Exploring the Firth of Lorn on the west coast of Scotland in a Shetland Family Four, summer 2009

Part 2: Lismore, Loch Etive and Kerrera

The Force 8 gale arrived from the southwest at around midnight. We had tucked ‘Swannanoa’ into a berth between too larger boats on the northern side of the marina, so we were relatively cosy. Nevertheless, the singing of the wind in the rigging of the neighbouring yachts and the clinking of stays against each other kept us awake much of the night. In the half-light of the early morning, we watched through the escape hatch the masts of the boats nearby seesawing across the sky like the needles on instrument gauges. Around 8am in the morning, the wind eased off, but it continued to rain heavily and heavy seas were running out in the Lynn of Lorn, so having listened to the weather forecast, we thought it best to have a land-based day and go shopping to stock up on provisions and fuel in the morning, and then visit some friends over in Loch Creran in the afternoon.

Lismore Island

The next day dawned bright and sunny with smooth seas, so we decided to explore up the east coast of Lismore Island making our way to Port Appin and Shuna Island. A hot shower followed by a hearty breakfast put us all in the right mood as we pulled out of the marina on a bearing of 290º to take us to the southern tip of small, uninhabited Creag Island, three miles away. From there, we rounded Eilean na Gamhna, the western-most island in the group, with seals basking on its rocks, and turned north-eastwards to follow the coast of Lismore. Just as we were approaching the tiny village of Achnacroish, we spotted the ferry from Oban approaching from our stern, so stopped and drifted until it went past. It pulled into the small pier at the village, and within minutes was disgorging its load of foot passengers, slightly bewildered cyclists, and one car. We debated about having a break and an explore there, but we decided to press on up the coast to Tirefour Castle. This is an ancient ‘broch’, or fortified tower, built in the 1st century by the Picts, and still quite well preserved. Just at that moment, we saw something splashing in the water over towards Eilean Dubh in the middle of the Lynn of Lorn, so decided to go over an investigate. It turned out to be two big harbour seals, who seemed to be fighting and almost oblivious to us as we drifted in quite close to them, engine off. We surmised that they might have been two males fighting over a female, and watched them for about ten minutes before they both became aware of us, and quietly submerged. Despite circling around a few times, we didn’t see them again.

We headed around the beacon marking Branra Rock, and continued north to Port Appin, keeping the green buoy marking the Appin Rocks to our starboard. It was only the day before that our friends in Creran were telling us of a yachtie who, apparently not realising the rocks were there, had decided to take a shortcut into Airds Bay at high tide and had run on to them, causing £7000 worth of damage to his boat in the process. Not having a bank manager that would be overly sympathetic to that kind of thing, we didn’t want to make the same mistake! It wasn’t long before Pier House Hotel came into view (Figure 1), nestled at the bottom of the cliffs of Rubha Clach Tholl. We tied up to one of the visitors’ buoys, but just at that moment, a heavy squall of rain arrived, and we had to put up the canopy and sit it out. Half an hour later, it eased off, and we were able to get in the inflatable and row for the hotel jetty. The next hour or so we spent exploring the small village, with its mini-market, crafts shop, and, well, that was about it! Its main claim to fame is the Pier House Hotel, which was originally the residence of the pier master who supervised the loading and unloading of steamships in the 19th century, and the fact that it has the cheapest ferry across to Lismore Island. The many parked cars that fill every nook and cranny along the narrow road down to the pier, however, are mostly quarry workers in the Glensanda Quarry on the Morvern Peninsula on other side of Loch Linnhe, where pulverised granite is extracted for shipping to places all over the world. It was even used for the linings of the Channel Tunnel across to France. Further along, just outside the village hall there is the lantern of the old Port Appin lighthouse, containing an interesting display of the history of the lighthouse before it was replaced by a solar powered light in 2001.

1 : Pier House Hotel at Port Appin in the Lynn of Lorn.

Having explored the village, and just as we were thinking about returning to the boat, it started to rain again. We had gambled on there not being a shower so soon after the last one, and, when we had left ‘Swannanoa’, had decided to leave the canopy down. Big mistake! We had forgotten the basic rule of living in Scotland – it can rain anywhere, anytime, and anyhow. Jumping back into the inflatable, we rowed furiously back, clambered on board, and got the canopy up so that things wouldn’t get any more soaked than they were. We sat it out until it petered out about 20 minutes later, and then, in brilliant sunshine again, we untied and headed up towards Shuna Island. Keeping to the centre of the channel between Inn Island and the mainland, where the water is around 7 m in depth, we passed the Port Appin lighthouse to starboard, and kept going until the transit marks of Appin House and Knap Point came into view. We could now see Castle Stalker at the mouth of Loch Laich (Figure 2), and immediately memories of all the old Monty Python films flooded back. Castle Stalker was where they filmed the Castle Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh scene in ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. We tried to sail as close as we could to it, but even though it was about mid-tide, it wasn’t long before the water that covered the drying mudflats became too shallow, so we swung around and headed for the perches marking the channel between Shuna and The Knap. Following these perches around, where the water depth was only 1 m in places, we emerged into the Sound of Shuna with its cluster of moored yachts at Linnhe Marina.

2 : Castle Stalker of Monty Python fame, at the mouth of Loch Laich, Argyll.

We stopped briefly at the landing pontoon here, but there seemed no reason to stay long, so we carried on to the northern tip of Shuna Island before turning southwards again. It was a bit confusing, as there is another Shuna Island further south near Luing, not far away. The Shuna Island where we were is privately owned, uninhabited apart from 300 sheep, and is relatively nondescript, except for its flat topped hill at the southern end, where there is also the ruins of a 16th century towerhouse and a whitewashed farmhouse. We cruised slowly along the west coast of the island around to its southern tip, and then decided to head for Port Ramsay on Lismore.

Getting into Port Ramsay takes a bit of care. To the north of Lismore are a series of small islets and skerries, some of which are just below the surface at high tide. Just the day before, apparently, a yacht had sailed into one of them, Eilean Glas, and had to wait six hours before it could be floated off, a piece of seamanship we weren’t keen to copy! A bit of careful navigation after consulting the charts did the trick – we took a bearing of 223º from the farmhouse on the southern coast of Shuna Island, and a couple more GPS waypoints just to be sure, and made it without mishap into the narrow channel leading into Port Ramsay, watched suspiciously by two seagulls perched on a rock at the entrance, looking as though they resented this foreign invasion into their domain. We found a buoy to moor to in the north-east arm of the harbour (Figure 3), just in front of the ruined pier , and waited for another brief shower to stop before getting into the dinghy and rowing to shore to explore.

3 : ‘Swannanoa’ moored in Port Ramsay on Lismore Island.

Port Ramsay itself consists of mudflats at low tide, a row of picturesque whitewashed cottages, a disused limekiln, and a telephone box.. There were a few fishing boats nearby where we were moored, and two or three yachts over the other side of the island Eilean Ramsay in the middle of the harbour. At the southern end of the bay, a few more cottages make up the small hamlet of Fennachrochan. ‘Lismore’ means ‘Big Garden’ in Gaelic, referring to the high fertility of the soil due to the island being composed almost entirely of limestone. Historically, the limestone was extracted at a number of quarries around the island, brought to the limekilns for burning, and the resulting lime then shipped out to be taken to other areas of the Scottish highlands. The cottages were built for the lime kiln workers in the nineteenth century, but the whole lime burning business came to an end in the 1930s, and nowadays several, if not all of them, are holiday cottages.

The sun had come out again, and it was a beautiful warm evening, so we decided to go for a walk over to the other side of the island to see if we could find a shop, a pub, or indeed, anything. We followed the small road behind the cottages, with the waters of the Lynn of Lorn, where we had been earlier in the day in the boat, gradually coming into view. We eventually came to the small hamlet of Stronacroibh where our road joined Lismore’s ‘main road’ which runs down most of the length of the island. Turning left here, we then followed the coast northwards to where the ferry from Port Appin on the other side of the Lynn of Lorn arrives at Lismore. No shop, no pub, and the small group of houses around the ferry pier didn’t even seem important enough to warrant a name! We lay in the sunshine for a little while, watching the ferry coming across from Port Appin bringing two or three passengers, before deciding to continue our walk around the northern tip of Lismore and back to Port Ramsay. There is a rough path that follows the ledges of raised beaches underneath cliffs, crossing stiles over drystone walls, with spectacular views out over Loch Linnhe and the Morvern Hills in the background. Below us we could see a yacht carefully negotiating the entrance to Port Ramsay as we had done earlier, the chug-chug of its diesel engine coming to us clearly across the water. The path petered out at the base of the cliffs at one point, so we headed inland and onto the top of Rubh Aird Ghainimh, before picking it up again and following it down to the mudflats of Port Ramsay, past the old limekiln, and back to the ruined jetty where we had tied up the dinghy.

Our little excursion had made us hungry, and it wasn’t long before the potatoes were boiling and the steaks sizzling, and we were sitting with a glass of wine watching the sun go down over the hills of Mull. While we were contemplating how wonderful it all was, we were surrounded by a huge shoal of tiny sand eels, and spent the next half an hour being entertained by thousands (if not millions of them!) swimming in formation, darting here and there, some even between the engine and the transom, but all the time in perfect synchrony as if they were a single organism. Every now and then, there was flash of silver of a larger fish, and we realised that they weren’t doing it for our benefit, but that they were being chased here and there by mackerel from below.

It rained heavily again in the night, waking us up, and for a while we lay watching the rivulets of water running down the windows and listening to them trickling into the sea. Before long, however, we drifted off to sleep again, and a few hours later woke to a beautiful sunny morning. At least we couldn’t say that the weather didn’t keep us guessing! The forecast from the coastguard was for sunshine and showers for the day, so well-practised now at putting the canopy up and down at the drop of a hat, we decided to press on down the west coast of Lismore. Leaving Port Ramsay the same way that we had come in, we turned and aimed for a waypoint between the submerged rock Bogha na Dubhan and the light at the north end of Eilean Ramsay in 5 m of water, before heading for the north-western extremity of Lismore, Eilean nan Ban, and from there turning south-westwards. Following the line of small islands that give protection to Port na Moralachd with its salmon farms, we came across a seal colony on the last of these, also shared by a flock of shags, and were able to get quite close to them before the seals slid off the rocks into the water to watch us silently from a distance, and the shags flapped lazily off to a further rock.

4 : The ruins of Coeffin Castle on the west cost of Lismore Island, Argyll.

We carried on down the coast until we came to the ruins of Coeffin Castle (Figure 4), covered in ivy and rising like a gnarled hand out of the small promontory guarding the tiny bay behind. Apparently, Coeffin was a Viking prince from the time that the western isles of Scotland were ruled from Norway, and who built the original castle. There is a legend that his sister was engaged to be married to another Viking warrior who went back to Norway to fight a war, but was killed. The girl eventually died of a broken heart, and was buried in the castle, but her ghost haunted it for many years until her bones were disinterred and she was taken back to Norway to be buried near her lover. I don’t know if it was true, but it makes a good story. Anyway, in the 13th century, the MacDougall clan built another castle over the top of the old Viking one, which is the one we can see today.

We pressed on, hoping that the dark rain clouds to the south of Lismore wouldn’t come our way, but it was a forlorn hope, and it wasn’t long before the rain was tipping down. By this time we were just off the small inlet of Grogan Dubh, where there are the remains of an old limestone quarry, and we toyed with the idea of mooring there and sitting it out. In hindsight, it wouldn’t have been a bad idea, as there is a small café and Lismore Heritage Centre about a mile’s walk from there, which apparently is worth seeing. However, the small harbour looked a bit tricky to enter, so in the event we decided to keep on going, heading for the south western tip of Bernera Island. A fishing boat loomed out of the mist and rain off to our starboard, which we recognised as having been in Port Ramsay the previous night too. With the canopy up, it was quite difficult to see through the small windscreen with no wipers to remove the rain (Figure 5), but somehow we managed, ploughing through the choppy seas until we rounded Bernera Island, where the rain suddenly stopped, and the sun came out again. The CCC Sailing Directions warn of a drying rock, Liath Sgeir (the Grey Rock), about a mile south of Bernera, so we took a wide berth of that to the west, before deciding to stop somewhere between Lismore and Duart Point on Mull, and to have a cup of soup and bread for lunch. Behind us, to the northwest, we could see the squall that we had just come through moving over the Morvern Peninsula, and in front of us, the Firth of Lorn and Kerrera Island in brilliant sunshine.

5 : Ploughing through a squall to the west of Bernera Island, Lynn of Morvern.

We drifted slowly towards Lismore lighthouse as we sipped our soup and watched the Cal-Mac ferry going up the Sound of Mull, but in plenty of time we started the engine and headed for a point between the lighthouse and Lady’s Rock, and then set a leisurely course due west for Dunstaffnage again. We arrived there mid-afternoon, where we decided to relax and catch up on a few land-based activities, including refuelling and restocking our provisions for the next leg of the trip.

Loch Etive

The weather forecast for the next few days seemed to be favourable, so we decided to take our chances, and aim for the top end of Loch Etive. The first challenge was to get through the so-called Falls of Lora at the Connel Bridge (Figure 6). These occur when the tide is falling, and the water in Loch Etive is trying to empty back into the sea. Just upstream from the bridge are a line of submerged rocks that break the flow of this mass of water, causing swirling whirlpools and overfalls just before the bridge. The effect is most spectacular at low water springs, but the currents can also be strong at other times.

6 : The Falls of Lora at Connel Bridge, Argyll.

Cutting through the shallow water between Eilean Mor and Rubh Aird nan Leum to the northeast of the marina, and avoiding the drying Ledaig Spit as much as we could, we positioned ourselves for the attempt. We had read all the instructions, had chosen slack water an hour before high tide, and knew that we had to head for the third strut from the right of the bridge, keep going until we had passed under the bridge, then veer left to avoid a rock on the south side of the channel. As it turned out, it wasn’t that difficult, and we emerged into the wider area upstream from the bridge safe and sound. We cruised slowly on, through the Kilmaronag Narrows, also with quite strong whirlpools, and arrived into Achncreemore Bay where it was calmer and a few boats were moored (Figure 7).

7 : Looking up Loch Etive towards Ben Cruachan from Achncreemore Bay.

We carried on up the loch, passing Abbot’s Isle to starboard, taking a wide swing around Ardchattan Shoal which rises abruptly to 1 m below the surface, eventually entering the picturesque Airds Bay with Ben Cruachan towering behind it. We headed for the Bonawe Narrows with its disused ferry jetty, where several fishermen were trying their luck to catch something. Just up from the pier are the remnants of the Bonawe Iron Furnace, built in 1753 to smelt iron ore. Despite the fact that just across the Bonawe Narrows there is a quarry, it is in fact a granite quarry, and the iron ore for the Furnace was actually shipped up from the Lake District. Apparently, the reason for this was that it was easier to transport the iron ore to where the fuel was, rather than the other way around, the fuel in this case being charcoal, which required large amounts of wood to produce. At that time, Loch Etive was densely forested with oak along much of its length, in stark contrast to the relatively treeless landscape that you see today. The woodcutters and charcoal burners of the day were cutting down about 1 hectare of trees a day, just to feed the ravenous furnaces to produce pig iron that was shipped all the way back to England again. This all lasted for 120 years or so, but eventually the increasing use of coke meant that it was cheaper to smelt iron back in England, and in 1876 the furnace at Bonawe stopped functioning.

We contemplated whether we should stop there and explore, but decided to do that on our way back, and to press on instead. Through the Bonawe Narrows, we eventually entered the part of Loch Etive where it bends north-eastwards. Just at that moment, there was a short sharp shower, so we decided to sit it out and do a spot of fishing. Only a few minutes after having dropped the line overboard, we had a small cod struggling on the end of it!

Eventually the shower passed, and we continued on our way. The landscape became more and more rugged and wild, with only the odd house or hunting lodge dotted here and there at the shoreline. Dark clouds gathered overhead, occasionally spitting rain at us, as if to warn us off. To add to our foreboding, a stiff wind sprang up from the south-west, whipping the surface of the loch into a chop. The vast glacial U-shaped valleys of Glen Noe, Glen Liver and Glen Kinglass opened out to our right, rising gradually to distant high peaks. Through to the north, Beinn Sgulaird emerged, flanked by Creach Bheinn and Stob Gaibhre, prompting us to dub them the ‘three brooding sisters’ – I don’t know if they are called that, but it seemed appropriate. We passed Inverliver Bay, where a couple of small boats were moored, and we made a mental note that if it got too rough, that might be a good place to shelter, provided we didn’t run on to the small skerries at its entrance. Past the sandy beach at Armaddy, on upwards to where the loch narrows and where the sheer slopes of Beinn Trilleachan (840 m) on our left and Ben Starav (1078 m) on our right begin to tower over Loch Etive. This was impressive country – we felt dwarfed by its grandeur and remoteness, made all the more intense by the almost complete absence of any other humans.

We eventually made it to the top of the loch, where we were the only boat, only adding to the sense of isolation (Figure 8). The only sign of any other people besides ourselves were a couple of small tents pitched at Gualachulain where the small River Etive enters the loch. We anchored in about 6 m of water in what turned out to be a silty bottom, probably brought down by the river, giving reasonable holding power with the Bruce anchor despite the reasonably stiff breeze blowing along the length of the loch. A quick cup of tea, then into the rubber dinghy to explore ashore.

8 : ‘Swannanoa’ anchored at the top end of Loch Etive.

Despite the remoteness, it was still apparent that a lot of activity had been going on relatively recently. A new pier had been built and an area of the surrounding Glen Etive forest had already been cut down, with the logs piled into heaps. All was explained on a display board at the top of the loch. The forests that were planted 25-30 years ago are now mature, and it is time to cut them down and use the timber. The Rathad Mara (Sea Road in Gaelic) project is aimed at doing that in an environmentally sensitive way by transporting it all by sea instead, and would save about 10,000 lorry loads of timber being transported over small B-class roads through tiny villages. On one hand it seemed a shame – the wildlife of the area had clearly been disturbed – we had come hoping that we might see herds of deer, or even some golden eagles or sea eagles, but we saw none of these. On the other hand, the forests had been planted for the purposes of producing timber to provide income, so it just happened that it is now the time that they are to be harvested. The plan is to cut the trees down over a 20 year period, and replant with oak, birch and Scots pine – we just hoped that this would encourage the wildlife to eventually return.

9 : View from the top of Loch Etive, looking down the loch towards Ben Cruachan.

The wind dropped around 1900h, and we sat having our dinner looking out at the conical peaks of Stob Dubh (883 m) and further away, Stob na Broige (955 m) and Stob Coir Altrium (939 m) near the Pass of Glencoe. Apart from the two tents, we could have been the only people for miles. We drifted off to sleep to the slight lapping of waves against the hull, and slept soundly the whole night, awaking in the morning to a picture postcard view of a mirror-like loch surrounded by rugged peaks on all sides (Figure 9). It couldn’t get better than this. Another leisurely breakfast, savouring the view and waving to the two kayakers who had packed up one of the tents we had seen, and who were now heading down the loch again, before we too decided it was time to move on.

About halfway along Loch Etive is a place on the northern shore called Dail, which has a fascinating legend associated with it. This concerns ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’, a Celtic princess who lived around 500 AD in the ancient kingdom of Dalriada which encompassed Ulster in Ireland and most of what today is Argyll. When she was born, the court druid forecast that kings and princes would fight each other over her, and that there would be great strife in Dalriada as a result. Many of the princes and nobles demanded that she be put to death there and then to avoid all this, but the king, Conchobar, decided that he would have her brought up, and then marry her himself when she came of age. She was confined to an secluded castle in the middle of a forest, looked after by an old serving woman. Despite all these precautions, however, one day she met a dashing young warrior called Naoise, and decided she wanted to marry him, and not the king, who was getting a bit past it by this stage. Realising that this wouldn’t be possible under the status quo, she and Naoise eloped along with his two brothers (the sons of Uisnech) to the far parts of the kingdom, which just happened to be Loch Etive. They found a pleasant spot to set up home (which is thought to be Dail), and managed to live there quietly and happily for a few years.

Eventually, however, Conchobar got to hear of where they were, and sent one of his warriors to meet them to tell them that all was forgiven and ask them to return to the court. Deirdre, to her credit, was highly suspicious, thinking that it was just a trap to get them to go back so that Naoise would be killed and she would be forced to marry the king after all. Naoise, of course, was having none of this, and feeling homesick anyway, believed that everything was above board, and decided to return. Poor Deirdre had no option but to go with him, so they returned back to Ireland. They were placed in a house for the night, but not welcomed by the king, which only added to her misgivings. During the night, Conchobar sent one of his men to spy on them through a skylight in the house, to see if she was as still as beautiful as he remembered her. Naoise spotted the spy looking through the skylight, and as he and Deirdre just happened to be playing chess, threw a chess piece at him, blinding him in one eye. The spy ran back and told Conchobar that she was as beautiful as ever, making him want her even more, and in the morning, sent some of his warriors to seize Deirdre, during which Naoise was killed. She refused to marry Conchobar, however, so frustrated by all this, he gave her to the man who had killed Naoise. All this was a bit too much for poor old Deirdre, and she ended up killing herself by throwing herself from a chariot and dashing her head against a rock. As we sailed past Dail, we tried to imagine what it would have been like around 1500 years ago. There were two kayakers and their tent on the beach, and we wondered if they had any idea of the history of the place where they were having their lunch.

We arrived back in Airds Bay sometime in the afternoon, and decided to moor there, explore the village of Taynuilt, and possibly stay the night. We tied up to one of the yellow visitors’ moorings, took the dinghy ashore to the pier, and continued on foot up past the Bonawe Iron Furnace. Historic Scotland have since reconstructed the furnace site, and it was fascinating to browse around the old stone buildings and to imagine the hive of activity that it must have once been. From there, we followed a path through an avenue of trees, and then across the suspension bridge to the smokery on the other side of the River Awe. There we had a coffee and salmon sandwiches while another rain shower passed, then back again along the A85 road until we reached Taynuilt village proper. A quick stop at the village shop to buy something for dinner, then back past the railway station to the boat. Unfortunately, at this point it started to rain again, and the last mile or so saw us trudging along, getting more and more soaked but trying to keep the groceries dry, before we finally reached the pier again, and back out to ‘Swannanoa’ to dry out and fill ourselves with hot soup.

The next morning was sunny, but the weather forecast was for strong winds from the north, so we decided to head back to Dunstaffnage. Already the water in Airds Bay was quite choppy, so we pushed on, reaching Connel Bridge just on high tide. We thought that it might be exciting to take the Falls of Lora at top speed, so up on the plane, we followed exactly the same course on the GPS that we had taken on the way up, zooming over the swirling water at 25 knots feeling it slithering around like a car on ice, under the bridge, and out the other side into the relative calm downstream, before throttling off and cruising slowly back past Ledaig Spit and into the marina. Great fun!

Kerrera

A few days later, joined now by a school-friend of our son, we decided to return to Gylen Castle at the southern tip of Kerrera, have a barbecue there, and possibly stay the night. We hadn’t yet explored the western coastline of Kerrera, so setting off from Dunstaffnage, we headed south-westwards down the coast, past Ganavan Bay with its sandy beach and caravan site, past Maiden Island, until Hutcheson’s Monument on the northern tip of Kerrera came into view. Hutcheson was one of the co-founders in Victorian times of the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry company, whose ships are everywhere you go around the Scottish islands. As if on cue, we spotted the Cal-Mac ferry from Mull just at that moment approaching us rapidly on our port side to enter into Oban harbour, so we stopped and drifted for a few minutes to let it past and avoid its wake. We then carried on down, soon passing Eilean nan Gamhna, or Shepherd’s Hat Island, aptly named because of its broad raised beaches and small table-top hill in its centre, past Slatrach Bay, where we saw the pylon where the power cable across to Mull enters the water, past Barr-nam-boc Bay with its lonely whitewashed farmhouse and winding gravel track, until we eventually reached the south-west tip of Kerrera, Rubha na Feundain. Here, between Kerrera and Bach Island where two currents were meeting, the water was quite choppy. A large flock of seagulls were riding the waves, making us think that it would be a good place for a spot of fishing, so out with the rods, and sure enough, a few minutes later, we had three mackerel in the bucket (Figure 10). Something more for the barbecue!

10 : Catching mackerel off the southern tip of Kerrera Island.

From there, it wasn’t long before we reached Castle Bay and our favourite Gylen Castle again. Anchoring in the same spot as before, we loaded the dinghy with the food and barbecue gear and rowed ashore. Although not as brilliant a day as the first day that we had been here (see Part 1), it still had not lost its charm and sense of remoteness. The boys found a good spot for the barbecue overlooking the bay, from where we could see ‘Swannanoa’ riding at anchor below, and we soon had the charcoal burning and sausages sizzling while we gutted and cleaned the mackerel (Figure 11). A pleasant evening was had by all, eating our fill and gazing over the Firth of Lorn, watching the last of the sun’s rays disappear behind the mountains of Mull in the west. This was the life. Even the midges stayed away to let us enjoy it!

11 : Barbecuing the sausages at Gylen Castle, Kerrera Island.

Then, up with the tent on a little bit of flat ground under the castle, with the boys snuggling into their sleeping bags while the adults rowed back out to the boat for the night. We caught the coastguard weather forecast, and were a little concerned to hear that the wind was expected to go round to the south-west ‘later’ and get up to Force 5. A south-westerly wind would funnel directly up the Firth and straight into Castle Bay where we were anchored. Should we stay or not? Thinking that ‘later’ technically means more than 12 hours after the forecast, we decided to chance it, but called the coastguard to let them know what our plans were, and also put out both anchors, as well as setting the anchor drag alarm. We had noted our position on the GPS, and taken a couple of transit lines, but since we had arrived they hadn’t changed. We settled down, agreeing to take it in turns to watch, but less than a hour later, the first of the long swells all the way from the Atlantic arrived, accompanied by a strong wind. Gentle at first, they gradually increased in size, causing poor ‘Swannanoa’ to pitch wildly and strain at both of the anchor ropes each time they came. Neither of us could sleep, so we passed the night peering out of the windows through the grey half light, trying to see if our transit points were moving. Three miles away, out in the Firth, the light on Bogha Nuadh winked at us, in reassurance or derision, we couldn’t tell. We could see the dark shape of Gylen castle above us see-sawing across the sky as we were tossed mercilessly, and reckoned the bow was going up and down a couple of metres each time. We kept a watchful eye on the GPS coordinates, being relieved to see that they didn’t change. The figures are precise to a thousandth of a minute, which is about two metres, but we had no idea how accurate this was, and prayed silently that the Americans wouldn’t choose that moment to degrade or switch off the signal.

Morning arrived, and emerging bleary-eyed from a completely sleepless night, but relieved that the anchors had held rock solid, we called the coastguard to let them know that we were OK, and rowed over in the dinghy to collect the campers. The swells were still coming in, and the wind was still gusting, but amazingly the boys had slept soundly the whole night, only waking at one point thinking they had heard voices and laughing, and putting it down to the ghosts of long-dead soldiers from the castle, before drifting off again! The imaginations of youth! We packed up, loaded everything into ‘Swannanoa’, pulled up the anchors, and headed round Rubha Seanach point before entering the calmer waters of Kerrera Sound, then back up to Oban, then out past Maiden Island (completing our circumnavigation of Kerrera), and back to Dunstaffnage. Lesson learned – find somewhere more sheltered to anchor next time, and not in a place exposed to the prevailing wind!

However, all in all, a great three weeks of cruising in a spectacular part of the world, with magnificent weather for most of it. Even the days when we were dished up alternately heavy rain squalls and brilliant sunshine only added to the experience. We had covered 175 nautical miles in total, survived living on the boat for two of the three weeks, and had experienced some of the mystique of the ancient Celts who had once lived in the region. Our only disappointment was that we had not seen more wildlife, particularly whales and sea eagles, despite having kept a sharp lookout for them. Still, you can’t have everything, and you always have to have something to look forward to next time!

Part 1 of this account can be found in the Cruising Gallery of the Shetland Owner’s Association website (http://www.shetland.owners.org.uk/gallery/gallery.asp?g=1&pagemode=view&recID=134).

The full set of our holiday pictures are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbmatthews/sets/72157621789531551/ for anyone that is interested. (For best results, press the Slideshow icon up in the top right hand corner, then the "Show Info" option, again in the top right hand corner, then the full screen option (the four arrows pointing outwards in the bottom right hand corner).