9. Selkie Dancer - 27th June - Plockton

 

We cannot believe it, we seem to have had four days of constant brilliant beautiful sunshine!  Today we were lazy like the porpoises we saw and we just drifted along gently enjoying the silence and the sun.

Leaving Lochinver we had an idyllic anchoring in the Summer Isles where, as we cautiously rounded a rocky corner, we were met by masses of selkies and their babies, their near human faces curiously following, inspecting us.  They put on an incredible display and made noises such that I'd never heard before.  They were jumping and diving around each other, playing like kittens and the noises - unbelievable.  Think of an uninhibited male in the mornings!

At Kylesku with the imminent arrival of  Alasdair and Kate Gordon-Rogers I found I had totally misjudged the availability of food.  I walked down past the local post office, a shed in a garden, and dripped into the local hotel, still dressed in all my wet weather gear asking if there was, perchance, a Tesco/Sainsbury/Asda nearby.  The answer - as you can imagine - was negative I think she was then stifling laughter when I asked desperately if a van called.

The next day we found ourselves in the middle of a military exercise, warships to the left of us, warships to the right of us, helicopters hovering, a rescue operation in progress, a re-supply ship grounded, and then suddenly we were surrounded by dancing dolphins who had defected from the nearby tourist boat and decided to grace us with their presence before veering off in a purposeful manner to who knows where.  

We ended up in Badachro, a place Andy and I took his fireball dinghy to over 30 years ago now.  If anyone had told me then that we would be back in our own lovely boat and be taking a call on a mobile phone from a son of ours in Afghanistan I wouldn't have believed them.  

Gairloch, which is just across the water was our next stop to let Kate and Alasdair catch the bus back to Inverness.  You hail the bus at the corner of a bend by the Old Inn - Scot Bus duly arrived ON TIME and they got on, the only passengers all the way to Inverness enjoying stunning scenery and sunshine.  Sorry K and A but the sun has been shining a lot since you left!  However still no big fins.

On the Sunday we climbed a hill and had views from North Uist in the south to Ben Hope in the north.  I must stop this adulation of the scenery here but honestly there is nothing like it and words cannot express how it makes you feel.

Plockton is every bit as beautiful as it is cracked up to be.  However Torridon and Applecross enroute are, by comparison, mundane.

The oyster catchers are calling their evening song and there is a chill in the air so I am going below to continue reading about the amazing 'Lighthouse Stevensons', ancestors of Robert Louis and responsible for most of the lighthouses around Scotland and much more besides.

 

Jinti and Andy

10. Selkie Dancer - 5th July - Ulva  - From Arisaig to Ulva with Muck in the middle.

 

Leaving  Coll in dead calm, we motored towards Lunga, the largest of the Treshnish Islands.  There were puffins all over the place and so tame.  You can get very close and they are such engaging little creatures.  We walked on expecting more of the same but were not prepared for the noise, smell and spectacle that hit us as we rounded a corner to find an avian amphitheatre, full to the gods, all dressed in their evening best.  It must have been the interval as they were busy, busy never short of a word or gesture; guillemots, puffins, razor bills, cormorants, gulls of all descriptions.  It sounded like a rowdy house of commons with the speaker absent.When in Knoydart, a beautiful true wilderness place, (it is treated as one of the Small Isles because of its remoteness and possibly the fact that it is accessible only by water) we went ashore for a meal and joined up with another boat that had come in.

 The usual introductions were made and then, in the chat that followed discovered that one of their number had been at Gordonstoun and he had been in the year below me - Oh dear I thought, I hope he doesn't remember much.  Well if he did he was too polite to say but he had remembered Inger and myself, not difficult when we were the only two girls in the school.

I had been told by my father that if we went to Muck we must find Lawrence McEwan, the laird, whom he had taught when at Altyre ( a part of Gordonstoun before the two schools joined)  We did, and the first person we met turned out to be Muck himself!  He reminisced fondly about Dad and the school.  We had a lovely walk to the highest point passing Bovine Biarritz, cows relaxing on the sands.

Ulva  is amazing and I want to come back here.  We are in a lovely anchorage and today walked to Ulva Ferry, enjoyed local prawns, salmon and wine.  Having found no mobile phone reception in quite a while we wanted to check in with the mothership (my good sister and PA) so were delighted to see a red phone box however on closer inspection we realised that it was only posing as such and was really a greenhouse full of tomato plants!  Along our walk we saw the sad evidence of the clearances.  Although its present population is 20, in its time Ulva sired both Lachlan McQuarrie 'Father of Modern Australia' and David Livingstone, the explorer.  Among the remaining inhabitants was a lady we took to be the current chatelaine, she must have been at least 80, who arrived and departed astride her quad bike with little dog, forepaws on the steering bar as co-driver.

As to our future plans, we are now taking a break and will return to the Odyssey on 19th July.  We now plan to go down the West Coast of Ireland to reach Fishguard for the 22nd August and Padstow for the 30th.  We have decided against wintering in Brest, instead will return to the Clyde to a language we are familiar with and trusted support.  So for 2007 we intend to explore the Hebrides (see below) before sailing south for Portugal in the August.

As always we would love to share our adventures with anyone brave enough to join us.

 

Jinti and Andy

 

There are spaces still to be filled before the map is completed -

though these days it's only

in the explored territories

that men write, sadly,

Here live monsters.

 

Norman McCaig, Old Maps and New