Ouch.
You’ll remember my mission to explore a few new places. and I am pleased to report some success on that front, some more successful than others. I’m also on a mission to write shorter posts, I’ve had a few comments… so in the interets of brevity here come two snapshots of boxes ticked and places finally visited.
Loch Moidart was top of my list of regrets from last year, having missed it twice. It is raved about by most pilot books, being described as ‘one of the most beautiful anchorages on the West Coast of Scotland’ (by definition, therefore, in the UK) and totally cut off from civilisation. One of these claims may be true, the other is most definitiely not.
I found these facts out by going there. Although I am broadly heading North I saw the opportunity to follow the sail-with-the-wind strategy, faced with northerly winds for two days, followed by southerlies, to spend the entire week sailing downwind in opposite directions. Not unusual around here. So following Peter’s departure and a day of sitting in Mallaig doing boat jobs and wishing the bakery was open, it was downwind south to Loch Moidart. I had taken full precautions of alerting anyone concerned for my welfare that I was heading into a communications deadzone, and had even fired up my emergency satellite Christmas present, and the prospect of using a new toy was just adding to the already-perfect conditions: sun out, spinnaker up, I was there soon after lunch and turned in to the famously terrifying rock-strewn entrance ready to lose all contact with the rest of the world.
The pilot has three pages devoted to the entrance to Loch Moidart with recommended tracks, transits, clearing bearings and snappy instructions such as “aim for a point just west of Sgeir na Claidheamh before passing 1/2 cable south of it so as to avoid an offlying pinnacle rock”. How almost disappointing then to pick up the tablet with the Antares Charts to find super-detailed coverage of every rock, pinnacle or otherwise, and thread through them with gay abandon. Nowhere near as disappointing to find that no matter how many rocks and islands I weaved through, the 4G coverage barely dropped, and by the time I wound my way round to the inner loch to anchor behind Castle Tioran, it even pepped up to 5G for a bit. I dropped the anchor in a little pool behind the castle, totally sheltered from the now-beefy northerlies, switched off the engine and waited for the silence to descend. Not so: that sound was children who should be in school, even in Scotland. Yes indeed, on the supposedly deserted beach next to me was a family having a perfectly ordinary, non-wilderness kind of holiday. Behind them was clearly a car park, and traipsing to and from the castle were a wide range of people with and without dogs and anoraks. So much for remote, there was quite clearly a perfectly good road. The only thing missing was an ice cream van.
Before you go accusing me of unreasonable curmudgeonliness, I’ll admit it was beautiful. It’s surrounded by pine trees, dotted with rocky islets and the ruined castle on its island belongs on a tin of shortbread.
I’d like to think that Blue Moon enhanced the view for those who came by car, but I suspect they weren’t sailors and were as annoyed by my presence as I was by theirs. Just to rub that point in, I went ashore and left the dinghy in the middle of the beach while I hiked around the hills behind.
Fabulous views all around, including to the back of Salen where we’d climbed up last summer, and down onto the rocky entrance. FInally there was peace and quiet (the road crowd appeared not to like walking out of sight of their cars) but still enough mobile signal to sit down and watch the Euros, had I been so minded. By the time I got back, though, the wind had got up still more, the sun was being replaced by grey clouds and in due course rain, and four other yachts had turned up, all of whom had to anchor in less shelter round the corner. I arrived in time to hear one of them actually moaning that some English bastard had nicked the best spot by the castle, but even that didn’t make up for the gloom that descended over the loch as the rain closed in. I derived some satisfaction from watching two blokes putting up a very small tent on the beach in the rain, but it didn’t last when they appeared to give up and drive off, probably to a five star hotel with a roaring fire and a tasting menu. I used the 4G to phone home from the wilderness and really wished I was in the nice warm kitchen with Sarah and George.
Next box to tick was Muck. You’ll remember of course that it and Eigg were on the list, being the two Small Isles I hadn’t visited. Northerly winds make both islands’ anchorages quite secure, and Muck got the nod because there was supposed to be a bit more room, and an award-winning tea shop and chocolatier. That said, I wasn’t really looking forward to it: sailing to a small island called Muck on a damp, grey, murky morning felt like a rather miserable undertaking and I rather wished I could kick the box-ticking habit.
How wrong I was. With a stiff (and cold, it was still northerly) breeze we were there in a couple of hours and the more the mainland receded the thinner the cloud got, and by the time we got to Muck it was blazing sunshine. Port Mor, the tiny harbour which sounded so gloomy when raining, sparkled in the sunshine and my spirits did a 180 degree turn. Another good sign: even though I’d anchored too close to a big mooring buoy, when the little ferry from Arisaig turned up to hang onto it while they ate their lunch, and I offered to move, instead of shouting at me they wouldn’t hear of it and shortened up their mooring rope. “We’ll be away in an hour”, they called cheerily, “you go on ashore now.” So I went.
What a lovely surprise. Slightly smaller than Canna, Muck looks even more cared-for and has double the population – all of 38 people. It has a primary school in the teacher’s house, several holiday cottages, a shop in a shed, a brand new community hall where you can do kilted yoga, and several farms. Unlike the other Small Isles, it has proper farmland and there were farmers with at least two tractors bailing hay and doing farmery things. Most of all, it was absolutely teeming with wildlife: the fields that weren’t hay were lush meadows full of cows, and on the higher ground hundreds of sheep along with thousands of daft birds: partridges, grouse, ducks and some other small things too daft to fly. I hiked off around the island to a lovely sandy beach and up to the not-very-high high point and everywhere I went flocks of birds ran around rather like dolphins playing with the boat, but less entertaining.
And the tea shop! I had had to call in before setting off to hike around the island, just in case it was shut later (it was). What Cafe Canna is to dinner, the Muck Tea Shop is to lunch. it’s run by a chap called Bruce who appears to have been a pastry chef all over the world, used to run a chocolate business on Loch Ness (called Choc Ness, almost as good as my blog title), then moved to Muck “for a quiet life”, he told me. “Trouble is, people keep coming and we keep getting busier.” I could have suggested that if he didn’t sell them the best crab rolls they had ever tasted for the price of a Pret sandwich they might not come so much, but decided to bank my good fortune and ask for some of his chocolates to take home. “Sorry, Thursday is chocolate day”, he said, “and they’re all gone by the weekend.” I was now so confused by his business vs lifestyle priorities that I gave up and went outside to eat the crab roll. “We’re staying here all week” said the couple on the next table, “that way we get to eat everything he makes.”
I went back to the boat wondering how long it would be before I could face eating dinner, and whether or not to encourage all my readers to visit Muck to eat Bruce’s food, or whether that would annoy him and spoil his remote idyll. Either way, if you’re in the area, take a day trip to Muck, it’ll only cost a bit more than Pret and you’ll remember it a lot longer.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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