So with the long haul up the motorway from Devon over, we arrive in Ayr. The drive though, over two days wasn’t too bad and perversely I do quite enjoy UK motorway driving. This is the sixth time we’ve driven one way or another between Scotland and the south of England with the breakdown kayak in the back of a hire van. Given the frequency an element of routine has established itself especially since a few journeys ago we discovered the Fell Bar Penrith - Fell Brewery
Penrith is roughly half way on our journey and with the Fell Bar offering more than a dozen excellent craft beers it’s an obvious stopover. This time we planned to do it properly. Rather than just a pint and a feed then driving out of town for a wild camp for the night, we’d scoped a small car park a two minute walk from the Fell Bar. Here we could stand the four pieces of kayak up hidden behind the van, spread out our thermarests inside and bed down for the night. Perfect. Yes, thanks, I’ll have another pint.
I always feel an air of unreality seeing in real life what we’d seen poring over maps and google earth. Our planned launch spot in three dimensions was everything it promised in two dimensions, plenty of room and nice little ramp down to the beach.
Just the bow section to attach now
It always seems to take longer than expected to bolt the boat together, set up and adjust rudder cables, rudder up haul and down haul, deck lines etc but finally just after high tide we were on the water.
Feeling frazzled and tired we plodded into a head wind for a few kms and found a campsite in the narrow strip of dunes squeezed between the beach and a golf course.
A series of high pressure systems to the west of the UK have been dominating the weather for weeks. With no sign of any change the sunny hot clear weather and easterly quarter winds are set to continue.
The easterlies the next day had us sailing at speed up the coast past Troon to Ardrossan for lunch and at the marina there finally managed to dispose of four well out of date flares from previous trips. The UK Coastguard used to offer this service but it has now been outsourced to private providers. These are thin on the ground. It’s not hard to be hundreds of miles from a disposal spot, there’s only three on the whole west coast of Scotland and they are all marinas only a few miles apart on the Firth of Clyde. Not only that but the disposal fee for each flare was ~AU$6.
The lovely sailing wind continued, pushing us north across the busy shipping channel at the mouth of the Clyde to land at just about high tide in lovely Glencallum Bay on the southern tip of the Isle of Bute.
Of all the places we’ve kayaked, Scotland consistently has the very best campsites. More often than not there is nice level close cropped grass at the top of the beach but also expansive views. There’s no scrub or forest to hem in the view but also of course no scrub or forest means no shelter what so ever from the wind. Given you’ve a tent that can take a battering it’s the place to be, views to die for and exposed to the slightest of breezes the scourge of midges is largely avoided.
Being so paddling unfit, tired and a bit stiff there was little motivation first thing the next morning to drag the kayak to the water across the rocks uncovered by the ebbing. A lazy morning, an early lunch and a flooding tide, then across to Arran.
It was hot and still, too hot. Hats were dunked and cold sea water poured over heads, PFDs were draped over the deck behind us, then thank goodness a slight headwind picked up. Its cooling effect was very welcome to over heated bodies cooking inside dry suits.
About 5:30, close to high tide a nice shingly beach backed by close cropped grass tempted us ashore for our customary wee dram, celebrating another successful day at sea without dying. Besides how could we resist camping at a spot named Fairy Dell?
Our poor old kayak has needed a proper refit for some time; it’s been patched and fixed up over a number of trips but we’ve never had the time, the workshop space or the necessary tools in the UK to really do it properly. Sure enough, landing on Arran for a cuppa must have exacerbated a weakness in the hull of my cockpit, and by the time we reached Fairy Dell there was a couple of inches of water sloshing around inside. I was too tired and it was a bit late in the day to do much that evening so the next morning the repair kit was unpacked and by 9am another large ugly but functional patch was added to others adorning the keel line.
The forced day off while the fibreglass set was slightly frustrating as the fresh north-easterly wind that blew all day would have blown us south towards the Mull of Kintyre at speed, but also sort of welcome as our paddling unfit bodies were creaking and groaning in complaint from the last couple of days of paddling.
A cruisey walk around the coast to Lochranza included the discovery of a fantastic orchid and a geological unconformity that when discovered in 1787 led to a complete rethink of the then accepted scale of geological time.
Lochranza sports a small but imposing castle, which we dubbed Castle No. 4. It being the fourth castle we’ve passed in two days of paddling!
It was so unbearably hot as we wandered to the village and back to camp that this from Wikipedia seems hard to believe -
Lochranza is reputed to have the fewest hours of sunshine of any village in the United Kingdom, and is the most shaded village in the entire world according to world climate experts, since it lies in a north-facing glen on an island with a particularly high level of rainfall.
The day off proved effective, not only were we not sinking any more but having gained a modicum of paddling fitness we were both paddling strongly 40kms down the coast as we looked for a campsite at the entrance to Campbelltown Loch.
4 comments:
Och ay. Way to go Tim and Lyn. Hot in Scotland- well I never!
Nice work team. Looks fantastic.
Wonderful - keep writing and photographing and we will keep lapping it up!! JJS xxx
You must be getting near Cuil Bay - exciting!
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