Today, in the simple process of moving a short distance east along the coast, we put Cirrus and ourselves right in the middle of one of the busiest stretches of water in these isles. And it being a Sunday, it was possibly busier than most other days of the week. For those who don’t know, the Solent is the waterway that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland and for many years it has seen itself as a sailing Mecca, the place to go or be seen if you are remotely interested in the sport. The result is that on any day, and particularly at weekends, there are sailing boats in every direction, many of them engaged in racing with crews all dangling their legs over the side as the boats lean away from them, but many others simply shuffling about aimlessly from port to port. Everywhere you look there are marinas stuffed with more boats, more still hanging on moorings wherever there is a bit of shelter, and then of course there are visitors like us who are just passing through. It is not just sailing boats either. A phalanx of jet-skiers (at least 12) came past us as we approached Cowes and then there are motor cruisers of all descriptions too, like the one whose French owner had to radio for help when his engine had a broken connecting rod (there are no secrets on VHF radio). For us, on our little catamaran, the contrast between here and the seas around Scotland could not be more marked. Even the Clyde at its most congested comes nowhere close to the Solent. Gazing out ahead of us we see a white forest of sails. The water is continuously being churned up by all these craft and there is the constant need to be alert, to be ready to take avoiding action when someone comes too close. This is not, therefore, the sort of place to have a quiet, restful day out. It is, in our opinion, a place to be avoided, if at all possible.

Had it not been for yesterday’s strong winds we would have done just that, avoided the Solent, by sailing outside of Wight around St. Catherine’s Point. But the southern shores of the Isle offer no safe havens and we would have had to sail right through the night had we chosen this route. The thought of doing that with such a sea running prompted us to select the lesser of the two evils, a passage through the Solent. Hence today we found ourselves right in the thick of things moving from Yarmouth to Gosport.

Day 7 – The winds may have been blowing strongly so far on our journey, but at least they have been coming from the west at a time when we were moving east. Today is scorchingly hot but what wind there is still comes out of the west. This is indeed what we and Cirrus like, a fair wind. Weather forecasts are showing us that after today this will all change and suddenly our eastward progress is going to stall, so to make best progress we leave Gosport late morning and turn left again.

Motoring for a time, once past Selsey Bill we switch off the iron beast and the spinnaker goes up, to float us gently over the almost calm sea. Cirrus just nods to the wavelets and we assume our favourite position on the bow, legs dangling forward just clear of the splash-zone. We have a piece of electronics that can take care of the steering in conditions like this leaving us free to lounge about in the sun… whilst keeping watch, of course.

The hours roll by and we sit around reading, eating, making cups of tea and occasionally tending the sails until away in the distance Brighton marina creeps into view. We radio ahead for a berth then motor slowly around to pontoon No.6, tucked away in one corner. This is a busy place and we are positioned just below a row of marina-facing restaurants and bars, whose clientele all observe our berthing manoeuvres, no doubt waiting for us to lose control of the boat. We disappoint them.

Cornwall to Scotland days 3 to 5

2011-07-10T15:59:00.003+01:00

Day 3 – The rain from yesterday finally moved away from Plymouth leaving us with only the wind to cope with. Trying to sleep on board Cirrus this meant listening to the bump and grind of fenders against the hull all night long, this not being the most sheltered of marinas. Somehow, eventually, the mind shuts it out and a broken sleep does come along.

Slightly less wind greeted us by morning but we knew that outside port we would find a rough sea waiting for us. An Irish depression (meteorologically speaking) is still swirling around and pushing Atlantic swells right up the English Channel so we had a fair idea what to expect once we were out of the shelter of land. Great lumps of water were jumping about wildly in all directions making life as unpleasant as possible for yachtsmen and tossing our little boat around every way it could. In short, it was a horrible piece of sea but even so we set off into it, turned left outside Plymouth and after an hour the sun brightened the day, warming us up and even bringing out our first dolphin, a small beast which popped up for a glimpse at us before swimming away.

At 1530 we sail into Dartmouth. There is little more to be said of the passage apart from noting our discomfort at the condition of the sea. The new echo sounder had a lot to say, however, and very loudly too (at least this is how it seems with its large numbers, like visual shouting). Was the gadget, being shown here by Kate, designed for the visually impaired, I wonder? Also please note that she is fully protected against the sun, dolphins and rough seas.

Once anchored in the ‘sheltered’ middle of the River Dart, gusts of wind immediately start blasting in from the sea and we realise we have been fortunate to avoid this whilst at sea. Much more of this with rain too is forecast for later.

Day 4 – The rain arrives at around two in the morning, wind too. To get the full picture of life aboard a boat at anchor here one has to realise that we are attached to the mud at the bottom of a fast flowing river by a length of heavy chain. The tide in the river flows one way then the other and the wind, in the narrow valley that is Dartmouth Harbour, comes in fierce gusts, generally following the line of the valley. The anchor chain is therefore being pulled one way or another depending on which is stronger, tide or wind and as it scrapes across the bottom of the river the rumbling sound this makes is transmitted upwards into the hull, adding to all the other noises of the night – the howling of the wind, the splashing of water against the hull, etc. The phrase “Quiet night at anchor” does not apply well to these circumstances.

At a more reasonable time of day we emerge into the grey daylight. Heavy black clouds hover over Dartmouth so we sit around and watch all the activity on the river, feeling smug about being safely tucked in here. The harbourmaster comes by for his dues and he gives us a neatly printed weather forecast for the days ahead which tells us we have fair winds and weather to come. We designate today as a lazy one, and I make the porridge for breakfast.

Our position in the centre of the river between the shores of Dartmouth and Kingswear gives us a panoramic view few experience. We notice, for example, that the residents of Kingswear are trying to replicate the colours of Tobermory on their houses. Boats small and large continually move about us, ferries, water taxis, dinghies, and then towards the end of the day a pair of ancient French working boats crewed by exuberant youngsters hoist sail for departure.

Day 5 – Creeping out of Dartmouth at 0620 we met the first wave of the day just outside the rocky entrance. The last one met us over twelve hours later just outside Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. It was a fair wind all the way, somewhat stronger than the forecasters promised us but this just meant we sailed faster than expected, especially when the spinnaker went up the mast and Cirrus took off like a scalded rabbit. Here is me steering at speed. The white stuff behind me is, well, white water.

So what do we feel like after twelve hours on a lively sea in a speeding cat? Pretty tired. But we are also quite proud of ourselves, pleased to have got so far in one day and that we coped OK with the roughest day at sea for many a month. Also delighted to have passed our nemesis, Portland Bill, without encountering the dreaded race. Yarmouth will deliver us a little peace and quiet tonight (once the over-excited oldsters on the yacht beside us are put to bed). Tomorrow, our plan is to meander along the Solent as far as Portsmouth where we can stock up with one or two necessities. Somewhere along the way today our anchor light flipped overboard and was lost. It is, in fact, nothing more than a garden light which sits in a bracket on the stern rail charging up its batteries from a little solar cell on top. A small adaptation enables us to hang it in the rigging at night. These lights are easy to replace - less than a fiver at any good garden store.

This is the first view of the Isle of Wight on a windy day.

Cornwall to Scotland day 1 & 2

2011-07-06T19:11:00.003+01:00

Day 1 - From the boatyard slip at Millbrook we motor to a safe spot on the river just across from Plymouth, somewhere from where we can watch the city but not get too involved with it, and drop the anchor off the bow into a soft muddy bottom only a few metres below. By morning it is raining (we are in Cornwall after all) and the wind has shifted around to the south-west. This is a good breeze to send us on our way but before we can use it we have some important jobs to take care of on board.

We motor across to Mayflower Marina and berth alongside a pontoon. We have a long list of tasks to be done and another of things to buy, an assortment of bits and pieces we could not carry with us or that now need renewing. One job is to clean out Cirrus’ water tanks. We have one of these fitted low down in each hull and the task involves filling them to the brim then adding some sterilising powder. Hours later they are pumped out, refilled again with fresh water and pumped out again. Each tank holds more than thirty gallons (125 litres) which basically means we pump until our arms fall off then start all over again on the other tank.

While I am away trying to buy an oil filter for the engine Kate washes our decks of most of the detritus a winter ashore has deposited there. The transformation is striking, to us, who knew how bad the mess was and Cirrus looks smart and ready to go. Our boat is now over thirty years old but structurally she is as strong as she ever was. Some of the equipment, however, which is less old, has begun to let us down. One thing that is nice to know when we are out sailing is the depth of the water beneath us but our echo sounder now refuses to divulge this information no matter what I do or how nicely I speak to it.

Day 2 - We check the forecast for the next few days ahead and can see a small depression over Ireland which is going to dump some rain here later today. So it’s off to the shops early to stock up with provisions and invest our pennies in a new echo sounder then back to the boat just in time to hide from the rain, torrential rain, which arrives early afternoon. Crawling through the smaller spaces inside the hull to run a new transponder cable I can hear the rain beating a tattoo above my head but finally, as the rain eases, the echo sounder starts talking to us again.

We have decided now to sail east up the English Channel then turn left (north) for Scotland, not the quickest way home but one that will enable us to meet up with friends and family en route. It is also the coast that is most familiar to us from years ago. All is set now, plans laid for an early departure in the morning, so off we go to the marina restaurant, Jolly Jacks, for a wee celebratory meal.

From land to sea

2011-07-05T16:16:00.003+01:00

Visiting a big city like Glasgow is always something of a culture shock for us. Earlier in the day we were staggering along the road to the bus stop in Carradale with our giant suitcases, greeting our neighbours with a friendly word here and there, explaining to those who didn’t already know that we would be away from a while, then before we know it we are stepping down from a bus meeting the noise and the rush of a big city full on. People are strangers here. Nobody stops for a chat and often will not even step aside to let us pass along the pavement, overburdened though we are. We feel like aliens, strangely uncomfortable with our fellow humans.

We spend the night at the Travelodge as we have business to conduct in the city and Glasgow has the nearest branch of our bank. After checking in at the hotel we rush off to arrive just before closing time and, business completed, then relax and celebrate a little, eating out at Dino’s in Sauchiehall Street. This is a little island of Italian-ness and once inside, seated before the red and white chequered plastic table cloth, we can pretend that we have just stepped off an Italian village street. We can even order our meal in Italian, if we dare. The Spaghetti Napoli is a delicious thing to behold and the owner exudes excessive Italian charm right through the meal – what more could you ask for.

Cities are noisy places at night (everywhere is noisy compared to Carradale) but despite this we sleep well and by mid-afternoon the following day we are in Birmingham and setting off on the last leg of our long journey. Puffy white clouds float about aimlessly above us as the day warms up and the fine weather continues; we are travelling south, towards the sun, and at each stop we notice a slight increase in warmth, degree by degree, until finally we arrive at our destination, Millbrook in Cornwall. Here we have barely set off with our luggage to walk the last mile down the lane to the boatyard when the yard owners, Pip and Debbie, pass by and kindly stop their car to take our bags for us. We are expected and they have made us feel less like strangers here in this foreign land.

Millbrook Lake is actually a tidal inlet off of the River Tamar which itself forms the boundary between Devon and Cornwall. The word ‘lake’ does not do this place any justice at all because for most of the day the water is absent and a muddy desert shimmers in the heat, quietly leaking an ever ripening smell which drifts across the boatyard where we are working to bring Cirrus Cat alive again. Fortunately there is plenty to be done so we ignore our senses for the moment; launch day is a weekend away and the anti-fouling paint has to go on, sails bent on spars and the engine run up. Considering that she has been lying here since October last year, the air inside the boat is quite fresh (a tribute to the ventilation) and everything we need to live comfortably aboard is soon unpacked or re-fitted in its place. We begin stocking up with food, connecting the instruments and other electrical equipment and brushing away ten months of dust where this has accumulated, ready for the land to sea transformation that is about to take place.

The heat is now oppressive and by afternoon it is sapping our energy. Activity begins to slow down a little as, with so little breeze, the temperature inside the boat rises to 29 degrees Celsius in the shelter of the boatyard. The moment will soon arrive when there will be cooling water lapping against the hull making things rather more comfortable on board.

Sunday is the day our son Mike arrives for a visit, with Yeovil’s newest inhabitants, Kate’s brother Peter and his wife Liz, who are now living in our renovated house there. We spend a hot but enjoyable day with them trying to deal with Liz’s apparent fears about whales rising up from the depths of the sea and tipping over our catamaran with one toss of the head (surely not!) then finally they return home to leave us alone to spend what will be our last night on land for many months.

Launch day finally arrives and a specially adapted trailer is slid between our hulls which jacks Cirrus clear of the ground. A tractor is hitched up and our home from home slowly trundles across the boatyard towards the slipway which leads… to the muddy expanse of Millbrook Lake.

Here we are deposited, gently, and abandoned for the rest of the day, forgotten by the world until the tide brings Cirrus’ natural element, water, to us. And before we know it we are floating away on a new adventure.

Soon Serious Sailing

2011-06-27T10:27:00.005+01:00

Despite venturing onto the water on other people’s boats (thanks to Owen, Jim and Celia) we are sorely missing life aboard our own. Having spent so many months living aboard Cirrus Cat in recent years we just feel comfortable there, at home and relaxed. We can close ourselves in and feel cosy there whatever the weather is doing outside or we can up anchor and move somewhere else. We are starting to get excited now because very soon we will be back on board, sailing our boat away from her Cornish winter home.

A big sky over the Isle of Arran

We hear tales of a heat-wave in the south of England and when we compare this with the weather these last few months have given us up here in the Highlands it is almost as if we are about to travel to some exotic far-away country. But no matter how pleasant this warmth may be we also know that we will miss the vast open views, the clarity of the air, the people, the sheer wild exuberance of our home…

…and the castles. This one is just along the road in Torrisdale, discreetly tucked away from view, believe it or not!

So once again we are making travel plans, packing our bags with essentials and with all the things we feel we might need over the month or so that we are planning to be away. It is now some ten months since we sailed on Cirrus. She was then ‘winterised’, her vulnerable bits wrapped up against the cold, and many of our belongings were unloaded (into a hired car) as part of those preparations. But after so many months, can we now remember what is on board and what is not? We will be returning only with what we are able to carry as luggage on the bus to the boatyard, a pretty limited amount, and when you consider that we will need an assortment of clothes, the computer stuff (to maintain the blog), and as many tools as we can carry to deal with all those boat-related repair and maintenance jobs, our suitcases are beginning to bulge. Somehow we have to prepare for this one-way trip based on what we can remember we left behind. Did I leave my shorts on board ready for the expected hot weather? What about the sun-block? Am I going to need a saw or a drill? Which shoes to take? Have we got the mobile phone chargers? Film for the camera? (No, I’m only kidding. This is some sort of a flashback.)

Finally we take our leave. We will know soon enough whether we have got it right or wrong.

Visitor action

2011-06-20T21:45:00.003+01:00

A series of visitors during a period of less than perfect weather has left us feeling drained of our normal energy and joy at living here in Carradale. Many different strands of our lives seem to be shifting simultaneously so that there is much to think about and worry ourselves over. There is the leaking roof, for example, which is now finally being repaired by a local builder. Ever since we first moved in here, each time the rain really fell heavily we have had to place buckets on the floor of our guest bedroom to catch the water that seeped through the ceiling. At last our guests can be assured of a sound night’s sleep without the noise of constant dripping into a bucket beside them.
Then there were telephone calls from our eldest son, Tony, who is reeling from the news of his best friend Ed who died recently. Tony had been close to Ed since they were at school together. We send our condolences to his family and friends.
The sale of our London apartment takes place any day now, closing another chapter in our lives and providing us with some much needed capital. We may even soon be able to afford those roof repairs!

Meanwhile our next visitors, my mother and her nonagenarian companion, George, were splashing their way through the showers and the puddles on walks around our village, this despite my fervent praying for some sunshine and warmth for their visit. We did at last manage to take them over to the Isle of Gigha on the ferry so they could wander around the garden of the Achamore estate here. The Vikings, and later the Norse Kings, who made their home in the Western Isles, called this place ‘the good isle’ or maybe even ‘God’s isle’ depending upon how you translate it. The hundred-odd full time inhabitants would not argue with this as back in 2002 they all clubbed together as a community and bought the island from its then owner. Today you don’t have to chat for long with any local to become aware of how proud they feel of their home and of the strong sense of shared community that exists there. It is a lovely place which exhibits humanity at its very best.

I will admit that squelching around gardens on a damp day is not my favourite activity. I preferred the drive to the northern tip of the island from where you can sit and watch the whole of the Sound of Jura spread out before you like a map. This is all good sailing country standing ready for when we have our boat up here.

Our wild landscape produces some astonishing shapes and colours. On a plastic bucket cast up from the sea on the Atlantic-facing beach at Westport I found this collection of goose barnacles with their elephant-trunk appearance and brilliant yellow ‘lips’ around the shells. As soon as they sense water around them they send out feathery feelers which they wave about to catch their food. These ones may have picked the wrong floating object to latch on to as the incoming tide had pushed it just too far up the beach to be able to suck it back again when it receded. The weight of the bucket was too much for me to try to cast it back out and as a result these particular barnacles may well have been doomed.

Back to our visitors now and on one exceptionally rainy day it seemed sensible to take a tour of one of Campbeltown’s whisky distilleries. Gone are the days when there were more than thirty of such establishments in the town to chose from. Today only three remain and Springbank offered us the temptation of a wee dram to dispel the chill of the damp day, so naturally we chose this. The sight of so many barrels of spirit resting untouched and quietly watching the years pass by is more than many men could bear. No wonder they keep their bonded warehouses under lock and key.

In better weather a few days earlier we drove our little car along one of the most exciting stretches of single track road that Scotland can offer, stopping above the lighthouse that guards the North Channel and winks its light at Ireland across twelve miles of sea. This headland is the Mull of Kintyre and road traffic has to stop high up above the lighthouse from where a narrow track spirals downwards. Walking down this final mile is a bit like reverse mountaineering - going downhill before going up – but it has to be done. It is part of the magic of the place.

Sailing with Vela

2011-06-13T22:00:00.004+01:00

Forecast checked, stores loaded, extra bedding brought on board for Kate and myself plus our Dutch guest Maartje, and after a discussion with Jim & Celia on where we would be heading to on the first night we cast off from the Campbeltown pontoon, raising the sails to the gentle southerly breeze. Far from being crowded with five on board, Vela proves to be a comfortable boat with plenty of space in the cockpit for us to flop around in the sun and watch the scenery drift slowly by. Once the sails are set, the autohelm (which still needs to be christened as it is a valuable member of the crew) is set so we can relax and try to pick out the landmarks.
“Isn’t that Carradale Bay over there?”
“Yes, I can see our house nestling amongst the conifers”, replies Jim who is alarmed at the flowering rhododendrons which seem to be trying to take over his back garden. The view from the sea is not one he has seen before and this gives him and Celia a new perspective on their home.

Some hours later Lochranza came into view and Jim is soon engaging in the familiar (to us) task of trying to pass a rope through the ring on the top of a mooring buoy whilst lying prone on the foredeck. No matter how hard one may try to make this an elegant exercise, failure is inevitable. The bottom in the air posture just about guarantees this. Soon all is shipshape and all five of us pile into the inflatable for the short ride to shore. From this point onwards nothing on earth can prevent us heading for the hotel to slake our thirst. Dave and Hilary, who set off from Campbeltown just before us, have landed from their pretty yacht, Foxcub, and seated round a large table in the bar we all pore over a large map of Arran as if we were planning a great campaign, David, to everyone’s amusement, producing the most authentic ‘major-general’ voice we have ever heard.

After we had eaten there was the compulsory visit to Lochranza Castle for a group Campbeltown Sailing Club photo in the late evening sunshine. The daisies were very pretty, I thought.

We all pile into dinghies again and head for Vela where we find Glenn has arrived on Jessica Lee so that there are eight of us crammed into the cabin for more socialising before turning in for the night.

The morning sky is streaked with cirrus while little puffs of white cumulus float aimlessly around. Foxcub is first away, heading north up the West Kyle to the proposed lunch-stop at Kames. The wind is light again, from behind us, so naturally I pose the question to Jim and Celia,
”Do we have a spinnaker on board?”
They don’t know for sure but, “There is a spare sail in the forward cupboard. I don’t know what it is but it is a nice colour”.
We dig around and pull the bag into the daylight. Yes, it is a spinnaker, so out come the sheets and up the mast it goes. Soon its red, white and blue is billowing out ahead of us. (Surely this is not patriotically correct on a Scotsman’s boat!)

We leave Glenn behind at Kames as the weather changes, cloud taking over and a wind arriving which swirls unpredictably around making sailing an energetic affair. Celia takes the helm, tacking this way and that, leaving the rest of us grunts to do all the hard work of hauling ropes and winding winches. Fortunately, just before the crew rebel, there is a wind shift which gives us a clear run up the narrowest part of the passage and round the corner into the East Kyle. We squeeze past the Burnt Islands but the wind deserts us and the rain comes on with a vengeance. There is nothing for it but to motor on south into Rothesay for our second night away. We are all tired and somewhat damp as we plod about the town until we find a restaurant that can accommodate all of us. Curiously our wet clothing gradually dries out more quickly the more we wet our inner parts – a lesson to be learnt there, I think.

Rothesay is as charming as ever with its impressive harbourside and, of course, the spectacularly tiled Victorian toilets, but the forecast for our last day out was threatening some fresh easterlies and more rain later in the day. This meant an early start, well as early as we could manage, out of the marina, but nobody complained. David and Hillary chose to stay on in Rothesay, knowing better than to venture out, perhaps.Arran sat brooding to the south under a heavy carpet of cloud but despite this no wind came our way. Our only choice was to start the engine and rumble on past the islands of Great and Little Cumbrae then on to Pladda which lies off the southern tip of Arran. All went well but for the engine needing an anastomosis in one of its various pipes (this being performed without anaesthetic) before we could continue. Fortunately we were properly equipped for such an eventuality, as every good boat should be, and the day ended smoothly. As for the predicted wind and rain, this totally failed to come anywhere near Campbeltown until after we had safely berthed and unloaded. Such is the way of forecasts around here.

Our first outing with the Campbeltown Sailing Club took us past a scattering of the most spectacular islands in Scotland, even giving us glances of a distant Ireland on the return. We still have to nudge ourselves to believe that all this is on our doorstep.

Hot, wet and cold

2011-06-07T14:55:00.003+01:00

For the benefit of those who do not live in the British Isles, the month of June can bring sun with an intensity that will burn exposed skin within minutes. Despite its northerly position Scotland is no exception to this rule; in fact due to the greater clarity of the air the threat may be greater still. Like so many others, of course, I should have known this, having lived in Britain all my life. So why is it that after a day on board Jim & Celia’s yacht my nose ended up a bright pink colour and my forehead glowing red like a stop light? The explanation I like best is that we associate a strong sun with heat and the two do not, as one might suppose, necessarily go hand in hand. In fact there was such a chill in the air out at sea in the middle of Kilbrannan Sound that a jumper and a windproof jacket were needed to retain body warmth, despite the sunray lamp in the sky. The sun reflected off the sea and the deck of the boat as we drifted along in the light breeze but common sense precautions like wearing a hat or slapping on sun cream are soon forgotten when all about us is so peaceful and the only sound is that gurgling of the water past the hull and the occasional ‘burp’ from the autohelm as it applies a small correction.

Back on land, with temperatures rising into the mid twenties Celsius, we all thought that summer had at last arrived so naturally I dusted off my best shorts when we drove to Loch Lomond to meet up with our son Ben who had briefly joined the ‘Folk Trail’ on their trek from Land’s End to John O’ Groats. It took me only a moment outside in the breeze to realise that I had once again misjudged the weather, made a poor choice in the lower leg protection department. On went the trousers in a flash. My white legs are destined to last a little longer.

Our meeting with Clare, Cara the dog, and the other walkers took place on what must be the flattest part of the West Highland Way, the long distance footpath that begins somewhere north of Glasgow and wends its way north for ninety six miles to Fort William. We followed the leafy route of a disused railway line for five miles or so until we bumped into the group as they rounded a small hill, then we traipsed back with them to their campsite outside Drymen. Later the same day we joined them for a pub folk music session which went on enthusiastically until the very wee hours, by which time some serious rain was falling all across the area. With a timetable to keep to, a different place to visit every night, the walkers are committed to setting off each day whatever the weather is doing. That’s real dedication!

We could not travel further with them because we were expecting our first house-guest to arrive on the bus from Glasgow. Maartje has provided us with a list of things she would like to see and do on her visit – castles, horse riding, and owls being high on the agenda. The first two are pretty straightforward. The last is a bit more problematical but we tell her to keep quiet at night so she can hear them outside the house. (Maartje tells us that the Dutch word for owl is ‘uil’ but the way she says this is impossible to replicate.)

Carradale has produced some rain for the start of her visit, but we advise all visitors here to come equipped so all is well. As ever here in Carradale, the weather being experienced at this moment will not be the same as the weather an hour or so later. We can expect the sun to burst through any time soon.

England for a while

2011-05-30T18:25:00.003+01:00

Kate sits munching on a croissant, while waiting for the train which will transport us to London, the first visit for several years. We have business there, our home for three years prior to retirement is being sold and we have come to collect the remainder of our belongings, but we go there on sufferance only, not through choice. The pace of big city life does not attract us; in fact we cannot stand it for long at all!

The journey is a fast one, a bus ride from the Wee Toon into Glasgow (with entertainment provided by the driver’s commentary accompanied by some pretty bad jokes) then intercity train which zips along at amazing speed through the countryside, stations passing faster than we can read their names, the whole of a good novel being devoured before Euston. It is here that the pleasure ends, abruptly, as we descend the escalators into the crushing underworld of the underground. The Tube, an apt description that brings to mind lengths of toothpaste being squeezed through a narrow nozzle, is stuffed full of a million or so sweaty bodies most of whom have not just stepped out of the Kintyre countryside but instead have struggled through a day of work in the humidity of the city. We have to change trains onto the DLR but just before Bank station we decipher a garbled announcement which tells us that our train will not be stopping there – the station is over-crowded. We thrust our luggage-burdened bodies out of the carriage onto the platform to immediately hear, “Bank station is now open. I repeat: Bank station is now open”, so have to squeeze ourselves back on board the next train, which is equally full. Fighting our way along miles of underground passages like termites the doors of the driverless Docklands Light Railway train finally appear in front of us and we haul our luggage on board. What a relief it is to arrive at Limehouse Basin, a place that was once our winter home on board Cirrus, a place where familiar boats still float quietly as we walk along pathways we remember so well and cross the lock gates to a welcome in the Cruising Association’s London HQ. This place is an island of peace in the mad city, a place where sanity rules once more.

We are not done yet though, for in the morning we venture forth for more craziness, this time on London’s roads in a brand new car hired from a dealership in the shadow of Tower Bridge. Terrified of scratching this powerful beast’s shiny new paint we pilot through the stop-start maelstrom that is the capital’s full-time traffic jam. Buses loom over us, motorcycle messengers flick into view from behind, taxis U-turn directly in front of our bonnet and death-wish cyclists weave in and out of everything. The philosophy here is: To give an inch is to surrender – never surrender! There are rules here, but not those in any Highway Code. They are unwritten, hardwired into the genes of every Londoner but a terrifying mystery to all outsiders.

The London skyline triggers old memories but there is a newcomer here, a thousand foot shape is emerging from the ground, improbable and unfinished, it will soon dominate the skyline, taking over from lesser landmarks like the Gherkin and Big Ben. This is The Shard – where do they think of these names? – still some way short of its full height but rising higher every day. This is just another hotel and office block really, and thank goodness someone had the sense to put it here and not on Kintyre!

The hired car is a has an acre of load space and twin turbochargers tucked away under the bonnet which give it the long legs we need to transport us and our belongings around the country. Once we have escaped London we begin to observe the finer points of the countryside we are passing through. To our eyes, which are accustomed to a lush green vista, the land seems impoverished and dry. The grass is pale brown where it is cropped close to the hard earth, trees are in full leaf but look tired from straining hard to find water and weeds have rushed through their lifecycle to produce seed quickly with what little energy they have left. The south-east of England which has seen little rain now for over a month. My mother grumbles about the state of her flower bed when we visit her down in Ticehurst. This corner of the country seems to have become more arid in recent years and her flower portfolio may need to change too if she wants to avoid constant watering to sustain life. But having said this, the colourful spread she does produce is still the envy of all her neighbours.

Our journey continued around the homes of some of our scattered family as we wrench our son Mike away from his computer to take him out for a birthday meal. It is also an opportunity to window-shop, to feast our eyes on exotic goods not found in shops close to home, to experience the novelty of being able to buy, well, anything we could possibly want and even more that we never will.

Our hire car takes the journey back to Scotland in its stride, only a deep rumble giving away the fact that the engine is even switched on. We run into showers somewhere north of Birmingham, strong winds across the Lake District then right on the Scottish border the sun pops out from behind a cloud and we know we are home. The ocean off the west of Kintyre sparkles for us, masses of white combed waves rolling up the golden beaches. Take away the million shades of green exhibited by the conifers and the bracken, the dazzling waterfalls bursting out of roadside crags, the sharp contrast of black rocks thrusting out of verdant mountainsides, remove the lochs and the mountain streams, wring out most of the water and take away all the road traffic and it could just be the southeast of England. Or maybe not.

Spring gale

2011-05-24T11:46:00.003+01:00

From indoors the noise is the first thing we notice, a deep, machinery roaring that seems to be direction-less, like a far away aeroplane at first but then it rises in volume and there is a burst of sound as a gust tries to pick up the house and carry it away. Everything is in motion outside. The upper branches on the trees behind our garden fence thrash about in a frenzy, as if trying to shake off something unpleasant. Each leaf flashes its pale underside to the wind as it hangs on grimly; it is the first experience these leaves have had of this as they are not long unfolded. Now whole trees give before the blast, bending to an impossible angle, each young branch lining up downwind. The air is suddenly full of debris, green leaves, some still attached to twigs which have reached breaking point and been torn free.

There is a brief moment, a false calm where the gale seems to recede, to gather its strength, but it is momentary and the roaring comes again, hissing through the tree-tops, then flattening the grass, dropping down to ground level to pick up what it left before. The glass in the window through which we are watching creaks and gives slightly to the wind but holds firm. Leaf debris patters against it, a sprinkling of rain now, although the sun still shines down and warms us. Our garden birds have gone to cover, most of them, although there is one opportunistic blackbird pecking in the garden trying to ignore the indignity of having his flight feathers turned inside out by the wind. He flies off but remains low, picking his moment to dart into the shrubbery.

The sky darkens and more rain comes. It sweeps down from the hill in misty waves, moving rapidly along the conifer backdrop before it spatters angrily against our glass. The rain is there in the wind although we don’t see it as it moves too fast and hardly wets the ground. It comes in a squall which whines and screams under the eaves but the wind is invisible still, only its ghostly touch is felt and the clouds race by.

Although it is our first gale since moving here, we are not surprised to find ourselves in such an event. We are fully aware that we now live close to the usual track a depression tries to follow on this side of the Atlantic and a natural consequence of this will be periods of strong winds and heavy rain. There are many compensations to living here, too many to mention, but whilst we can see them, others may see only the worst. Strong winds can and frequently do cause havoc; we can expect them to disrupt our comfortable lives.

An hour ago I was speaking on the phone and just as the conversation ended our electricity supply was cut off, as if it was only waiting for the moment the receiver was replaced. Like many others in the village now we are without power and many of the things we take for granted are lost. We cannot heat ourselves nor cook. The kettle lies idle. The freezer is silent (now slowly warming) but daylight means we do not lack for light. So long as our mobile phone batteries last we can still communicate with the outside world but we assess our situation, making ready the candles and torches for later in the day. Our house is heavily reliant on electrical power, but no more so than those of many of our neighbours. Our plans to install a coal stove will eventually rectify this, so we are better able to cope with power cuts when they occur in winter, but this is some way down our list of priorities at the moment.

It is not just windy, it is exciting. So unable to stand it any more, we pull on our coats, zippers are yanked up and we stride off to the beach just in time to catch a heavy shower which soaks everything that is not waterproof, drenching our legs and shoes. The cold water has barely time to penetrate though for within minutes the sun has popped out and we are drying again as we battle on against the gale, which now begins to taste salty from spray picked up in Carradale Bay and being blown ashore. The tide is high now, made higher with wind behind it, and the sandy beach has vanished beneath a veil of foam which comes streaming off the wave crests. Spume wobbles up against the turf of the dunes or rolls along the shore like big lumps of sponge. We struggle to stand, overawed by the sheer wildness of what we are seeing, thrilled as young children.

Returning home via the village shop and bakery we find that the electricity has been reconnected and our preparations for a cold, candlelit supper are put on hold. Perhaps the sense of excitement we feel is not shared by the whole of Carradale, it is not an unusual occurrence after all, but this does not mean we cannot enjoy it.

On and over the water

2011-05-21T18:49:00.003+01:00

Expecting at this point to be able to show on this blog a series of exciting pictures taken from the deck of ‘Jochr’, a sailing yacht on board which I hoped to be winning Campbeltown Sailing Club races, I regret to have to disappoint. So few skippers have been turning up on race nights that the season has so far been something of a let down. Skipper Owen and his wife Joanna generally make a showing, whatever the weather, as does his regular crew Glen, who is another Carradalian, but we find ourselves standing about in front of the clubhouse watching the fishing boats come in from the sea instead of cranking winches on the sloping deck of a boat. I suppose it does take a certain degree of dedication, some might say determination, to race regularly and perhaps the enthusiasm of those who previously found the time to go sailing has been eroded by these recessionary times we are living in. Whatever the reason, it is disappointing for those like me who are suffering withdrawal by not having a boat to sail on. It will be many weeks before we are back on board Cirrus.

Campbeltown Loch did at least give us something more interesting to gaze at this week as we had a visit from the sail training ship, ‘Stavros S Niarchos’ which was on a week long tour of the Clyde starting in Greenock and finishing in Belfast. This is a modern Tall Ship, sixty metres long and forty five metres high, built in 2001 to take groups on training voyages around Britain and sometimes further afield. And not just youngsters either – the age limit seems to be seventy five… we’d better hurry and sign up!

This last week or so has seen some changes around the house as we rectify some of the more glaring eyesores and gradually put our stamp on the place. We have stripped and painted the ceilings in two rooms, installed a new stair carpet and plumbed in two new radiators, putting my plumbing skills to the test. Kate has transformed our bathroom by some simple but effective cleaning and me by installing the new light fitting we acquired in Oban last week, something we had not realised we needed until we switched it on and saw the tiled walls in their true colours for the first time. Our ‘guest’ bedroom however remains in a transitional state, the ceiling prepared and the walls now lined with paper but with the rain penetrating the dormer ceiling and dripping into a bucket on the floor it would be a waste of effort to decorate fully. Further progress must wait until the flat roof is repaired, hopefully within the next week or so.

The pile of rubble which was once neighbour Pat’s coal bunker is gradually resolving itself into the base for our new shed on a rectangle of ground adjoining our back boundary. The sledgehammer is once again the basic tool for this work, a blunt instrument that strangely seems to get heavier with each blow, as if the head is absorbing mass from lumps it makes contact with. The trick here is not to beat the concrete lumps so far into the soft ground that they disappear from view but instead to try to break them into small pieces to form a platform covering the ground on which the shed will float. There is definitely a technique to this and I am sure I will have learnt it by the time the shed base is finished.

But rather than show a picture of the evolving shed base (which is far from being beautiful) I have chosen instead this shot of Crow Wood taken on one of our little strolls. Only five minutes from our back door, this is a delightful place where the light filters down through the tree tops and the trunks have a beautiful symmetry, bursting out of the bare ground like magnified strands of hair on a bald head. The Village Hall, which sits on the other side of the road at the bottom of the wood, was a mill in some earlier incarnation and the stream which used to power it slices through the wood at the bottom of a deep gully, the noise of its passing echoing through the timber as it splashes its way down the hill. This wood is a magical place where out of the corner of the eye one might see fairies peeking out from behind the stumps or bathing in the old mill pond, or am I imagining things again?

Carradale Village Hall still straddles the old mill stream but today it provides space for an assortment of activities ranging from sewing to badminton. At last week’s management committee AGM Kate, rather to her surprise, was nominated for the post of secretary, a speedy way to get involved in village life if ever there was one. If the speed of this integration seems unseemly – we are still only into our second month here – then perhaps it is because the village needs something from us, just as we do from the village. It is a small community which needs people to contribute rather than just occupy its houses and well, we have nothing else on, so why not. In many ways we hoped that Carradale would suck us in, although we had no idea it would happen so quickly.

Rainbows and garden birds

2011-05-14T12:35:00.003+01:00

The rain descended like a waterfall, hammering on the roof of the car and bouncing up off the road to create a dense mist which flowed away to either side, the water taking with it anything it could pick up from the road surface. We were deep in the forest, driving along the winding single track road that follows the long edge of Loch Awe and just minutes before the sun had been shining, blasting down through the trees creating sharp bars of light against the under-dark. There is nothing like a good drop of rain to freshen everything up and clear the air - and this was nothing like a good drop of rain. This was solid water coming from a cloud as black as night which we had seen approaching from the west, a real tropical cloudburst. It hardly felt safe to continue so we slowed down and crawled along till it moved on, as we knew it would. Minutes later again and as if a tap had been turned off, the rain ceased, the noise stopped and we had escaped from the shadow of the black beast; it was distracted and had turned its attention elsewhere while we sneaked away.

Such dramatic weather generates impressive rainbows, always elusive and hard to photograph, like this one sizzling as it touches the surface of the water from which it appears to emerge.

A little further on and our road was dry, as if it had not rained at all, when across the road in front of us ran a small red bundle of fur. Kate screeched in delight as we stopped the car and watched the squirrel as it loped back into the woods, aware of our presence but hardly bothered when there was work to be done, seeds and nuts to be gathered. Red squirrels do live on in Britain and the spruce and pine forests of Scotland provide a habitat where they can compete with the non-native greys. The reason for this is largely due to the presence of spruce cones which they strip for the small seeds that lie within. It is a meagre diet for the work involved but it is enough for them to live on whereas the grey squirrels need more substantial fodder and cannot compete. Red squirrels are a native species surviving competition from the invading hordes against all the odds, a condition shared by humans too, in many parts of the world.

It is easy to become blasé about the way the sky shows off around here. On a windy day the clouds can be blown apart into long streaks that surely can only be the result of a paintbrush being liberally applied to the canvas above. Then there’s the way the sun catches the clouds as they slide over the hill behind our house and provide a full palette of tints and shades as the evening draws in. They are back-lit, so the colour the cloud picks up depends upon its translucence and on the angle of the sun as it strikes – the low sun of the gloaming being the best. The heavens fill with colour and this matches the reddened tints of the fresh leaf growth which spreads up from below. We have a dense barrier of green now just beyond the garden fence and this is where the birds that visit our garden will perch as they size up the competition on the feeders. A typical thought process might be, ”Oh, I see a goldfinch is on the seed feeder. I’ll do an ascending fly-past to see if I can shake him off then just whizz onwards to the nuts for a small snack. Oops, I nearly didn’t spot that siskin there.”
A siskin will often act aggressively towards a chaffinch, a considerably larger bird, and vertical-flying fights ensue, a no holds barred punch-up between the two as they rise from a feeder, wings, legs and beaks all in action. I have yet to see a chaffinch win such an encounter.

It is tempting to think of the birds as ‘ours’ or even ‘tame’ when they are slow to react to our presence at the back door, even right in the garden with them. They are neither of these things. They encounter few humans so do not assess us as a primary threat, or so I imagine, and they are in the garden only to visit our feeding station, not for our pleasure. Little do they know how much we enjoy them there!

Meanwhile work progresses in our garden on building the base for the new shed. Thanks to Pat next door, whose unused coal bunker succumbed to the power of the sledgehammer, we now have a small mountain of hardcore which will provide a firm base and after our trip to the Oban shed factory we now know the size we need. Laying a level base using large lumps of brick and concrete might sound like a simple operation but I continue to perspire freely whilst breaking up the pieces and flattening them into the ground. In the end though, between the rain showers and with the sun bursting through, things are gradually taking shape.

Moving sheds

2011-05-03T08:27:00.004+01:00

Throughout our married life Kate and I have lived in many different towns and in many houses in many different places. Although this is unusual, most people move house far less frequently than we have, it is perhaps why we are able to settle here in one of the more remote but stunningly beautiful parts of our land. By moving about, living for only a few years at a time in each different area of the country, we have never acquired much of an attachment to a place, such that we could live nowhere else, and in the long term this has given us a rich set of experiences to look back on. It has also given us a set of guidelines so we can judge the merits of a place, and the ability to settle anywhere that meets our requirements.

Carradale meets our requirements, that’s for sure, but it is slowly beginning to have a different feel to it, something new to us. We are putting our roots into this place.

So many houses. But until recently it had not occurred to us that there were so many common elements to what we have done in or to them, things we have changed or work we have carried out whilst living there. From memory we can recall installing, for example, at least three fitted kitchens and the same number of wood or coal-burning stoves, in one house having a complete chimney constructed as well. Before winter arrives this year we hope to have stove number four securely installed here and the coal-bunker outside full to the brim with enough black stuff to see us through till spring. We are, in case you missed it, lovers of a natural fire.

Then there are the garden sheds. We cannot bring to mind how many of these we have erected or which gardens they were in. What we do know, however, is how many we have moved about from one place to another; the present one is number two. Both of these shed relocations have occurred within the last twelve months. Now most people would probably not, in all honesty, wake up in the morning and ask, ‘Right, shall we read the Sunday papers or shall we move the shed today?’ Even fewer would opt for the second choice and still less would know where to start even if they wanted to. Sheds are not, after all, light things. Once installed they do not want to be moved. Shed manufacturers would most likely fit wheels underneath them if they envisaged that people would regularly want to move them about. So take our advice, if you want to move a shed, consult the experts, us, and we’ll turn up with our two spades and a few lumps of wood and have the job done for you in no time at all.

I hasten to add that we would not be moving sheds were our particular specimen in the best of health. But it is not. We know for a fact that has been there for nearly eighteen years because whoever put it up wrote ‘Erected 23 October 1993’ on one of the roof timbers. We also know that the shed’s owner had a boat named ‘Wanderer’ which was once moored in Carradale Water but which sadly met its end some years ago. The boat’s name plate is still attached to one of the walls inside our shed. The rest of the boat’s story came from Johnny Durnan, the power behind the Carradale Goat website, who we met on the beach on one of our walks. Johnny is a coastguard, a fireman and a man who seems to know most things that go on around Carradale.

Like the boat, our shed too will soon pass into history. It is so far past redemption, with rotten floor boards, a roof that leaks and walls that allow daylight to streak through between the planks, that it can only loosely be described as standing. It barely survived the move, but then it doesn’t need to for long. On the site where it used to stand we will erect a brand new one, something known as a Beaver shed after the company in Oban that makes them. These are the Kings and Queens in the world of Sheds, strongly built to last for years.

We soon found that moving sheds is exhausting work. Worse still we found our shed was hiding a large concrete block that needs to be broken up and removed before the new one can be built. Time to dig out the sledge hammer and yet more muscle power.

By close of play we were well overdue for a bit of rest and relaxation so the next day we don our walking boots and march off into the hills. The Scottish bluebells are out in force as we stroll along forest tracks leading away from the back of our house. The sun shines, there is just enough breeze to cool us and the air is crystal clear. It does not get much better than this here.

Our route, a circular one using only forest roads and tracks leading off them, leads us up the Carradale glen then eastwards along the Kintyre Way towards the sea and past the abandoned village of Grianain which now lies almost hidden from view by the conifer plantation that surrounds it. It is always sad to see what were once substantial properties lying in ruins but in this case we found it almost impossible to imagine what life could possibly have been like for the folk living here. This is because once the land became managed for forestry every part was used that could be, trees being planted right up to the front door. Whatever view the inhabitants once had from their windows has so completely disappeared that now we have no idea what it might have been. The land slopes away towards Kilbrannan Sound but whether or not the people of Grianain had a view of the sea is impossible to say as today the trees form an impenetrable barrier.

Following the faint path between these cottages we descend to the sea where a narrow strip of raised rocky shoreline keeps the forest at bay. Here the tiny islet of Eilean Grianain floats just offshore in a small bay and the blue sea reflects the sky. The rocks are made of thin twisted layers which lie at all angles, on end, flat or anything in between, sometimes like sheets of corrugated iron crushed together. Slowly and carefully we negotiate the shoreline, in and out of the line of birch trees which survive despite the occasional dowsing of salt and around the many brackish pools which are teeming with life, tadpoles by the thousand living almost on the sea. This is a rare place, a primeval landscape, wild and unmanaged. Undamaged. Untouched.

Yet it is so close to home. Carradale point finally hove into view just as our legs are failing us. Along the way we have collected limpet shells which have eroded away into white rings which we thread on a piece of salvaged rope. By the time we arrive back home there is a long string of these so I splice the rope into a loop to hang up in the house as a decoration, to celebrate the day.

Scarecrow wedding

2011-04-26T17:13:00.005+01:00

If we are to believe all that we read in the news and watch on television then every living human being should, at this moment, be getting themselves wildly excited about the wedding of two particular members of our species. One would think, from all the fuss, that this is the first time that any member of our Royal Family has ever been married (perish the thought). So, resisting the urge to voice my own opinions regarding the event I shall limit myself to including this charming picture of one of the many entries for ‘Scarecrow Sunday’, an annual event which takes place down in Southend, the most southerly village on the Kintyre peninsula. The occasion is often used as an opportunity to pass comment on both local and national events, through the medium of the scarecrow, so to speak. The winning entry was a biting social statement on the state of the roads hereabouts (one of several on this theme), the scarecrow being dressed as a road worker but lying on a sun lounger beside the very road which, presumably, he should have been repairing.

Since arriving in Carradale we have experienced what everyone assures us is ‘very unusual weather’ - lots of sunshine and warmth with only the occasional drop of rain. Even the winds have been mostly light. As I write, every piece of vegetation is doing its best to burst into leaf or flower, emerging from the long winter. We walk about and keep getting bursts of scent from the masses of gorse which is now in full bloom (I have often wondered whether it is gorse that smells like coconut or the reverse) and everywhere we go there is colour where previously there was none. Even up amongst the few remaining stones of Carradale’s strategically placed Aird’s Castle, overlooking Kilbrannan Sound, there are splashes of Scottish bluebells dotted about and bright yellow celandines too. Clearly the wild goats don’t get up here very often. We are still exploring around our village but recently we have discovered paths we never knew existed which meander their way around the back of the main street and give us a completely different view of the place. We now have our own ‘secret’ wooded route which leads down to the sea; we make a round trip so we can deposit glass in the recycling bins at the harbour and check on what yachts are sailing in the Sound. Only a few weeks ago we would be out and about almost alone and the few people we met were local residents. Now suddenly, it being holiday time, there is a new population in the village and many of the previously empty cottages are opened up. These second homes are occupied so their owners can frantically tidy and prune their gardens to get things back into shape for the season. The noise of lawnmowers and the buzzing of strimmers is all around us.

The sunshine even tempted us to dig out our bikes from their hiding places and pump the tyres for a ride along the single track road which runs north, roughly following the eastern shoreline of Kintyre. We rapidly discovered that there are only two modes of cycling hereabouts: flat out downhill barely in control and praying the brakes will slow you down enough to negotiate the next hairpin bend, or walking up hills too steep to ride. There is nothing that is flat – it just does not exist. Whoever built this road had some enormous challenges to overcome so I suppose we should expect this. The mountainous spine of the peninsula lies close to the eastern shore and is cut by deep valleys which means the road has to descend to sea level every so often to bridge one of the many burns which flow into the Sound. On the way back we stopped for a long chat with Tony and Margaret, the only full time residents in the settlement of four houses that is Grogport, where the River Sunadale makes its way into the sea. They have forged a productive garden out of the wilderness to make themselves completely self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables – the Good Life. Later we took to the forest roads, constructed for lorry traffic and rather more level but rough on the bikes, and our bottoms. In drainage channels alongside the track there were clouds of tadpoles, despite the fully grown newts who share the same pool and prey on them. Such abundance of life is inspiring. From our living room window now I gaze up at buzzards high above the ridge engaging in courting acrobatics when a much larger bird appears, soaring lower over the trees on enormous wings. Can this really be a Golden Eagle?

Spring is here

2011-04-18T22:00:00.003+01:00

One of the consequences of moving house is that it forces us to pack up our belongings into boxes, packaging everything we own for removal. What perhaps we don’t realise when we are doing this is that very often those things will stay packaged up, maybe forever. This happens because we are poorly equipped as a species when it comes to discarding that which we no longer have a use for. Over time, therefore, a house will inevitably become cluttered with its own past. We have to containerise everything for transportation and on arrival at the destination there is an alarming but very human temptation to see convenient packages that can be tucked away permanently in an attic or basement. What is the point, we think, of unpacking that which we will never use. We avoid, therefore, the need to make decisions on what to discard, to throw away, by hiding it from sight, for good.

This behaviour might have been of no consequence to us at this juncture but for the tendency when packing to leave part-filled boxes lying about the place, open and waiting for that last item so that the lid can be closed on a full box, which is then sealed with tape. One of the natural laws of packing states that in this situation someone will always come along innocently clutching a much needed piece of kitchen equipment, an egg cup or the cheese grater, and pop it inside the part-filled box before it is sealed up, little realising that this box is one of those destined for hiding away in a darkened room once it has reached its destination. These two apparently unconnected quirks of human behaviour must give rise to more wasted hours, cause more anguish and frustration, raise more blood pressure than any other part of the moving house experience. To say nothing of the cost of the new cheese grater reluctantly bought in the end when we all know that the act of buying a new one will precisely trigger the finding of the one that has been lost.

For us it was not the cheese grater (thank goodness) but the bread knife. Many days after our arrival in Carradale we were still struggling to make toast using rough-edged slabs of bread that barely fit in the toaster slots and it was really only our location on Kintyre, so inconveniently placed for shopping, that saved us from duplicating that which we already had, but had temporarily lost. Who would have thought to look deep down amongst that old curtain material stored away years ago, for something to slice bread. And when the offending item did finally emerge into the light of day it was difficult to avoid the enquiry, nay inquest, into how and who and why our old curtains came to be a hiding place for such a vital item of kitchen hardware. We might just as well not have bothered, of course, since if we had been able to recall what might have led to the knife being hidden there in the first place, it would never have been lost at all.

Ignoring such hardships, we are trying hard to pace ourselves with the ‘jobs that need doing’ in the house, not wanting to be thought of as dull stay-at-homes who have nothing else to do with their lives but decorating, making our mark on the house. But having spent the last six months focused entirely on refurbishment of another house it is not easy, when presented with an unpainted ceiling or, for example, a stair handrail painted pink, to ignore this and spend the day out enjoying the countryside. At least it wouldn’t be anywhere else. Fortunately we have plenty to tempt us out - forest walks, shoreline strolls, exhausting blasts up the hillside - and as soon as the sun pops out our walking shoes go on and we are away. The net effect is that our cheeks are losing some of their winter pallor at last.

We found one excuse to get out by offering to help our friends Jim and Celia on board their fine yacht down in Campbeltown. They live in a beautiful house perched above the shore over Torrisdale, just a brief stroll south of us, and being members of Campbeltown Sailing Club this gives us the opportunity to join up, another essential part of us getting into the community. Cirrus Cat still rests way down in Cornwall but we have plans to sail her north later in the year and keep her berthed somewhere close to hand. Roll on Summer. By April in each of the previous two years we were sailing and living on board so we find ourselves missing being on the water, especially as suddenly the sun is out, the clouds have evaporated and the temperature is soaring as high pressure moves the Spring in.

Alien things are sprouting in the hedgerows, emerging from their winter cover. Once this strange looking thing has unrolled itself it will become bracken, green and luxurious and ready to unload a dripping wet shower onto legs that pass by. The swallows have also returned, a sign that their food, insects, are also more plentiful. While going the other way, to the north, are flocks of geese, their honking echoing off the hills. Trees now are speckled with green, leaves replacing the swollen buds, although these are still like scrunched paper, the veins still pumping to ensure everything reaches its pre-ordained shape. Colour is everywhere, in everything, even the most unexpected places. This moss needs the crack for its roots while the lichen is happy to use the bare rock as an anchor. Both, though, are exposed to salt spray as they live close to the shore where we follow an ancient raised shoreline to get out to Carradale Point.

Close though it is, it takes us nearly an hour of hard walking to get to this place. We step carefully from one rough boulder to the next, by-passing pools, some deep and salty with marine life, others fresh and filled with pond life. Then avoiding a marshy area where the water oozes black over our boots we clamber over massive rounded boulders, sea-eroded in another age when the tide was some eight metres higher than it is today, to arrive at our destination. To sit. To admire the quiet and watch the swirling.

Davaar

2011-04-11T20:06:00.004+01:00

The lump of rock that is Davaar Island is neatly placed in the entrance to Campbeltown Loch, some fifteen miles to the south of Carradale, creating a natural harbour within the Loch itself, something the Admiralty has not been slow to take advantage of. The island’s shape has been likened to a large wave on the sea, steep on one side and sloping on the other, but its origins are in fact volcanic. There are many former volcanoes like this in the Highlands, where all that is left is the solidified core, surrounding material having eroded away leaving a convenient plug which serves to prevent the innards of the earth escaping.

Naturally enough Davaar island now has its own website, maintained in part to promote the delights of three holiday cottages tucked away just out of sight around the corner on the left of this picture. During the summer months the island’s resident population of two may even swell into double figures when these cottages are occupied. When it comes to visitors, however, since 1887 Davaar has had an attraction many a resort would die for for this was when a local art teacher at Campbeltown Grammar School painted the image of Christ on the cross which later became so famous. When we visited the damp cave in which it lies the low sun was streaming in casting a yellow light on the green algae covering the walls, giving the image an ethereal quality. Since 1935 when the artist died it seems to have been within the job description of the Head of Art at Campbeltown school to maintain the work, and if necessary repaint the rock entirely so that the island loses none of its visitor appeal. Hardly surprisingly the whole community was enraged when in 2006 the painting was vandalised, the body being covered with the image of Che Guevara but thankfully the skills of the art department put things back as they should be again.

Most people visiting the island do so via a narrow causeway which allows access several hours either side of low water, feet pleasantly dry. With Kate insisting on us taking a short cut across the sand our feet were far from dry for our visit but we know enough about walking in Scotland not to ever expect dry socks for very long. And having viewed the cave, most people will then return the same way, re-crossing the tidal boulders to reach the causeway before it becomes submerged. This is, of course, the sensible thing to do. To set off on a circumnavigation of the island, clambering over loose boulders which in a matter of hours would be once again beneath the sea would never be the recommended thing to do, so naturally this is what we felt inspired to do. Was it worth it? Most definitely yes for it gave us views of the island few will ever get to appreciate. Davaar’s eastern shore is best known to the goats which inhabit the cliffs, the otters (which we just missed seeing) and to seabirds like the peregrine falcon which hunts for prey from high above the cliffs. Having gained the safety of the lighthouse cottages we met the caretaker who, in his own words, has “the job of looking after the place for the summer – can’t be bad eh?”, before setting off along the causeway again for the mainland. The tide was rushing in but enough of the stony ridge was still exposed so we could return safely, even stopping en route to pick up some shells on the way.

Back in Campbeltown the sailing club was having its annual launching extravaganza, yachts on trailers arriving on the harbour wall to be craned up and placed back in their natural element, the sea. Having recently bumped into Jim, an incomer like us and a sailor too, at Carradale’s doctor’s surgery, at the harbour Kate and I were both introduced to the club’s leading lights, names being showered on us like confetti. They are clearly a friendly lot, these sailors, who we hope will forgive us for not remembering everybody we met there.

A guide to Carradale

2011-04-07T15:16:00.003+01:00

It was a wild and windy day, another one, when I drove into Campbeltown to return the carpet cleaning machine we had hired to deal with our rather noxious stair carpet. It may be some days before we know whether the unwanted scent of dogginess has been completely removed from the house but it was certainly the most urgent of the jobs confronting us when we moved in here. Several others have since emerged, like the small leak through the flat roof over our dormer windows and some poor quality plumbing work which needs to be corrected. But these are minor issues and no different from those occurring in other houses we have lived in. They do not detract from our enjoyment of the house and its situation.

The fifteen mile drive into town can be quite a challenge in bad weather, so I discovered, although the views out to sea en route will never lose their dramatic charm. What did surprise me was to see a lone yacht escaping through the narrow passage out of Campbeltown Loch, sailing past Davaar Island heading for open water and into the teeth of a full gale. If there were prizes for boldness this crew was certainly earning them as when I looked again the yacht had a second sail set and was charging along like an express train, headed out past the southern end of Arran, if I am not mistaken.

That was late morning. By midday the rain had eased and during the next hour the clouds scudded away to the east and the sun’s warmth transformed everything. I then realised that the decision to sail was either lucky or quite a clever one as with the veering wind, the yacht would now be sailing free in clear air and brilliant sunshine. I almost envied them now.

The rapid changes in weather will be an inevitable feature here, something we must acclimatise to and which we intend to take full advantage of. The moment the sky clears and the sun blasts in through our front window we feel the urge to get outside, to explore some of the paths and tracks which lead off everywhere. One foray took us to the beach at Carradale Bay, a long, gently curving strand of sand. At one end of this lies a line of cottages known as Waterfoot and it is here that the river Carra escapes into the sea, the entrance being narrow and sandbank ridden. The holiday season is still some months away so not surprisingly the beach was deserted, apart from the random pebbles left behind by the tide (which we scoured for ‘pretties’ to add to our collection at home) and a single tractor tyre, now almost lost to view.

Just inland from the beach another sign led us to ancient stepping stones which, were the river not so swollen, might just be a viable route from one side to the other. My guess is that this is rarely a safe crossing though for the path to the river’s edge was not well worn.

By exploring in short bursts, often initiated by warm sunshine, we are slowly getting to grips with the layout of our scattered village. The main settlement, in which our house lies, is the largest but there are outliers such as that at Waterfoot, and another in the Glen at Carradale West where the fire and police stations lie just across the road from our village’s second post office (they each open to a schedule which allows no overlap). The petrol station here closed recently but there is still a store, inside which we have yet to venture because our part of the village has its own shop, which is also the bakery. Both east and west Carradales have a large enough population to sustain their own bars and there are several residential hotels too, a caravan site and numerous private establishments offering holiday accommodation. Here at Carradale East, however, we can boast something really special – our very own bank. But if there was to be a list of Carradale curiosities, for me this would be somewhere near the top because the solid looking, substantial building, sited just at the top of the descent to the harbour, opens its doors only once a week, for one hour. Nevertheless it is still a bank and it even has its own sort code - 831627.01 – although this would be difficult to enter on most paying-in slips I have seen.

Kate has just returned home with a piece of news, hot off the grapevine, from one of our neighbours. Contrary to what I have written above, and indeed since writing it, we now only have one bar in the village. It seems that the owners of the Glen Bar and Restaurant, who have been trying to sell the place for some time, can no longer afford to keep the place open. They have had to let their staff go. I am aware that this piece of news is likely to be of little interest to those who do not live on the east shore of the Kintyre peninsula but never let it be said that what we write here is not bang up to date.

Carradale

2011-04-01T20:35:00.011+01:00

Our first week in Carradale was a quiet one, weather-wise, with plenty of sunshine, light winds and almost no rain. This, we realise, is far from the norm for this place. Just one week in and we get our first taster of what the weather can do when it wants to. Overnight we heard the rain pattering against our bedroom window and in the morning we peered from our back window up at where the slopes of Cnoc nan Gabhar disappeared into a swirling mist. Clearly there was a strong wind blowing although we realised, for the first time, how sheltered our house is from the main force of a westerly blast. By late morning the rain had eased and the sun was peeking through for my drive into Campbeltown to stock up with provisions. For the drive home I had full sunshine from a cloudless sky although by now the wind was powerful enough to sway our little car about and to pick up the sea in Kilbrannan Sound and throw it out towards Arran, some three miles away. This little blow was just a teaser though, something to excite us but not to scare us off. We are well aware of what the weather in the west of Scotland can do.

Through all this, our acquaintance with the people of the village continues at some pace, faster than I can easily commit names to memory. We went to register at the doctor’s surgery and our names were passed around the waiting room to those who had not already met us, like we were some sort of celebrities. “Oh you are the couple who have sailed around Britain and you had the hernia, didn’t you?” We have to remember to keep our stories straight – any discrepancies are bound to be picked up on. Most of the Carradalians (?) to whom we speak ask us where we are staying (the Scots use this expression as the English might use ‘living’) but often those who have lived here for many years cannot place us easily from our address alone. We have to tell them who we bought the house from before all becomes clear, “Oh I know where you are now… next door to Pat.” The people here are far more important than the houses they live in. We are even getting acquainted with some of the dogs who we meet on our rambles along the local forest tracks. Ailsa and Jess here seemed quite happy with us as we walked along chatting to their owners.

All of this welcoming warmth we sort of expected, or at least hoped for, even though we had no idea it would happen so quickly. Friendships we have made in little more than one week we expected would take many months to develop. And there is another population who seems to like us being here as well. As soon as our bird feeders were unpacked we hung them up in the back garden just to see what would happen, knowing that it can take many days before the birds ‘find’ them and start to feed. How wrong we were. Hardly had we closed the back door when the first chaffinches arrived, swiftly followed by blue tits and a robin. Now they arrive in their hoards and in no less than eleven different varieties, surely something worthy of a list:

Chaffinch; Bullfinch; Greenfinch; Great tit; Blue tit; Coal tit; Robin; Siskin; Blackbird; Thrush; Sparrow.

They flit from perch to perch at amazing speed, sometimes three different types of bird on a feeder at the same time, jostling for space, fighting for dominance. Only the coal tits, of which we have already seen three at once, know their place. They will lurk about watching for the moment when every other bird flies off so they can zoom in for their feed. Quick as a flash they dart in, head down for a mouthful then eyes swivelling about checking for competition before taking another nibble. Our garden has become a circus ring, full of acrobatics and flashing wings, but always with the safety of the cover provided by the shrubbery on the forestry land just beyond our back fence. The birds here seem to have little fear of humans, possibly because there is a greater threat which glides around the sky, something we hear before we see, a high-pitched screech that echoes across the land as the buzzard calls to its mate.

Mostly moss

2011-03-27T22:14:00.003+01:00

There are several owls that live here in Carradale that hold deep and meaningful conversations for long periods of the night, gently disturbing our sleep and many of our neighbours’ too. At the bus stop one morning this was the main topic of debate, in a pleasant way, not by way of complaint but more spoken of with a quiet smile over our fortune - that we are sharing our world with such creatures. So we are not alone in feeling this way. Then again one of the things we noticed on viewing our house for the first time was that the grass in the back garden was short, but not as if cut, more like as if grazed. So it didn’t greatly surprise us to learn from our immediate neighbours that we can expect rabbits, hares and even the odd deer has been know to wander in from time to time.

As it happens, in our garden there is little enough grass for such creatures as moss has blanketed everything with a pale green sward, to such an extent that it disguises the shape of anything that might lie beneath. One morning I set myself the task of exploring some of the strange rounded hillocks I have been stumbling over and I pulled out a good collection of timber, fencing pieces and posts, long ago abandoned before being overwhelmed by the vegetation. Some pieces were well on their way to becoming part of the soil itself and had to be torn free from stringy roots but here and there I noticed something else, something I hadn’t expected. Beneath the long lost pieces of wood there were paving slabs, in fact a large paved area just in front of the house which had long disappeared completely from view. The physical effort of uncovering this was considerable, such was the depth of the turf layer holding on tenaciously with roots burrowing down into every crack, but two days later the full extent, with paths extending out into the garden towards our shed and again diagonally out beneath our washing line towards our heating oil tank, was revealed. Pat, who lives next door, came out mid way through and told me where to dig, for she has lived there long enough to remember our garden as it was before nature was allowed to overwhelm it. Her memories proved correct too. The paving was dark and damp from being so long hidden from light but it is slowly drying now, the lost colour returning. It may not be pretty but it will enable us to move around outside when it is wet without feeling we are walking on a damp sponge.

We do not object to our moss carpet, however, as it is a testament to the clean air here. Lichen is another organism that thrives best where there is little pollution and it can be found here in prolific quantities. All over Kintyre you will find tree branches dripping with long strands of the stuff and the shoreline rocks are carpeted with many-coloured varieties. Even on the smooth PVC of our house windows, hardly the most ideal of surfaces, there are sprigs of grey-green lichen starting to colonise.

Needing to get away from the chore of unpacking and organising things, Kate and I take our first walk up the hill behind the house. This is known as Deer Hill, or Cnoc nan Gabhar if you prefer, and it delivers splendid views to the south past the tip of Arran towards the Irish Sea. Although we were walking under cloud cover we could see that the Irish had the sunshine until mid afternoon when finally it burst through over Kintyre as well. Higher up the hill we kept finding owl pellets lying by the path, the size of which goes some way to explaining why our sleep is being disturbed. These are packets of fur mixed with pieces of bone and other indigestible material which are disgorged by owls and left lying about. They can be teased apart, so long as you have the stomach for it, to provide evidence of the owl’s diet.

Soon our path was descending into dense forest, a place where little light penetrates the trees and just like in our garden, here the moss covers everything, boulders and fallen branches alike. Where there is a clearing the light blasts down from above to create a magical stage effect, the trees being the actors with gesturing limbs frozen unmoving before their non-existent audience. Leave the path here and you will quickly lose your way as you stumble through the avenues of conifers. The smooth covering of moss is deceptive as despite the lack of other plant growth the ground is almost impossible to walk over. The moss layer is thin and what lies beneath is rough ankle-wrecking stuff, damp and unforgiving, primeval lumps of rock balancing there waiting to ensnare a passing leg, or more.

I now realise that somehow or other I have managed to write over eight hundred words in this blog entry without once mentioning our biggest piece of news. This week, for the first time in nearly three years, we have once again become car owners. The bus service to and from Campbeltown will continue to see our custom but having a car will now enable us to venture out after five pm when the last bus leaves town, it will enable us to carry bulky and awkward loads without risking injury to fellow bus passengers, to stock up our freezer from time to time and in due course to visit Cirrus Cat when she is berthed here. We always knew it would come to this and we have been pleasantly surprised to discover how easy it is to buy what we wanted. The choice of models is very limited here as indeed is colour, so we consider ourselves fortunate indeed to acquire such a brightly conspicuous example. The daffodils in our front garden think so too, seen here craning their long necks in wonder… or is it lust.

Carradale home

2011-03-23T20:26:00.003Z

The news from Libya is troubling and is all over the television at the Lancaster Travelodge where we spent the night en route to Scotland. Nineteen pounds buys a bed here with clean sheets, a cup of tea or coffee and hot water in which to bathe, many thousands of miles away from the men with guns. But prior experience has taught us to avoid Travelodge breakfasts. These come in a tough plastic bag within which is a series of small hermetically sealed packs – cereal, milk, spoon, crunchy bar, fruit – the contents of which are digested with difficulty to leave behind a cloying aftertaste and a mountain of packaging waste. The best part by far is the tough plastic bag of which we already have several serving as handy receptacles for our muddy walking shoes. (This is called recycling, Travelodge please note.)

After stuffing ourselves full with a more sustaining breakfast we head northwards on the M6 towards the Lake District, Kate doing a sterling job piloting our heavy vehicle. At first low cloud blankets the road as we ascend steadily then suddenly we crest Shap Fell and the sky clears, the air sparkling and radiating sunshine. Descending now towards Carlisle the only dull note is when we spot a Tunnocks lorry heading south, full to the brim, no doubt, with delicious caramel wafer chocolate bars destined for the undeserving English. This is Scotland’s least talked-about and most underrated export product, unrivalled and unchanged since my childhood it brings back a host of memories at each bite.

M6 becomes the M74 as we cross the border. Now only Glasgow stands between us and our new home. The motorway fills as we navigate around the metropolis, many lanes of traffic weaving about pointlessly but purposefully, then across the Erskine Bridge and suddenly it feels like we have dropped into another world. We glide along Loch Lomond’s shore, Loch Long, Loch Fyne and finally Loch Gilp where we turn south for the first time in two days of driving. There is a thin neck of land between the east and the west Lochs Tarbert but for which the Kintyre peninsula would be an island. It takes but a moment to drive across this, to transit from the cul de sac of the Clyde estuary to the Atlantic Ocean, and years ago sailors would drag their boats across this piece of land to avoid a long and dangerous sea passage around the Mull on their journey out to the Western Isles. Our road now follows the Atlantic shore where today the air is clear, just a faint salty mist drifting in where the swell pounds jagged boulders at the water’s edge. The Isle of Gigha lies closest but beyond this we can see Jura with its naked rounded paps peaking cheekily out of the sea. The road surface is still cratered from last winter’s frosts, holes cannot be avoided and our heavy van’s wheels crash noisily beneath us, distracting us from the horizon smudge that is Rathlin Island, another country just visible across the sea. We peer out to see if the surf at Westport has lured any wave riders before driving into Campbeltown where in an estate agents’ office there is a key waiting for us, the key to our new home.

I clutch this smoothly worn precious object tightly in my hand as I climb back into the van for the last leg of our journey. We head back north now along Kintyre’s east coast past Davaar Island which guards the entrance to Campbeltown Loch. Ailsa Craig squats in the sea away to the south east and the Isle of Arran shows off its massive summits just three miles away across Kilbrannan Sound. This is the road that takes our village’s inhabitants into Campbeltown but there are no concessions here to make a driver’s job easy. There are twists and turns, narrow bridges with tight corners and hard stone parapets, hairpin bends which enable the road to drop to sea level when it wants to show the traveller some feature, a quiet cove with a sandy beach or a rocky inlet. This lively piece of tarmac is now taking us to our new life.

It is very mild, with almost no wind so there is a tropical feel to the day. The vegetation is lush, daffodils in full bloom are scattered here and there making a startling contrast against the dark vegetation covered rocks. The moss under the rhododendrons is bright green too, springing back to life freshly emerged from winter. Our key turns in the lock and we enter. The empty house blinks back at us. All we have to do is fill it with our belongings to make it ours so up goes the loading door, down comes the tail-lift and away we go. Despite all those potholes and the twists and turns of long road from Glasgow nothing has moved or come adrift inside the van, nothing is broken. Peter and Liz soon arrive to help out having made the long journey from their home in Leeds and by dusk we are all sweaty and exhausted. Our bed is reconstructed, our visitors retire to their B&B in the village, and we all sleep the sleep of the just.

The next day, our first full day in Carradale, and the van is empty. Peter and Liz have departed and we make time for a five minute stroll to the sandy beach of Carradale Bay. The rocky point lures us in and before we know it we are in full adventure mode, clambering over rocks, splashing through soggy tussocks and wading through last year’s bracken. We already know that this place is home to a herd of feral goats – perhaps we’ll be lucky. We see their hoof prints in the mud and follow them but they could be behind any piece of rock, hiding in a crack where the strata have twisted in on themselves. Goats could even be laughing at us while hidden from view close by.

We turn a corner and suddenly we are confronted by them. They, of course, see us first but stand and stare, captured between curiosity and caution, jaws munching on regardless. The message is clear: approach thus far but no further. Such wild animals ought to be living free from any human interference but the ‘freshly-shorn’ appearance of these two suggests that they might have given up their coats to a higher cause.

Countdown to Kintyre

2011-03-20T19:27:00.003Z

According to news reports we now follow, the Type 22 Frigate, HMS Campbeltown, made a farewell visit to the Wee Toon this week, her last before she is sent for decommissioning. The event required firing of guns across the loch in salute, something we would have loved to have been there to see and hear. The moment of her departure might even have been captured on the Campbeltown webcam if it had been possible to swing it in the right direction, across the loch to the naval pier – bah!

Then over in Machrihanish on the west coast there is news that the windfarm proposal has now been dropped and also that the wind turbine tower manufacturing plant may have been saved from bankruptcy, both of these items being very good news for the local community.

As our focus turns ever more towards our new home the last week in Yeovil proved a tough one indeed. It seems as though our lives are on hold as we get everything ready then sit around waiting for the moment of departure. It is at times like this that I almost wish I was still amongst the ranks of the employed as this would at least provide a distraction until the day actually arrived. It occurs to me that in the past this is always the way things have in fact worked out, that over the years our numerous house moves around England have been initiated by the need to follow employment, usually mine I have to say, and not therefore really driven by free choice. This time, however, things are different. At last we are embarking on a venture to a place we ourselves have chosen, with no outside influences.

This is not to say we have made anything like a snap decision to live in a remote part of Scotland; far from it. From the moment we decided to live on board Cirrus Cat we knew we had started down a particular road - we had temporarily freed ourselves from the constraints of the house-on-land concept of living and thus has started a process which we both secretly knew would end at some point in us choosing another home location where we could settle. Although neither of us ever stated this as an objective, from the moment we retired from work and floated our boat-home downstream from London we were embarking on a search for that new life. The mental process was a fluid one which took place as we moved from place to place, following the coast of Britain in an anticlockwise direction, stopping here and there as the weather or our inclination dictated, but always there at the back of our minds was the question, ‘Could we live here?’

Scotland’s magnetism has taken us both a little by surprise, but in different ways. For Kate there is the blood, which comes to her from her Scottish father, the memories of childhood holidays spent in the Western Isles and the nationality she has always felt herself to be, Scottish. A little later in my life I discovered Scotland as a mountaineer and rock climber and returned time and again in winter and summer to clamber over many of its peaks and valleys. But new to us both was the opportunity to see the country from a different angle, the sea, and also new was the chance to spend more time there, beginning to integrate ourselves into the culture that makes the place so special. We began to feel we were no longer just visitors, despite our being yachties, normally a transitory group, and whilst travelling about the Western Isles and the Clyde we were getting glimpses of something else, a way of life that was enticing us, drawing us in. Trying to describe what was doing this is difficult. There is a sense of confident self-sufficiency plus a very trusting nature about the people who choose to live in remote places and these are traits we admire. We think we can expect those living in Carradale to be there because they want to. We need to be prepared for the fact that few drive along the road to Carradale to go anywhere else.

Counting down to our removal day, Kate’s brother Peter and his wife Liz have arrived to lend us a hand. They are planning to live here in Yeovil when we are gone so this is an opportunity for them to see and admire our freshly refurbished property. They seem impressed.

We rope them in for transportation duties so we can dump essential equipment on board Cirrus Cat in her boatyard across the border into Cornwall then finally our removal day arrives and they help with the loading. Here Peter stands back in a calculating sort of way finding it hard to believe that we have, finally, managed to get everything to fit in. Hiring the largest van that we can legally drive on British roads was always going to be a calculated gamble but so long as we can persuade it to go along ‘the long and winding road’ to Carradale then it will have paid off for us. Thank you Mr Hertz.

One way or another, the next blog entry will come from north of the border.

Scheduling dilemmas

2011-03-08T13:13:00.003Z

Reading just now about our friends Maryanne and Kyle on board SV Footprint who are preparing their boat for departure from the UK, we realise that we are just weeks away from our own removal to a new home in Scotland and we too are facing scheduling dilemmas. Surrounded as we are by our possessions, for each item a decision has to be made as to when it can be packed away, moved from view and therefore out of use. Since this involves quite a complex thought process, one that is repeated many times each day, exhaustion generally sets in from early afternoon and henceforth all higher brain function grinds to a halt.

Take a simple example like our wellingtons [this word probably ought to be capitalised - another decision]. Can we be absolutely certain that a need for rubber footwear will not arise before our departure for Scotland? And then again, when we eventually come to sail Cirrus north from Cornwall to Kintyre, surely we might have need of them with us on board? Maybe so, but they sound like useful things to have ready to wear in Carradale too so we can plod along the Kilbrannan shoreline with dry feet. Ah, but take them north now and we’ll have to bring them back south again, maybe on an plane, in order to have them on Cirrus and to wear them when stepping ashore from our dinghy in Ireland whilst on passage up the Irish Sea. Simple, you might say, buy another pair. Except that this type of decision applies to so many things and we simply cannot duplicate the lot.

Thankfully Kate quietly takes care of most of these decisions without reference to me and all I notice is that some item is not where it used to be, a shelf has become bare or a cupboard empty because things have been packed into a cardboard box. My primary role is to deal with the suppliers of everyday services, deciding when to terminate our supply of gas to the present house or how to ensure a telephone is connected to the new house when we need it. I also take care of the transport arrangements, both for us and for our belongings, and this can prove to be a considerable challenge too. We have opted for the DIY approach to house removal since we are both confident of our capability as regards piloting the largest type of van the law allows us legally to drive on British roads. Unfortunately the question as to whether this size of vehicle will hold all our belongings, even with our well-practised packing skills, is one that will not be answered until just before the moment of our departure from Somerset and this adds an element of unpredictability and excitement to the whole affair which keeps our reactions sharp. The logistical challenge of putting each of our belongings and ourselves just where we need to be is a little bit like getting a man on the moon, but without the backup of NASA Mission Control Centre.

Our neighbour’s cat, Jelly, will surely miss us when we are gone. She sits beneath our ornamental willow in the front garden oblivious to the sparrows perching calmly in the branches overhead, or at least pretending to be so. She has the wisdom that comes with age (and perhaps some infirmity) that tells her how futile any efforts at catching the birds would be so she gives them a brief glance then focuses her attention on absorbing the rays from a weak March sun. She doesn’t notice my photographing her through the window and really doesn’t care who lives at No 20, just so long as she can rub her flanks along a friendly leg when she feels like it. We’ll miss her antics though.

Back to another scheduling decision, this time it is the freezer. We are struggling vainly to eat our way right to the bottom, down to the last frozen chip and pea as by moving day it must be empty so that it can be loaded into the van. The space inside can be used to pack some breakable items, how convenient.

We also keep a close watch on the weather we will soon be exposing ourselves to up in Scotland. This is done via the Internet and a couple of ‘gadgets’ that rest on my computer desktop. Earlier today there was a surprise in store as whilst both in Yeovil and Carradale the sun was shining, there was a twelve degree temperature difference, Carradale being the warmer. We are not fooled, of course. Spring has arrived here in Somerset – the daffodils are in bloom, tree buds are swelling, even the magnolia trees are about to burst into flower – but we know that at fifty-five and a half degrees north the seasons will lag far behind. The good news is that having enjoyed one Spring this year we have a second one in store waiting for us.

Arthurs

2011-02-25T18:01:00.003Z

What are we doing wrong? Surely we should be climbing the walls with stress at this juncture. We are only a few weeks away from a house move from one end of the country to another (some might say from one country to another), into a house that is so far away and difficult to get to that we will not see the place now until we arrive at the door with our furniture and, we hope, our own front door key. But with no toilet or sink yet installed in our Yeovil bathroom, are we really ready to leave? Well no, but we have Andrew, one of the builders who worked on opening up our living room, on stand by to fit the toilet as soon as the floor is laid and now that the bath is fully tiled up, the vinyl floor tiles will go down in only a few hours. So there is a plan, it seems.

Packing began in earnest today after Kate arrived home with armfuls of flat-packed boxes and a big roll of bubble-wrap. Already now I personally have assembled, labelled and sealed some of the boxes, a very satisfying experience because it also involves sorting through the contents and throwing out things we no longer have any use for. Of course this is a two-edged sword for it is inevitable, sooner or later, that we turn up the old photo albums and we both just know that as soon as these are opened the day is lost, neither of us can pull ourselves away and we end up drowning in the memories as they flood past our eyes.

Here are some examples, although I appreciate that these may be of limited interest to anyone who does not know these people. Pictured here are my brother, parents and grand-parents seated on a settee that I recognise and in a house that I remember well. I can even recall taking the picture and even the camera I used. Flash photography in the 1960s meant plugging a small blue bulb into the centre of a fan-like reflector. Triggered by current from a battery the bulb exploded, sometimes dangerously, in a single flare, after which the molten blob it had become was thrown away.

Just to put things in perspective, this second picture comes from Kate’s side of the family, her grandparents with their children. Kate’s mum is on the left with the bow in her hair and her age puts this shot around 1920. The difference in style is quite marked and as much as anything else this illustrates the development of the camera which brought about a change of role, from a professional’s tool to a piece of domestic equipment anyone could own. Each of us knows or remembers different things about our maternal grandfathers, just small fractions of the men that they were, and although they would never have known each other they did share a name, Arthur, which is sort of nice to think about.

Of course what is really dominating our thoughts from moment to moment is a Scottish landscape, soon to be on our doorstep. The Internet enables us to discover what hot issues are affecting the lives of our soon-to-be-neighbours living on the Kintyre peninsula. and top of the list seems to be the plan to use the sea close to Machrihanish for a set of generating towers, a wind farm. Its location lies on a track used by yachts sailing around the Mull and it is also not far away from the RAF base and airport, to say nothing of the golf course. (I didn’t realise this but apparently the game of golf is badly affected if the view is not just right.) All this is causing excitement and controversy locally. Bizarrely, until last year, the wind farm towers used to be manufactured locally, just outside Campbeltown and when Cirrus was berthed there in July we watched these vast tubes being loaded and shipped away. The factory has been a recent casualty of the recession, sad to say, but another hot news item. Will the plant be sold or broken up? Watch this space.

Clearing the dust

2011-02-20T19:09:00.004Z

In a single moment and a yellow steel skip, five months worth of bits torn from our Yeovil house are carted away, captured (just) by Kate’s camera. As each item was pulled from the rubbish pile in our back yard and placed delicately inside the skip there was a new memory triggered of where it came from, what it looked like before and what we had replaced it with. Each rusted nail had its own story, each broken tile held a dust-filled memory of how it had been chiselled free of the wall, every strip of flooring held the imprint of where it had fitted before my crowbar had pried it loose. The whole event is strangely therapeutic, a cleansing, a separation with the past. We feel we have achieved a lot in doing such a substantial house renovation and learnt a lot too, about houses, what they are made of and what goes on behind the skirting boards. There has also been much we have learnt about ourselves and what we are capable of taking on. So would we do it again? I think the answer is yes, we would, but maybe we’d go about things differently, putting ourselves under less pressure by setting a longer timescale.

One good thing is that I now have some amazing new tools to amuse myself with, very powerful and mostly red in colour, strangely. There is the random orbital sander (RAS to its friends) which vibrates at 13,000 cycles a minute whilst whining loud enough to wake the dead. Don’t think for a minute of using this little fellow to sand off an offending corn or bunion for it will have half your leg off before you can get to the power switch. I also persuaded Kate I needed a hefty circular saw for ‘cutting things’, preparing the ground for when we saw a nice orange and black one on offer in the store. This little babe will eat fingers, toes, arms, just about anything if you let it get away from you, all at great speed, projecting all the little pieces out through a nozzle in a glistening arc. I always do a detailed limb and digit count both before and after this one comes out of its case. Just because it hasn’t got me yet doesn’t mean I’m not on the menu.

One thing is for sure though. Taking on any house renovation work in the Highlands of Scotland will present a whole new set of logistical challenges. There will be no B&Q store close by and open seven days a week. I will not be able to stroll down the road and take my pick between five different plumbing suppliers nor will I have Screwfix at my beck and call. It is not an island we are relocating to but the location will present communication difficulties of similar complexity. We have already in the past come across the ‘Highlands surcharge’ on deliveries to this part of the world but we have now also witnessed an Argos van struggling around the hairpin bends just near Carradale’s long bay, which tells us that they do at least try.

What we can predict is that our car-free life is about to come to an end. Twice in our married life we have sold a car, our only car, without buying a replacement and we both have rather fond memories of the first time this happened and the car being driven away from our house in Faversham. No longer would it stand on the street soaking up our pennies and interfering with our green intentions. We both noted an immediate and distinct sense of relief and pleasure to give it away; the fact that someone was actually paying us money to take it off us even felt rather magical. Five years later and we had completely mastered the art of meticulous journey pre-planning which is the required skill for all those following this path. No journey is undertaken without studying bus and train timetables or fixing bike punctures and getting the family dressed up for the weather outside. No stepping from the house lightly clad and staggering into the shelter of the car for us. But we thought nothing of it, were proud of living this way – out of step with the rest of British life. When we needed a car again though, after our move to Devon in the late 1990s, we went straight out and bought one, only selling the thing after our move into London made ownership unnecessary again. Transport links in and around London are better than most places in the world and driving there today is one of the worst experiences you’ll get on four wheels. The decision was a no-brainer.

So here we are again, with yet another house move weeks away, reviewing our transport needs and saying yes, car it is again. How many other households today go through this process, I wonder.

Faces from the past

2011-02-16T16:42:00.003Z

Just one trip to Scotland and back has turned into a life-changing experience for us both, far more than we expected when we set out.

Of course it is not every day that we end up buying a house on the west coast of Scotland – we need time for this to sink in, a little longer for the concept of living in Carradale to permeate our brains, time for our mental landscapes to adjust to accommodate the new place, the new land that awaits us. Chance was giving us no quarter, however, for no sooner had we left the Highlands when suddenly our path was swerving towards those of some friends whom I lost contact with over forty years ago.

A small collection of islands sat on the edge of the North Atlantic continental shelf they may be, but Britain is our home. Whilst being conscious of how it is home for our family and for those with whom we have daily contact, we forget how this place is also home to those whose lives have mixed with ours in the past, people we have known in a particular place or at a certain time and who have then passed out of our everyday lives. Each of us wanders along our own path through life, a meandering path that can often pass close to that of someone we know without ever crossing it. Two former friends might pass each other on different sides of the same street without ever re-uniting and of course as our faces change with age, recognition becomes less likely anyway.

It also seems very human to be intrigued by the past, especially by those we have known in our past. Wondering what happened to someone we once knew is so much a part of the human condition that it is hardly a surprise to find the Internet devoting such massive resources to bringing people together, enabling those separated by time and space to communicate freely. To pretend that this electronic medium is somehow less substantial and that the meeting, electronic or otherwise, is therefore less adequate than what went before is to deny the obvious. The great pleasure and satisfaction that can come from re-connecting with one’s past can be sensational, inspiring.

Having broken our journey south in Leeds to visit Kate’s brother Peter, and then in Sheffield to meet our son Ben and his band, Bang Bang Romeo, we begin to receive Facebook messages that for me in particular cast my mind back to 1967, to a time when my hair was long, my arms thin and my teeth all in place. This was a time when the favoured mode of travel for me and a group of close but hairy friends was a succession of rather dubious motorcycles, probably considered old at the time but now looking like museum pieces. The Internet has enabled friends Geoff and Shelagh (Geoff far left, Shelagh the photographer?) to emerge from memory into present day, face-to-face reality. (I am centre picture, by the way, face partly hidden behind the windscreen of my pride and joy, a red/grey LE Velocette.)

We had diverted our journey home to visit my mother in the South-East and as a result, soon after the initial electronic contact we hastily arranged a meeting and over a pub lunch in Wadhurst there we were pouring over old photographs, hazy memories being resuscitated. In the faces around the table were the faces I once knew, subtly altered by time but easily recognisable - the human face is what we remember best of all when everything else is forgotten. Fortunately the Internet is no respecter of international boundaries so the fact that the life-paths of at least two of this group have taken them outside Britain has not prevented them now being part of a revitalised regrouping. And such was the warmth that flowed from those of us who were able to meet in person that it is hard to see how henceforth our lives will ever disconnect again. It really felt good to be part of this assembly. Thanks guys. Don’t disappear again!

Back in Yeovil we dropped down to earth with a dull thud as it dawned on us that we have but a few weeks to complete the house rejuvenation project that we started back in September last year, to pack our belongings away and transport the lot up to Scotland. It is one of the joys of the place that a house purchase there is a simple and rapid affair, although this now puts us under a lot of pressure. We have a deadline to aim for, achievable but buttock-clenchingly tight, one might say, so a plan of action is needed to guide us on our way. Fortunately this is just the sort of thing we do quite well. We have had plenty of practice.

Scottish adventure

2011-02-12T16:39:00.003Z

Our train ground to a halt for the fourth time and we sat gazing out of the window as two men in bright orange vests strolled by on the track. Each had a large, long handled hammer slung over his shoulder, not a sight likely to inspire confidence in the rail network and as we waited, and waited, it gradually began to dawn on us that we might still be here when our flight from Bristol took off and flew over us. At last an announcement came, but this filled us with even more gloom as its tone was depressive, predicting as it did no end to the holdups on the line ahead. There were signalling problems on the network, delays on the ‘trunk line’ ahead and no sooner had the words come out when rumours about fallen trees blocking the line began to spread amongst our fellow travellers, which just goes to show how we hear either what we want or what we expect to hear, never what is actually said. So far as we were concerned missing our flight to Glasgow would scythe through our carefully planned timetable, the booked rental car and accommodation, the visits to friends and family on our return journey, as well as being a very costly experience. Our stress levels began bubbling nicely in the quiet of the railway carriage.

Fortunately the train eventually re-started and we did arrive at the airport in time so that little more than an hour later we were driving along the shores of Loch Lomond just as the dying light of the day was lighting up the freshly snow-covered mountain tops. We had been transported from the relative warmth of Somerset into the heart of a Scottish winter with ice crunching beneath the wheels of our hire car the moment the road climbed above sea level. Soon enough though we arrived at our B&B in Inverary and tucked into the tea and biscuits that was laid out for us, putting our travel worries behind us.

By morning there was a crust of ice on the car and the steps from the house we trod carefully, keeping our wits about us ready for the day for we were in Scotland to look at houses, to find a new home for ourselves. Our planned property viewings were lined up, all pre-arranged with the estate agents, so that we would see a different place at roughly hourly intervals throughout the day. This was the start of a new venture, our Scottish adventure into the Highlands of Argyll. Something is pulling us northwards like a magnet, drawing us in to a new life in this beautiful land, an area we have got to know very well over the two years since ceasing full-time employment and a place that is going to suck us in to its welcoming embrace.

When the Scottish winter can produce views like this, how can you resist?

We tramped first around Lochgilphead, a town which nestles snug at the northern end of a long sea loch, before moving along the shore to Ardrishaig where the Crinan Canal emerges from its journey across the land from the west. Here it is possible to live with salt water at the front door and fresh water at the rear as the canal runs close to the sea before it escapes. There were a few neat little properties here that interested us but winking away further south was a fishing village on the eastern shore of Kintyre and we had a rendezvous there at three o’ clock. We drove off south down the peninsula past East Loch Tarbert then turned onto a narrow road, wide enough for a single car with posts marking places where two approaching vehicles could pass. With nothing but a passing tractor to worry us, soon we were dropping down towards the sea, Kilbrannan Sound, and in the near distance the mountains of Arran rose large and dark. The road wound its way on, the surface broken by winter frosts so our tyres crashed and splashed into large black, water-filled holes. Slowly, up and down the hills beside the sea, in and out of gullies and rills, we closed on Carradale where the river Carra drains the Kintyre and where a settlement of some five hundred souls have made their home. Here we found a small house that will soon be our home, for a day later the deal was done, our offer accepted; we are now Scottish property owners. This is not some vast country mansion but nor is it a holiday home to be used just in the summer months. No, this place will soon become a permanent home for us both, within a small, remote village on the edge of the Kintyre peninsula, the sea just five minutes from our door and in every direction, more wilderness than you can throw a stick at.

Perhaps it is Kate’s Scottish ancestry that has brought us here or maybe it is our joint insanity that has pulled us in. Whatever it is we are totally comfortable with the idea of joining the small community of Carradale to begin a new life here. This is not some sudden whim, much though it may seem so through the pages of this blog, but instead it is something we have talked about long and hard between ourselves, sometimes deep into the night. Probably from the moment we sailed out of the Caledonian Canal into Loch Linnhe back in 2009 we began to have the inkling of an idea to get our lives to the point where we could re-locate permanently into the Highlands and we feel that the moment and the opportunity has now arrived. So rather than sit around doing nothing about it we have plunged headlong into action, researching the Internet to come up with a shortlist of affordable houses and taking our very limited funds north to make our choice. We have settled on the village of Carradale not specifically for its remoteness (this is a subjective term anyway) but more for the chance to live in a lively community where a spirit of self-sufficiency is the norm, and surrounded by the most beautiful scenery that this country can offer.

The Saga of the Leak – part the second

2011-02-01T10:28:00.005Z

Now the men of Wessex Water they make their own laws regarding when, where and how to dig to find a leak, when it is proper for sod to be turned, how deep to dig and when they should extract payment for doing so. And if their own people do not follow those laws and rules then the noble men who manage Wessex Water can exact penalties against wrongdoers or indeed may also award gifts to those who have been wronged. Such a gift has now been bestowed upon the bearded Malcolm and his good lady and this saga has already passed into the folklore of the men of water with their listening sticks and their spades. It pays to complain.

But such men do not take kindly to water hissing from their pipes and they do not like to be beaten. So they have paused for thought, weighed up the balance of skills and technologies available to them, planned a new campaign of assault and consulted the oracles regarding the most favourable day of the week on which to begin. Meanwhile the hissing of the leak continues unabated although the water still flows in the pipes and tubes so life continues with little change – until the Day of the Dig. This is the day the whole of Somerset will not forget, the day when the soil was peeled back so that the pipes beneath were revealed to all, a day when every substance which lies hidden below was exposed to human eyes, a day when the long-lost knowledge of pipes would be re-discovered, finally, once and for all time, never to be forgotten again.

On the morning of the chosen day the sun rose above the horizon but it hid its face from the men of Wessex and the wind it blew cold. Those men they had arisen early, champing at the bit like stallions in protective clothing, their large boots thudding to the ground as they emerged from their coloured vehicles. They had brought with them their listening sticks, they had brought their spades but most of all they had brought their favourite machine, a rather nice grey and red one with a long arm for digging deeper and further.
”Let digging commence”, they cried with one voice as they laid into the ground. Rapidly the first hole appeared, swiftly followed by a second and a third. The men of Wessex fell over themselves to dig deeper and further, the competition amongst them was intense. By noon and soon after their fifth cup of tea they had traced a pipe as far as the house of Malcolm and Catriona, the black plastic seeing the light of day for the first time for many years. There it was at last, the knowledge guarded by the men who built was at last revealed to the men who dig, the lost pipes had been found.

But what of the leak? What of the hissing beneath and the water that escaped to run away into the ground? Tracing the pipe is only part of this saga as despite eight holes having now been dug, we still have water seeping away into the night. No wonder there are floods around the other side of the world in Australia!

The men of Wessex departed to their homes and families no doubt to sing songs of pipes lost and found, to brag of the holes they had dug that day, to tell tales to those who would listen of great deeds and how many sugars they took in their tea. For the bearded Malcolm and his lady however the story had yet to end. The saga of the leak must have yet another chapter, the one in which the leak is finally quenched so the water flows no more. Make yourself comfortable where you sit and read on to the end of this tale.

Now the thing about pipes that lie hidden beneath the ground outside houses is that they work best when they are connected to pipes within houses or, as they say locally, “That’s what he do round here”. This final chapter in this saga is about connecting the without to the within and the men who do these things, not Wessex men but men from Sherborne, that is across the border in Dorset. So it was that a Dorset man, this one calling himself Sid, came to the house of Malcolm and his good lady to make a connection that would stop the leaking water from leaking and hissing away. There was much discussion as to the best way this could be done, whether if the water ran backwards in the pipes within the house it would still flow from the taps in the same way, so that the lady Catriona could bathe herself and make free with the oils and essences to purify her skin as she was wont to do. And at last ‘The Day of Connecting’ dawned, another day when the wind it blew hard and cold but nothing could prevent the connection being made for the lost pipes had been found by the men of Wessex and the Dorset man called Sid wielded his spanner for all to see. The pipes bent beneath his will and became one with the water inside and all was well at last. The deed had been done and the leak was no more.

So it is that the saga ends.

We now have a quiet house, one that hisses no more. Sleep is difficult, of course, as the noise of silence is deafening but it is pleasant to know that all is well with our pipes once more. This whole process has been a learning experience for us both although not a particularly enjoyable one. While waiting for this or that to happen we have felt trapped, unable to leave the house for any length of time in case someone turned up to dig another hole. We both feel like a break, perhaps even a holiday is called for, a term not generally applicable to retired persons, so where better than a few days in Scotland in mid-winter. Flight and accommodation booked, transport arranged, off we go!

The Saga of the Leak – part the first

2011-01-21T09:49:00.003Z

There was once a town in Somerset in the west of England where a bearded man called Malcolm lived with his young wife, Catriona. The man’s wife, a flaxen-haired lady, was often to be seen paintbrush in hand smoothing a coating of some exotic elixir across the walls within which they lived for she enjoyed, if not the smell, then the feel of the paint as it flowed from her brush and the resultant effect. Despite all this they lived happily together in a house which was blessed with many wonderful features, not least of which were the pipes and tubes through which electricity, gas and water flowed to and fro endlessly, both into and out of the surrounding land, seemingly without effort at all. Without these hidden pipes and tubes life would have been difficult indeed but by using their contents carefully and wisely Malcolm and Catriona were able to do many strange and amazing things and were able to live their lives in warmth and comfort. For example they could talk to others around the world as if they were next door, they could make tea using water as pure as many a mountain stream and they could warm their toes before a fireside glowing hot without the use of coal or wood. All these things were made possible by the pipes and tubes which ran into and out of the house.

Many years ago, when the house was built, there were men who had knowledge of just how these pipes and tubes were connected, of where they entered the building and where they left, men who used their knowledge wisely in constructing such a splendid dwelling but men who, nevertheless, chose to keep their knowledge to themselves. Perhaps they passed on this knowledge to their sons and daughters who, as is the way of things in the land of Somerset, then filled their own heads with so much else that the knowledge became lost for ever. Perhaps the men who built the house drew plans and drawings which described how everything worked, what secret places there were within the house where this pipe or that tube could be found so that water or gas could be drawn off when needed. Perhaps when they buried those pipes deep beneath the house they never expected anyone to need the knowledge they alone possessed as once hidden down under the clay on which the house was built those tubes would forever continue to bring electricity and water to those that lived there, no matter how many years should pass. Who can now tell what these men thought or did for time has passed and the house still stands but the pipes and tubes are older now and access to the wisdom of those who built it is now lost to those who now live within.

So it was that the Malcolm and his lady awoke one day to a strange sound, a sound which followed them about as they passed within the house, a sound which comforted the lady Catriona while she painted the walls but which nevertheless unsettled them, especially at night when the house was peaceful and quiet. To describe this as a hissing sound, high in pitch but its source low in the house, may not adequately portray the noise nor the effect it had on them both for this was the sound of a leak, of a liquid escaping from a pipe somewhere beneath their feet, something uncontrollable and mysterious, out of sight but not out of hearing and persistent in its nature, annoying. Somewhere, they knew, the pure water that provided them with so much comfort and sustenance was escaping, oozing out, and running away into the land beneath them. And of course, not having the knowledge of those who built the house so many years ago, knowledge secreted away or simply forgotten, the location of the pipe with the mysterious hole which was allowing the water to spill away could only be guessed at.

Now this part of the land of Somerset used to be named Wessex and water which flows over and under the land is owned by a company called Wessex Water who allow many different pipes and tubes to pass through the land. Many of those pipes are known to them and the location is drawn on maps and plans so that men can dig down and allow light to shine on a pipe when this is needed. But sadly, because the men who built the houses were secretive or forgetful there are many pipes which are unknown even to Wessex Water. Fortunately however, Wessex men are well versed in discovering lost pipes and they have many skills and machines available to them which enable them to locate a pipe when they need to, even when this is hidden underground. The first of these is the ‘listening stick’, a steel rod a metre and a half long with a cup-shaped wooden piece at one end which is placed against the ear while the other end is thrust into the ground. All leaking pipes share the same characteristic, the whistling and the hissing, which can be heard through the long rod of the listening stick, especially where a leak is beneath or close to a solid structure such as a house. Where the pipe is leaking into the soil away from a house a second and highly sophisticated skill is deployed – the hole. As it happens no modern equipment is needed for this; the requirements are simple. First there is the fork and then the spade. These shamanic tools are placed in the hands of a skilled artisan who is plied with cups of tea until eventually, a hole appears in the ground.

Thus the saga begins, with all this technology available and after many cups of tea and many holes having been dug our brave Somerset couple should reasonably expect to know where the mysterious pipe lies, where the water is running away, where the hissing is hissing from, to have rediscovered the knowledge long lost since the house was built.

But they don’t.

Twelve months ago

2011-01-09T18:36:00.003Z

Every so often Kate and I find ourselves posing the question to each other, "What were we doing this time last year?”, not for any deep or meaningful reason, but simply because in the two years or less since we both ceased gainful employment and began doing other things with our lives, even we are beginning to lose track of where we have been and what we have done. The answer to this question if posed at the present time is that we were mid way through six months of living in northern Italy, for me the longest period I have ever spent outside the UK and therefore an experience of some significance. What is rather strange, however, is that it takes no effort at all to remember our Italian sojourn because a number of rather bizarre happenings are combining to act as reminders for us, things that seem to be stretching the boundaries of coincidence considerably.

The apartment in which we were living, tucked away in the village of Torri at the end of an ‘interesting’ fifteen minute drive from the Italian Riviera town of Ventimiglia, was owned by native English speakers, a fact that became evident when we first glanced at the content of the bookshelves that would sustain us throughout the winter months. It would be no exaggeration, indeed a considerable understatement, to say that our lives were made more enjoyable through having such a library at our disposal. Many a rainy day did we spend in front of our log fire, reading our way through novel after novel, all of which were new to us and most very much to our taste. How could whoever placed these books there have known?

So here we are back in the UK, twelve months has elapsed, and a film based on the Stieg Larsson novel we read in Italy, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, is opening at cinemas across the country. It doesn’t stop there though. At least three of the books on our shelves were written by Henning Mankell whose creation, the Swedish detective Wallander, really got under our skins. So to see him come to life on television here in Britain has been a real treat, as well as taking us straight back to the fireside sofa in Italy. Then as if this wasn’t enough, when we recently heard the name Aurelio Zen this too immediately rang bells for us. Michael Dibdin’s novels featuring this Italian detective have an amazing feel to them, Italian life just oozes out of every word despite them being written in English by an Englishman. Having now watched the TV version we are not disappointed. It is almost as if whoever stocked those now far off bookshelves must have had an uncanny, even spooky, ability to see into the future. Surely this cannot just be coincidence.

The reminders of our Italian living do not, however, start or end on the bookshelves. Being ever conscious of our making best use of pension pounds (or Euros), it was not long before our daily and weekly shopping in Italy had introduced us to a new experience. We have my brother Graham to thank for our initiation to the place - he shops there regularly – and we did have our reservations at first but sooner or later we found we had caught the ‘Lidl’ bug. Now if you prefer to buy your foodstuffs with labels you recognise, Kelloggs for breakfast, Heinz for lunch, Cadbury’s for a snack, then a Lidl supermarket is not for you. The problem is not that they don’t sell any products you recognise (they do) but simply that the brands and labels are not those you will be used to. So for example you may find yourself buying ‘Crownfield’ corn flakes for breakfast, ‘Campo Largo’ is the brand for canned goods and if you are looking for a Mars Bar then you’ll need to find a sweet bearing the name, ‘Mister Choc – Choco Caramel’ which only reveals itself for what it really is when you bite into it. All this was part of the learning experience we went through when we first arrived in Italy so that by the time we left in April 2010, we had become thoroughly Lidl-ised, possibly even addicted.

Imagine our surprise when we first started exploring Yeovil after our arrival here in August last year when we found ourselves within easy walking distance of our own Lidl supermarket. This was like home from home for us and the reminders of our Italian life were everywhere we looked. But there was still one thing missing for us, one product that was a particular favourite of my brother Graham, and soon became ours too as thanks to his generosity a bowl full of these things always appeared before us at the end of our climb up to his Torri apartment. It was not until early December that our local Yeovil Lidl finally started to stock our favourite ‘Crusty Croc’ crisps, paprika flavour. Thanks Bro’ for introducing us to a snack that now takes our minds back twelve months with consummate ease.

And what has been happening around the home whilst all this reminiscing has been taking place? Well, I am doing another apprenticeship in plumbing, connecting complex bits of copper together so that water can flow around the shower and the small sink we have squeezed in. Kate puts herself at great risk by holding the pipes together so that I can apply the blowtorch and solder them up; such bravery. She still has both eyebrows so things must be going reasonably OK.