Blue Moon's trip around the UK

Sorry, couldn’t resist it.

Andrew headed off on the early morning ferry to Ardrossan to catch the train south. I had a day spare before heading over to the marina there before going home for a few days. There was a tiny bit of breeze so I let it waft the boat around the coast to Lamlash Bay and Holy Island. What complete contrast to Brodick, where the ferries rumble all day and the shops all look a little tired. Lamlash looked very quaint but I didn’t hang around: the breeze was in the East so I anchored in the lee of Holy Island. Absolute silence, for the first time in days (the top of Goatfell was rather full of excited school trips).

Apparently the island has been bought by some Buddhists who run retreats there. I want to go, even if I have to pretend to be a Buddhist. It looks beautiful, being mainly a small mountain sticking out of a loch with some trees and horses and one house. Nothing else at all. You’re allowed to go ashore and walk around and I really would have done, and spent the night anchored there, if it wasn’t for the fact the wretched outboard had played up meaning I had had to row Andrew ashore and I really wanted it fixed before I headed off to wild Scottish anchorages. So with a lot of reluctance I pulled up the anchor after lunch and tried to tiptoe out quietly, which is quite hard in no wind with a diesel engine and a windlass. I managed to sail so slowly that a basking seal drifted past me.

---

The contrast between the Holy Isle and Ardrossan could not be more marked. The pilot book explains that it was an industrial/port/ferry town but now just has the ferry, and adds that ‘its process of reinvention is under way’. I am glad to hear it but struggled for the evidence. Nice beach, very friendly marina within 20 metres of both a huge Asda and a railway station, but it is in the old iron ore dock I think and surrounded by blocks of flats that would look about right on the set of Trainspotting. Noisy teenagers who (now I have made the connection) all look like a young and even scrawnier Ewan McGregor are pushing each other off the jetty and screaming over the sound of their boom boxes. The only sound that drowns them out is lorries on the ferry ramp and the cheery tones of the man who purports to be the Captain of the good ship CalMac welcoming his passengers aboard. I say purports because he does seem to be reading from a script, and only after about six hours (which is about eight loadings and unloadings) do I realise it’s a recording. As soon as I do it becomes unbearable, and I have another whole day of this to come as I take the outboard to bits in the sweltering heat.

The next day is even hotter, there are even more kids (who must have bunked off school) and the only relief is when I get to cycle to the petrol station and back to buy new petrol that isn’t made of 10% water like the super new E10 I had recently bought and which had bunged up the carburettor. This journey was made more memorable by the discovery that the adult population of Ardrosson look like Ewan McGregor would have looked if he hadn’t become rich and famous: they have all taken their shirts off in the heat to reveal more white skin and tattoos than a visiting yachstman needs.

Luckily by the end of the day the outboard is fixed, but then I am treated to an odd experience which is the residents of about half the flats sitting on their balconies all evening watching me. So it was with a lightness of step that the following morning I shouldered my bag and headed off to the station to get back home for a few days.

---

A few days at home and I am back with my next guest so no more posts for a while. But the next leg involves canals and whirlpools so there may be something to write about in a week or so.

---

---