Some posts are sadder than others, even in blogs that win multiple awards, and this is one of those posts. Don’t worry, it will be brief, but I have to work the sadness out of my system.
This, as eagle-eyed lighthouse-spotting readers will recognise, is Ardnamurchan Light, on Ardnamurchan Point, the westernmost part of the UK mainland. It’s one of those truly significant sailing landmarks like Portland Bill or Land’s End, as it marks the turning point between the relatively sheltered waters of the Sound of Mull, the Firth of Lorn and Sound of Jura and all the lochs and inlets off them, and the wilder, more rugged, exposed coast from here to Skye and beyond. It’s the one where you’re allowed to show off your piece of heather once you’ve been round it, and the first time I did I was beyond excited and did so. (Back among the English. for those with less attentiveness to the blog than it deserves). Since then I have been back and forth around it several times, but yesterday I went around it for the last time, and in so doing I turned my back on some of the very best places to spend time on a boat.
I’ve met many people, both here and at home, both English and Scottish, and even Swedish, who are so enamoured of the area that they keep their boats here, either for the summer or all year round, and drive up from Glasgow or Leeds or London or Stockholm several times a year to spend time exploring more of the hundreds of places that you could never hope to visit all of in one sailing lifetime, each of them more beautiful and considerably less crowded than anywhere on the South Coast. Some grew up sailing here, but many more came by in their boats from the Clyde or the Solent or the Stockholm Archipelago and loved it so much they couldn’t leave. I can see their point, and have found myself wondering about the logistics of doing the same, but when I’m done with this circumnavigating business I want to be able to pop down to my boat for a day or two without having to get on a plane, so I have sailed out of the Sound of Mull for the last time, turned right at Ardnamurchan and tried hard not to look back.
Each of the places I would never see again lived up to their expectations. I’d spent two calm nights in Kerrera Marina while the friendly folk serviced the engine for the last time (they didn’t appreciate the emotional significance, but it did turn out that Julian the engineer grew up in Broadstairs and learned his marine trade working out of Hoo, my home village, for Tony Lapthorn, a good friend of my parents and usual Thames Barge skipper, who owned a small shipping company there. We agreed it is a very small world).
I wandered around Oban visiting the shops for the last time. The man in the tree-felling outlet store remembered me from the last two years when I had gone in to buy the super alkylate outboard fuel that his chainsaw-wielding customers love. “See you next year!” he said cheerfully as I left, and I didn’t have the heart to disabuse him. The smiliest lady in the laundry-cum-Thai restaurant remembered my name, which I found hard to believe, but that’s Thai hospitality for you right here in Oban. I bought bacon in the best butchers outside Kentish Town and Kidderminster (I hadn’t been able to stop David eating it all) and fish from the best fishmonger anywhere. I couldn’t resist the seafood shack where they sell oysters for £1.50 and a whole lobster for £20. (Only once a year, I have antifouling to pay for). I even got quite emotional in Tesco, so it was time to hop on the ‘wee ferry’ back to Kerrera for the last time, and have a last pint outside the marina bar looking across the bay to the town. I couldn’t find the excuse to buy fish and chips in one of the two chip shops that claim to be the best in the UK as determined by Rick Stein. There are two others that don’t.
Next morning the Firth of Lorn was as glassy calm as it so often is as I motored out past Dunollie Castle and the house on the tiny island off Kerrera that in another life I will have the idea of building…
…past Lismore light for the last time…
…and down the Sound of Mull, where I had to stop taking pictures and feeling melancholy because the Sound wanted to say goobye by reminding me that it’s the place where you can get 270 degree windshifts, hit submerged rocks and get run down by two ferries and a fish farm boat all within five minutes. But now I knew where the windshifts would be, I knew the names of the rocks and I could tell which ferry was going to run me down and which one was going to turn left and stop at the pier at Craignure.
Then it was past Tobermory without a second glance – I am made of stern stuff – and on to Ardnamurchan. The breeze had come up and I squeaked round close-hauled while avoiding two last ferries, bore away and put up the assymetric spinnaker. I was heading North and home, albeit the long way round.
But first I had an engagement with Eigg, the only one of the Small Isles I hadn’t visited because I assumed it would be rather dull. In fact, the opposite is true, which banished the South of Ardnamurchan Melancholy instantly, but I shan’t write about that now because I’m still here, and if it all goes pear-shaped before I leave I will want to modify that cheery tone when I give you the summary. But for now the sun is out, it is hovering above 10 degrees and Ardnamurchan is behind me, and I am happier about it than I was.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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