Cruising on the west coast of Scotland in a Shetland Family Four, summer 2008

Part 2 – Loch Carron and the Applecross Peninsula

This follows on from Part 1 of our cruising adventures in Loch Alsh and the Sound of Sleat described previously. Leaving Kyleakin Harbour, we headed for Plockton where we had booked a cottage to enjoy relative luxury after a week on the boat. Just out of the harbour, we had to wait for a little while to go under the Skye Bridge for a large ship to pass through, as we didn’t want to get caught by its wake. As it turned out, it didn’t amount to much, although it was going quite fast and we heard some alarmed calls on the VHF from yachts moored at the Kyle of Lochalsh pontoons worried about the wake causing damage. We aimed for the centre of the bridge, out between the two sets of marker buoys, then turned north into Inner Sound to follow the coast around to Plockton. The sea was flat calm, like a mill pond, and we had no trouble spotting two porpoises about a mile from the bridge. They seemed pretty unconcerned about us, but when we turned to get a closer look at them, they quietly submerged and we lost them. We eventually rounded the rocky headland at the entrance to Loch Carron with the disused lighthouse on Cat Island, and headed due south into Plockton Harbour, taking care to give Hawk Rock a wide berth. We had made arrangements to use one of the visitors’ moorings for the week, so we tied up to the yellow buoy marked with a ‘V’, loaded everything we needed into the inflatable, and rowed the not insignificant distance to the pontoons.

Figure 1: View of Plockton looking up Loch Carron. Duncraig Castle on the right.

Plockton is a picturesque little village on the eastern side of a small peninsula (Figure 1), sheltered from the westerly winds blowing across from Skye, which together with the warmth from the Gulf Stream, allows cabbage trees to grow along its sea-front, giving it a faintly tropical look. The village was planned by Sir Hugh Innes, a previous owner of the large surrounding estate, who wanted to establish a fishing industry for crofters who had been moved off their land during the Clearances. The village has three pubs, a small general store, a café, a village hall, and a railway station on the outskirts. Across the harbour is Duncraig Castle, which one of the former estate owners built, with the railway line snaking its way around the coastline at its base.

After establishing ourselves in our cottage in the village, the next day we set off in Swannanoa to explore Loch Carron. Just outside the harbour, we rounded the tiny island of An Dubh Sgeir and surprised a colony of seals (Figure 2), most of whom promptly slid down the rocks and dived into the water to swim a respectful distance from us, then regarded the intruders to their domain solemnly with just their heads showing. One or two even remained nonchalantly on the rocks perfectly aware that they were in no danger from us, and that with a flick of a tail could follow their mates into the water whenever they pleased.  

Figure 2: Seals on the island of An Dubh Sgeir in Loch Carron.

From there, we headed up into Loch Carron proper, passing between the village of Ardneaskan to the north and the Strome Islands to the south. More seals on those islands, although we couldn’t get as close to them this time due to the shallowness of the water – 1 m in places – so we had to take extra care to make sure that we didn’t hit anything until we were back in the main channel where it drops to about 10 m or so. It wasn’t long before Strome Castle came into view, or at least the remains of it, as it was pretty much destroyed in 1602. Time for a coffee, so we moored to the old ferry slipway at Strome Ferry of ‘No Ferry’ fame (Figure 3), boiled up the water for a cuppa, and explored the castle while we were waiting. The story about how it was destroyed was great – apparently it was inhabited by the MacDonalds who were always fighting and scrapping with their neighbours, the MacKenzies. On this particular occasion, the MacKenzies had laid siege to the castle, but after several weeks with no result, were getting pretty bored with it all, and were just going to pack up and go home, when one night some of the MacDonald women were drawing water from the well inside the castle, and accidentally spilled it all over the gunpowder supplies. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there just happened to be a MacKenzie prisoner inside the castle who overheard the ensuing consternation, and as luck would have it, he managed to escape and tell his clansmen what had happened. Needless to say, they set forth, attacked the castle, and captured the powderless occupants. As it turned out, the MacDonalds were allowed to sail away to fight another day, but the castle was blown up (presumably with a different lot of gunpowder!). Well, after learning all that we were quite exhausted, which coincided very nicely with the coffee being ready.

Figure 3: Coffee break at Strome Ferry.

From there, we carried on up the loch until we passed a salmon farm on the north shore. Just as we were passing it, we spotted two dolphins streaking towards us, jumping in huge arcs as they came, obviously attracted by the sound of the engine. They circled the boat a couple of times, then decided they had to entertain us by swimming at top speed around and under the boat, trying to surprise us by randomly leaping out of the water and splashing us as they re-entered, almost as if they were inviting us to play (Figure 4). The boys (and adults) were fascinated by this display of dolphin behaviour, but getting photos of them proved to be pretty difficult – our eye/shutter coordination wasn’t all it could have been, and all we managed was lots of splashes where they had re-entered the water, but none of the dolphins themselves! It was only when another boat appeared in the distance, and the dolphins heard the sound of its engine, that they decided that we had had our money’s worth, and streaked away towards it to find another audience to impress.

Figure 4: Looking at the dolphins in Loch Carron.

We eventually reached the top of the loch, moored in the shallow Slumbay harbour just off the village of Lochcarron with its houses spread out along the road to Ardneaskan, and rowed ashore in the inflatable dinghy to have lunch. It was a glorious sunny afternoon, and we just chilled out for a couple of hours lunching and exploring the village before heading back to the boat. As it was, we had almost left it too late as it was almost low tide, and while Swannanoa was still moored in about 70 cm of water, we didn’t dare risk using the engine to get back out again, instead pushing ourselves out with the boathook and paddles, carefully avoiding the submerged Red Rocks at the entrance to the harbour, before we reached deep water again. The café owner in Lochcarron had warned us of the sandbar stretching out from Slumbay Island, on which he had seen numerous yachts founder on over the years, so we weren’t too keen to add ourselves to his list! In the event, we made it, and headed back down Loch Carron again, past the dolphins and Strome Ferry, passing the intriguing Victorian navigation marker built entirely of stone on the tiny island of Ullava, rounding the navigation pole marking Plockton Rocks, eventually reaching Plockton at dusk and tying up to our visitors’ mooring.
The next day we headed out westwards from Plockton into Inner Sound between Skye and the mainland. It was another glorious summer’s day, with the sun shining, only the faintest of breezes, and the sea like a mirror – at least until we rounded the tip of the Applecross Peninsula, when we encountered a fresh breeze coming down the length of Inner Sound, bringing with it a slight chop in the waves. We passed the ruins of the farmstead at Rubha na h-Uamha, before heading across Caolas Mór strait towards the Crowlin Islands. It was just as we were halfway across Caolas Mór that we noticed a large container ship about a mile off our stern coming from the Skye Bridge and bearing down on us fairly quickly. It seemed as first as if they hadn’t seen us, so we increased speed a little and eventually reached the relative safety of the Crowlin Islands as the ship passed a few hundred metres behind us in the middle of the channel, heading northwards up the Inner Sound. Awed at its size, we dismissed it from our minds as it sailed on, and gave our attention to negotiating the entrance to Crowlin Harbour.
The harbour is a natural gap running northeast to southwest between the two Crowlin Islands of Eilean Mór (Large Island) and Eilean Meadhonach (Middle Island), about 100 m at its widest. Entrance is from the northeast, from where it gradually narrows towards the southwest end where there is also a bar, the latter being apparently passable at high tide with a shallow draft craft back into the main Inner Sound. We sailed slowly along the length of the harbour, gliding past seals sunning themselves on the rocks and one or two other yachts moored in there overnight. As luck would have it, it was just high tide as we arrived, so we though that we would have a crack at making it over the southwest bar, and approached it carefully, keeping a watchful eye on the bottom and the depth sounder: 3 m …., 2 m …1 m …, 50 cm …at this point, still with about 50 m to go, we chickened out, and decided not to take the risk of catching the engine on some submerged protrusion. Slow astern took us back into the relatively deeper water of the main harbour, where we decided to temporarily drop anchor, have a coffee, and swap notes with some of the other sailors moored there.
From Crowlin Harbour, we headed for the village of Applecross on the mainland. Just as we emerged from the harbour entrance, to our surprise we could see the same ship that had passed us earlier, which we had thought would be miles away by now, but which seemed to have stopped in the middle of Inner Sound. Even more alarming was the fact that it was listing to port, with its cranes dangling over almost into the water on that side. Had it hit something, and was slowly sinking? There certainly didn’t seem to be anything on the chart that it could have struck – indeed, although previously a firing range, the water was about 200 m deep at that point. Imagining all sorts of calamities, we decided to head towards it to investigate. As we got closer, we were even more puzzled to see a small rubber inflatable at the waterline on the starboard side. Were the crew trying to get off the stricken ship? Nothing quite so dramatic – as we drew parallel, the explanation became apparent. We could see that there were about 3-4 men in the small boat all furiously painting the side of the ship above the waterline in a brilliant blue colour! They had cleverly used the weight of the ship’s cranes to tilt it to one side so that the bits that they had to paint were high and dry out of the water (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Ship being painted in Inner Sound, between Skye and the Applecross Peninsula. Raasay Island in the background.

We continued our voyage to Applecross, sailing parallel to the mainland coast, with the island of Raasay to the west, and the mighty Cuillin Hills visible in the haze beyond. By this time, the wind had dropped right off, and the sea was like glass, punctuated now and then by the odd pair of porpoises breaking the surface in the distance, then disappearing again almost as quickly underwater as they continued their journey to wherever they were heading. We switched the engine off, and drifted slowly northward with the tidal stream, lazing in the hot sun. We even nonchalantly dropped one of the lines over the side, not caring whether we caught anything or not, and within a minute had hooked three mackerel. Perfection! Now and then, we would be passed by another craft heading either northwards or southwards, usually being greeted with a friendly wave. At one point, we heard the sound of something large surfacing and clearing its blowhole, but despite searching with the binoculars, we couldn’t find it. We surmised that it might have been a minke whale like those that we had seen in the Moray Firth earlier in the year, but couldn’t be sure.

Figure 6: Applecross village from the sea, with Beinn a’ Chlachain in the background.

Figure 7: Swannanoa moored in the tiny harbour of Aird-Dhubh on the Applecross Peninsula.

From Aird-Dhubh, we carefully navigated our way out of the south entrance to the harbour, avoiding the submerged reefs by following the course marked out by the poles standing in the water, and slowly made our way back to Plockton, passing some kayakers on the way heading in the direction of the Crowlin Islands, and impressed how far out from the coast they were in their small boats hardly discernible above the waves. Then a quick tour around the derelict harbour at Toscaig, waving to the one or two fishermen on the ruined pier, catching a couple more mackerel for our dinner on the way, before returning in the evening to Plockton. All in all a magnificent day.

We stayed a few more days in Plockton, but the weather wasn’t up for much boating, so we explored the area around the village by car. Of the two weeks that we had altogether, perhaps about half of the days were great for boating, the rest being too rough and stormy, which is about par for the course on the west coast of Scotland. Nevertheless, on the days when the sun is shining and the seas are flat, it must be difficult to find a more beautiful part of the world for cruising. We’ll be back sometime!
For anyone that is interested, the full set of our holiday pictures are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbmatthews/sets/72157606515646326/