Blue Moon's trip around the UK

This has been an interesting few days of contrasts.

The previous post left me bathed in the silent sunset of Loch Drumbuie, but needless to say as soon as I had pressed ‘Publish’ the rain began again and it was a damp start next morning for the long sail across to the Outer Hebrides. I was looking forward to this, mainly because I had long dreamed of getting this far North and really had no idea what to expect; I actually had no idea what the Outer Hebrides might look like beyond the white sandy beaches (which are on the other side). The second reason was that the forecast had promised that it would be fast sailing all day, which would make up for having to do the whole leg in one go as a result of losing two days stormbound in Tobermory. Yet again the forecast lied – it was flat calm and drizzle as I motored out of the Loch (through an entertainingly narrow entrance), and I was glad I’d left Tobermory when I saw the stream of yachts pouring out of the bay, and all before 0700.

The reason for the mass early start – even if the others weren’t like me going 55 miles to South Uist – was to catch the tide around Ardnamurchan Point, which is another big box ticked for me. It’s the most westerly point of mainland UK, and also a famous yachting headland – beyond Ardnamurchan you really are in the North, even by Scottish standards. There are very few cruising facilities and it is all a great deal wilder. Not this morning though, and I get unnerved when famously dangerous bits of water present like sunny pussycats, I assume there is bad shit being stored up for later. The same applied to The Sea of The Hebrides, apparently evil on a bad day but flat as a pancake this morning, until eventually the sun came out and some breeze picked up, when it began to resemble The Odyssey even more as it went an Aegean blue. Spinnaker up, lunch out, shorts and sunglasses, it could be Greece.

But no, in my limited experience of sailing in Greece, in pretty short order you end up in a sun-drenched whitewashed village full of bustling locals and jolly tourists trying to decide which of the dozen excellent tavernas you are going to eat in. In South Uist you end up in something that resembles the moon but with green scrubby bits instead of moondust in between the rocks. And more to the point, there is absolutely no-one there. Not a single house or road or telegraph pole or any sign of human habitation. After my Tobermory experience I was keen not to miss out on the community-run pontoons in Loch Boisdale, so I had rung ahead to check there was space, and been assured there was. Odd, then, that when I called on the VHF for instructions I was met by silence. No answer on the mobile or the landline either. By now I was motoring into the Loch and still nothing but rocks and scrub. I even wondered if I was in the right loch, although I had three digital devices telling me I was. Round the corner suddenly the village that was advertised as South Uist’s main settlement came into view: I could see half a dozen houses, a slightly larger building which I assumed was the famous Loch Boisdale Hotel, and a portacabin by way of a ferry terminal.

On the left behind a stone wall were the pontoons, space for around 20 boats but only half a dozen there. I tied up, switched off the engine and was met with an eerie silence. With the exception of two friendly visitors from Dumfries who took my lines the place was deserted. I went up to the office to check in and pay and found another portacabin, locked. The surrounding boatyard was deserted too. The contrast with charming, picturesque, bustling Tobermory could not have been more complete.

After about an hour someone arrived and unlocked the cabin so I went up and paid. He was friendly enough in a dour sort of way but offered little by way of conversation. Intrigued by the place I walked round to the village. In addition to the six houses was a newly built row of flats and shops, all of which were completely empty. I didn’t see a single person until I got to the hotel, where rather disconcertingly I saw the man from the marina sitting outside with his pint and a rather aggressive dog. The bar contained two locals, one of whom was either marina man in some horror film re-apparition, or his twin brother. Rather improbably they had the test match on, less improbably neither was paying it any attention. A little spooked, I took my pint outside and drank it quite quickly, went back to the boat and left early the next morning.

The next day took remoteness to new levels. The East Coast of the Outer Hebrides is one long chain of largely similar lochs, mainly full of rocky islandy bits that you can either run into or anchor behind, and they all have impossible-to-remember Gaelic names (Loch Boisdale sounds as if it should be in The Rockies but is actually the English version of Loch Baghasdaill). Consequently it’s quite hard to choose which one to visit or anchor in, and having chosen it’s even harder to remember which one you chose, or to find it again on the chart. I had chosen Loch Finsbay largely because I could remember its name, and it was on the corner of South Harris so I could find it. It certainly ticked the Hebridean Moonscape boxes: just the one house this time, at the other end, and the rock to scrub ratio was up to about 60:40 in favour of the rocks. They’re all around in the lochs too: to get into these places you have to have charts put together by an amateur enthusiast and his friends who’ve found all the rocks in Scotland that the Admiralty charts missed 150 years ago, which appears to be most of them. Finsbay made Boisdale look like Cowes: there was one other yacht half a mile away by the house, but at my end just me and the noisiest seal I have ever met, whose idea of fishing involved honking at the top of his voice, trying to catch fish with his flippers, then doing a sort of a back flip into the water. He must have been very hungry.

Oh, and an otter. Another box ticked.

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One more loch to go before I made it to Stornoway, and I had picked Loch Grimshader because it was supposed to be as beautiful as any but also had a rock in the shape of a lion’s head at the entrance. The combination made it sound more like a Harry Potter location but at least I could remember its name. Sad then that the next day dawned as grey and grizzly as the name Grimshader suggests. The sunshine/spinnaker combo of the previous two days was replaced by a dull fetch up the long, rocky, largely featureless coast in the pouring rain. It was really very wet indeed, even by my recalibrated Scottish standards, and cold too, and the word Grimshader was beginning to make me feel colder. I was motoring past Loch Maribheig when I noticed in the pilot book that it too was highly recommended for natural beauty. I couldn’t stand the thought of Grim anything, did a 90 degree turn and headed in to Maribheig instead, it sounded so much prettier.

Pretty it isn’t. Rugged, remote, wild, rainswept, lonely, bleak: all of those things. Less of a loch, more of a collection of craters full of water surrounded by rocks and scrub and seaweed. The amateur chart-makers must have spent a year here – it resembled a maze made of rocks rather than hedges. I’d spotted a pool that would be sheltered from the current wind and to get into it involved wriggling through no less than three gaps about a boat-length wide in between scary but steep-sided rocks. Totally sheltered, very entertaining but also absolutely devoid of any life form whatsoever higher in the evolutionary ladder than seaweed. It rained constantly, was really quite cold, and at this point I began to wonder whether these cruising guidebooks aren’t put together by secret Scottish sadists who lure English sailors into the wilderness while they sit beside a roaring fire in their castle cackling over a bottle of malt.

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The following morning couldn’t come soon enough, and with it the promise of an easy hour or two motoring to Stornoway, although its name too was now beginning to make me feel wet and cold and miserable inside. It is as far North as I’ll get this year, and I had expected it to be fairly grey, grim and – well – stormy, obviously. Its storminess had been conflicting in my experience with the unnaturally bright and breezy tones of the Stornoway Coastguard who, unlike any other of the Coastguards I have listened to on the trip, sound as if they’re narrating a bedtime story even when they’re guiding a lifeboat to a shipwreck. Well, it turns out that all their fellow townspeople have the same sunny attitude. I call up the Harbourmaster as required, even though he is clearly very busy dealing with windfarm boats and tugs and trawlers and what-not and he warmly welcomes me and gives me detailed instructions on how to get to the marina and where to tie up. No sooner have I done so than there’s a lad on the pontoon with a welcome pack asking if I need any help with anything at all. The sun comes out. There is a shop opposite selling shellfish landed that morning; I reserve the scotch egg for tomorrow and buy half a dozen of the best and plumpest scallops I’ve ever eaten for £5.

I’m excited just to have someone to speak to, but that’s before I meet the women in the harbour office. “Welcome to our wee bit of paradise” one of them actually says to me at one point, whilst pointing out every shop in town on her giant aerial photograph (this doesn’t take long, there aren’t many, but half of them sell black pudding which is good news). And then: “just one night? But aren’t you coming to the festival?” I look at her blankly, but then the penny slowly drops. I have heard of the Stornoway Celtic Music Festival but ignored it in the way that I might ignore the Redhill Tiddlywinks Championships, having no interest in Celtic Music or Tiddlywinks. But it is a big thing, and I am here, and apparently I have the last space in the marina, and she assures me it will be the best thing ever and the whole town will be buzzing and so on and so on. I say I’ll think about it, and go out for a wander. She’s right: the whole town is buzzing and full of life and the sun is out and there is a band playing on the opening night that I have heard of, and the next deserted loch on my list sounds a lot like the others. And those aren’t fairytale tents, the festival is in the castle grounds across the harbour from where I’m moored…

At this point I have a moment of enlightenment. Much as I like nature, and enjoy looking at bits of it that you only see from a boat, what I really wanted to sail around the UK for is to see what all these different places are like, and what goes on there. I’m much more interested in people than seals and otters. So it is that I find myself with a ticket to my first and probably last Celtic Music Festival (just the one night you understand) and two whole days in Stornoway. And I am really looking forward to it.

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