If the pressure was on not to disappoint Neil, how much more significant was this week? Not only was it Sarah’s second week on the boat in one year (she really is a saint) but we were joined by Marnie in another case of spouse missing out – this time pressure of work rather than of vertebrae. Since neither Sarah nor Marnie are sailors, the emphasis had to shift away from anything that might resemble a long beat (or any kind of upwind work for that matter) and more towards sightseeing, relaxing and gastronomy. This would have been a tall order on almost any other leg of the trip, but apparently the Sound of Sleat (which is the bit of water between Skye and the Knoydart Peninsula on the mainland) is known as a culinary hotspot, in spite of being absolutely miles from anywhere. And – astonishingly – the power of prayer paid off yet again: it only rained the whole day for one of the five, and, having insisted on buying Sarah a set of proper oilies, I was secretly pleased to be justified in the purchase despite her hatred of such garments. In fact, the week passed off so completely without disaster or incident that this could be one of the more travelogue-y posts.
I’d come home for George’s birthday and being unable to face two entire days on a train in one week, let alone subject Sarah to the same torture, we’d treated ourselves to a sleeper to Glasgow. They have recently spent millions on a new fleet of trains and I’d been so looking forward to the upgrade, having endured many rather lumpy journeys home from Scotland in the past. They are indeed very swanky but sadly the one thing they don’t seem to have upgraded is the suspension, so we weren’t in great shape to fully enjoy the five hour slog up the beautiful but oh-so-slow line to Mallaig, in spite of all its Harry Potter connections.
I say Mallaig but luckily we remembered to get off two stops before then in Arisaig as that’s where the boat was. Hurrah for Arisaig Marine who have fixed the outboard (although no-one knows what was wrong) and for Arisaig Spar which somehow managed to stock enough interesting and surprisingly good quality food (it’s a Spar, for heaven’s sake) to provide breakfast and lunch for three demanding townies for a whole week – because we really were heading into the land of many restaurants but no shops.
I have had a thing about the Knoydart Peninsula ever since many years ago we had a holiday up the Sound from there and one day watched a farmer coming home with his weekly shop, a scene which wouldn’t be worth watching in most places but because he lived in Knoydart he had driven 30 miles from Morrisons, then climbed into a dinghy and set off across the gloomy-looking Loch Hourn to his house a mile away on the other side, which had no road connection whatsoever. Most of Knoydart is completely empty, and whilst there is a sort of track-cum-road that joins up various hamlets, in order to get your car onto it you have to take a ferry as there is no way over the mountains to the rest of the country unless you want to walk for two days and camp in a bothy. It is home to the previously mentioned most remote pub in the UK, but I had also read about the even more remote restaurant-with-rooms at Doune, overlooking Skye, which you can only visit by walking from Inverie (12 miles each way), by staying there for a few days (when they will collect you from Mallaig in a small boat), or by sailing there (but only when the wind is in the South or East as the bay is only sheltered from those directions). Hallelujah, the wind was forecast to be southerly so I had booked, and off we went.
The wind being in the south meant that I could play with both spinnakers while the girls ignored me, but I felt like I had achieved something when we picked up the restaurant mooring. Complete silence, but rather disappointingly there were several houses dotted around the bay, not just the one restaurant in isolation as I’d imagined. Unfortunately again, in a fun game of guessing which was the restaurant, we scored nil points and visited all the neighbours before coming across the building which was identical to the rooms next door, but held a communal dining table and a tiny kitchen. You’re supposed to chat to your fellow guests and mobile phones are banned – largely unnecessary as there is no signal anyway. What there was though was a bay you could walk around to take pictures of your boat and of the passing minke whales, a well stocked wine and beer fridge, and supper so fresh that it was half an hour late because the boat with the fish had been held up. Our fellow guests were quite fun too, and seemed pleased to have three new people to talk to after a few days with strangers. All in all a pretty unusual experience, and a big wilderness box ticked.
Day two saw us head up Kyle Rhea which is the really very narrow bit between Skye and the mainland, where the tide roars along at five knots on a mild day, and a gang of seals hang around waiting for it to fling fish up from the depths into their jaws. We were headed for Plockton, which used to be the big TV tourist trap until Balamory took over, as it was where Hamish Macbeth was filmed. We’d never seen this so didn’t know whether to be impressed or not, and only after we’d left did Marnie discover that they also filmed The Wicker Man there, which seemed a lot more notable, if perhaps less of a mainstream tourist draw. It did rain quite a lot, and the guidebook raised hopes of hot showers, which meant three people traipsing around the village in full oilies for an hour with rucksacks full of towels and shampoo. At least we can say we’ve seen all of Plockton, and it really is very postcard-worthy, but only after we’d eaten another excellent meal and dinghied back to the boat did we find out that the showers offered were in the hotel we’d just eaten in.
Unwashed but undaunted, we headed back south as the wind obligingly turned round for us (this never happens to me – but I will be praying regularly from now on as it seems to work). Much better to sail under the Skye Bridge than motor, so I took pictures.
And what could be cooler than to turn up at Scotland’s most picturesque castle in your own boat, anchor right next door and head ashore to look around?
The answer is to find that you are on the castle’s webcam, which meant I could wander around the restored home of Clan Macrae while checking the anchor hadn’t dragged, and also taking pictures of the boat out of every window.
The castle itself was excellent, in spite of the holiday hordes, managing to combine a bit of clan history with lots of stuff we didn’t know about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite rebellion, including that he got to do famous things in Arisaig and Glenfinnan along the West Highland Line before they’d even built it, let alone filmed Harry Potter there. And how smug we felt when rather than queuing with all the other visitors in the tearoom we could sit in the cockpit eating lunch watching them, before drifting gently up Loch Duich in the afternoon sunshine without needing to fire up our campervan. The only fly in the drifting ointment was discovering that if you get too close to fish farms they smell really quite fishy, with some chemicals thrown in.
This was drifting with a purpose though, which was to get to the Kintail Lodge Hotel for dinner, the next in our gastrotour, and rather surprisingly perhaps the best because we had no great expectations, and whilst everything else about the hotel had been done up expensively, the bar retained a uniquely, shall we say, rural Scottish character, which made the excellent food feel even more noteworthy. Only one slightly out of the ordinary incident worth reporting, which was a man who climbed into a digger at 9.30pm on a Sunday evening, drove it about 200 yards across a field and then left it, while another man ran around the field and off up the road. We couldn’t work this out, but perhaps Hamish Macbeth would have cracked it in one half hour episode. The sunset over the Loch was as postcard-worthy as any TV set village though.
We paid for the sunset next day, as Scotland returned to form with that full day of rain as we headed south again. Even the seals hid from the downpour, although we did have a uniquely local VHF chat with the ‘wee ferry’ which still runs to Skye in spite of the bridge. “Blue Moon?” he called, “mind if I nip out ahead of you? I’ve a man with a sick dog and he’s heading to the vet.”
Our destination was Loch Hourn, the very place Sarah and I had watched the Knoydart farmer, because after three days of three course menus we agreed that a bit of real wilderness was in order. Discovering that Loch Hourn and its neighbour Loch Nevis were Gaelic for Loch Hell and Loch Heaven respectively, I did worry that we’d chosen the wrong loch, and it did feel that way as we turned into it and found ourselves motoring into 25 knots and driving rain. I say ‘we’ but I found myself strangely alone on deck at this point. But it turned out that this is absolutely the way to approach Loch Hourn: stunning, rugged, empty and with huge mountains (a couple of Munroes) towering above us which made the loch feel like a fjord, with different views around every corner alternately hidden and revealed by sweeping clouds of rain. We anchored in perfect shelter, (at the Second Narrows, for keen navigators) watching waterfalls plunge down hillsides while mountains appeared and disappeared behind clouds, before taunting this wilderness with the smell of civilisation in the form of boat cooking. There was no sign of human habitation whatsoever: no houses, boats, paths or fences, let alone a mobile signal. We agreed that you could get three course meals in many places, but proper wildernesses were harder to come by, let alone visit.
Most improbably, our final day was bathed in sunshine, which almost made up for the disappointment of finding we hadn’t been alone. We wanted to take a look through the Narrows to see the even steeper mountains beyond, and as we gingerly motored through the tiny gap came across two ex-crofts, now clearly some lucky person’s summer getaway as there were kayaks on the grass and towels in the trees, even a boat on a mooring. Glad that we’d anchored out of sight, we refused to let this spoil the sunny day: we managed to sail upwind to Mallaig, without any tacking or winch-winding, there were dolphins to play with and showers next door to Scotland’s best bakery to look forward to. The Steam Inn dished up langoustines and Sauvignon Blanc and the train home was on time next morning. I breathed a sigh of relief: lack of incident may make a dull blog but it helps a marriage.
Footnote: I would like to reassure readers that Blue Moon has a hot shower, which we used having missed The Plockton Hotel’s offering.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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