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2006 ROUNDTRIP IRELAND BLOG (INCOMPLETE 2013)

posted date July 2006 Aug 2006

area / subject Inverness to Ireland Ireland west coast

region 2

Around Ireland Without a Fridge*. (2006, June and on...)

(*normally a lack of fridge for northern waters would not be an issue, but with the unusually scorching weather we had it was a challenge to keep our butter solid! have you read: ?Around Ireland With A Fridge??)

June 1st was my first day off after working a stint for Shell Expro in Aberdeen. As Sarah?s projects were still not finished, I made use of the new-found freedom to collect an old Aprilia Pegaso (motorbike) from NL, both as a break from boat work and a good excuse to see some friends! But then Siobhan took over again and a few weeks were spent with maintenance and small repairs. The new sails were a couple of weeks late so no need to rush, and the weather was fantastic (sunny and warm which is extremely rare in Scotland!) Summer solstice came and went with a wee visit to the ?Rock Ness? festival by power boat with Robin, and then on June 29th we left Inverness for Loch Ness!

The new main-sail lasted roughly 30 minutes in the admittedly gusty winds of the loch before crashing down, by which time we were approaching our gorgeously peaceful anchorage for the night near Drumnadrochit anyway.... so we folded the new sail into its bag, put the old one back on, and celebrated our first anchorage for the year with a wee glass of champagne. As each sail weighs in at 80kg or so, we figured we deserved champagne for that as well!

The Caledonian Canal (*60 miles from Inverness on the east coast to Corpach by Ft.William on the west coast), taken at a leisurely pace and in summer this time, was truly fantastic: breathtaking scenery, gorgeous hikes (Loch Oich & Ben Tee score max points), peaceful (and this is the busy season), friendly lock keepers, good pubs & restaurants, warm & sunny weather! Out of the canal at Corpach, Siobhan into salt water after all those months of waiting, and on to Tobermory on the Isle of Mull: coastline cliff walks to be recommended, fantastic views, warm & sunny weather (!), good food and a bottle of good ?Iona? whisky to be had...

July 7th On to Oban to pick up Sarah?s sister Helen for a week, and a bottle of my favourite ?Oban? whisky hopefully for a bit longer... As Helen is new to sailing (and to pretty much any other outdoor pursuit) we start off with an easy sail through the notorious Sound of Luing to Craobh Haven which conveniently allows us to watch the world cup finals in a pub, access the internet, and me to reminisce a bit in what was my sailing base 10 years ago... I don?t recall ever having set foot in either the pub or the showers though surely the showers I must have?!?! Interesting sailing days back then, with a wee low-maintenance boat...

A few days later we?re on Islay sampling whisky at the Bowmore distillery and accidentally end up with a bottle or two... about time to leave Scotland before this theme gets out of hand!

So away we go for the 30 mile hop to Ballycastle in Northern Ireland, near Rathlin Island. A slow sunny sail past shags & cormorants, puffins and razor-bills, and various other marine wildlife ends with some record-breakingly tight manouvering in a small busy harbour to get to the one spot where we fit and will barely touch bottom when the tide goes out... and as it?s sand, and low water is at 03:00, I assume no-one will notice whether we lift the pontoon a few inches as long as we drop it back afterwards. A couple of friendly and persistent kids with cute and extremely hard-to-understand accents end up having a look around Siobhan, and mere minutes after they rush off to fetch their ?sister?, they return with another four kids including one girl with a wee boy in a pram. Since the age difference between ?sister? and the wee one appears only 8 or 9 years we agree to assume she?s not the mother...

Helen leaves again (too much of a good thing can be hard to handle, apparently), and we take a day to go to the Giant?s Causeway, a world renowned (?) geological feature of geometrical basalt towers, and it is indeed spectacular. We walk there along a fantastic cliff path (2 hours), look around (2 hours) and then take the last bus back. The female driver drops everyone off at their respective houses & cars in a lovely display of personal closeness, for want of a better word. Welcome to Ireland.

15th Over to Rathlin Island, and this is fantastic: lovely, friendly (apart from an extraordinarily grumpy tourist office attendant who we do not manage to persuade to supply any information to us whatsoever) and a couple of hours walking away: an amazing bird observatory on a cliff complete with telescopes set up for visitors so you can watch literally tens of thousands of birds nesting on cliffs and ledges! Hundreds of puffins (including an albino!) and thousands of the other various birds we sailed past a few days earlier! It always amazes me that they find ledges to sit on, and when looked at from close up it turns out that a lot of them actually lean towards the cliff, and cannot turn without falling off. Where they park their eggs? Some mysteries must remain. Also witnessed the first guillemot chick of the year ?swim? out to sea accompanied by mum, where it will not only learn to swim (!) but also to fly (hopefully) during the next few years.

19th Onwards to Aran Island. A picturesque short sail from Gola island which is a nice if rather bleak 90% deserted island Aran by contrast starts off just slightly over-populated, and whether or not this is where the famous Aran sweaters come from we never find out, for they barely sell ice-cream and the temperature is in the 30?s! But this is the good part. As we walk up one of the smaller roads which doubles as a scenic walking route, it becomes clear that where the potentially beautiful countryside begins, so do randomly scattered waste dumps, illegal soil excavations and (probably also illegal) peat ?harvesting?. The highest hill lends a fantastic panoramic view of this mix of beauty, strip-harvesting and junk, and just to show there really is a theme going on the second highest hill of the island, beautifully framed by the Atlantic in the distance, also features a scrap yard on its crest. We turn back just as the sky senses our mood and lets her tears gently fall on us.

-There?s this strange mix of impressions in Ireland so far. Coastline almost as spectacular as Scotland, but much more populated. And the continuous sun, warmth and slight haze don?t match the normal associations of atmosphere I have with this landscape. Great beaches, bays and anchorages, but in amongst all the houses no villages?! Is the Celtic Tiger?s main achievement that individuals have the funds to build breeze-block houses and extensions, whilst it hasn?t instilled them with the sense of pride required to restore the existing stone ones, or invest in town centres? Is this TV taking over from the pub as ?social? focus?

20th Another lovely day, and we head across Donegal Bay to Eris Head, to make some southing. Light winds, some motoring, and a near run-in at dusk (22:00) with a salmon fisherman laying nets & floats. Now is the season when they lay their floating nets across the routes of the migrating salmon, who follow the coast until they smell the stream of their birth and dive into fresh water. Though the nets are relatively small ?the boats are 2-man jobs? they still form quite a hazard for us as they?re marked with a small float on one end only... Even nearer dark (23:00) sees us anchored in a lovely river mouth under the watchful eye and shelter of the lighthouse of Gubacashel.

22nd Saturday, following closely upon the news that a cousin of mine died, the weather has changed dramatically; there is no safe place to leave the boat behind to attend a funeral. Wind and rain from the south, more what I?d expected of Ireland when we set off, but not very convenient now. We move over to the west side of the bay as the wind turns, which gives us an enjoyable hour of sailing before we hole up again. Walking up to the nearest cashpoint -8 miles as it turns out- we pass a surprisingly rare treasure in the scenic irish landscape: a pub. We duly enter, straight into a raucous and friendly crowd speaking words distinguishable as english but with an accent which makes it all gaelic to us anyway, with shinty (a very irish sport: the tools of hockey with the rules of rugby) on TV, and we settle for a pint of local brew while we contemplate how to make ourselves understood to ask for a ?taxi?. This turns out to be easier than we thought, and an ex-seaman (called Pat, predictably) turns up in an old car to drop us off at a cash point with some advice on the best local food which we follow up. He picks us up again later and is so enthused by the view of Siobhan anchored in the distance that we almost invite him over for a wee dram but it?s windy and wet, he?s driving, and we?ll need to ferry him back in this weather too. Meanwhile we learned a thing or two about how salmon fishermen lay their nets which may help us avoid them later.

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