As several readers keep reminding me, the blog’s multi-award-winning status is unlikely to last another year if nothing happens, by which they generally mean misfortune of some sort, or at least some amusing misunderstandings, navigational blunders or plans turning out even worse than feared. Unfortunately this post is going to do even less than the last to rack up the award-winning misfortune points as the last week has not just gone swimmingly, but even more so than anyone dared hope. You will be forgiven for skipping the rest as it may make you jealous, depending on your position on sailing to windward, anchoring, climbing mountains and eating very good food, because we have done a fair amount of all four, and all in quite un-Scottish sunshine.
For those prepared to continue, some context. You may recall that last year I had a plan to visit even more of the harbours and anchorages of Wester Ross, but that this had been scuppered by a leaking prop seal and an enforced stay in a car park in Lochinver Crisis? What crisis?. Poor Andrew had had a week of walking and sailing replaced by a couple of days in said car park followed by an early trip home, so I owed him a rematch, and having heard about the opportunities to climb mountains and eat good food, Roger also signed up for the week.
You may also recall that my experience of Wester Ross was not entirely benign: although it is probably the best sailing and scenery of the trip, this scenery has its drawbacks as those impressive mountains also produce some rather impressive gusts of wind which belt unannounced down the beautiful but rugged and empty lochs. (Wild and windy Wester Ross). Not a place for the faint-hearted at any time of year, in mid May I was fearing the worst: after my very cold week with David I was encouraging Roger and Andy to pack their thermals in the face of forecast light north-easterlies.
This, it turned out, was another even more spectacular example of a nonsense Scottish weather forecast. I’d made it from Eigg to Mallaig and having got the boat clean and tidy treated myself to an afternoon hike through the wilderness in the hills behind the village, only to find myself sunburned and parched as I had taken neither suncream nor water and it was boiling hot.
This was confusing, but not as much as the wind, which saw a forecast for it to blow five knots from the north-east and decided to blow 25 from the north, which makes Mallaig’s pontoons very uncomfortable. It blew all next day too, and having negotiated a late stay with the pontoon manager to allow Andy and Roger to jump on from the evening Glasgow train, she said to me twice “you’re not taking your friends out in this, are you?” with an accusing tone. I assured her that it would take more than 25 knots to keep these two from their beer, and so it proved. Andrew had studied the wind apps as well and we concluded (or rather, prayed) that round the corner the wind would drop. To our astonishment we were right, and after 20 minutes of fast sailing with a reef we spent the next 40 motoring across a glassy loch.
Why the rush? Because I had spotted the opportunity to tick another box and have supper in the Old Forge in Inverie, the pub that purports to be the most remote in the UK. In the evenings it is, as the last ferry had already left by the time we arrived, and we felt quite smug arriving within 90 minutes of two of the crew getting off the train.
The pub was excellent and considerably more packed than it had any right to be considering that it is most famous for being on a road which is not connected to any other roads. As a result we shared our table with some friendly walkers, one of whom had been a Royal Engineer and spent his youth fixing bombs to the underneath of Rochester Bridge for practice.
Another glassy calm next morning, and a gentle northerly forecast, but as soon as we poked our noses out of the loch it was back up to breezy: 20 knots this time and on the nose. We were headed through Kyle Rhea, the narrow bit between Skye and the mainland, and there was no point getting there before the tide turned after lunch so it was a very enjoyable morning rediscovering those winching muscles tacking up the Sound of Sleat, in so doing keeping pace with a yacht motoring, which is always satisfying. Around Kyle of Lochalsh, under the Skye Bridge (no obvious sign of practice bombs) and out into sudden calm again.
Our destination was Plockton, home of The Wicker Man and Hamish Macbeth, you remember (Fine Dining in the Wilderness) and totally sheltered in a north-westerly. To our dismay, no sooner had we had a wander ashore and a swift half than it started to blow ferociously from the north-east, right up the loch. Not such a quiet night, but now we were beginning to work this wind out. It was indeed blowing from the north or north-west, but as soon as it came across a loch it would, not unreasonably, bend around to blow down it. It was also compounded by the effect that I love calling a katabatic wind because it’s Greek and I know what it means, but everyone else calls a downdraught, because the higher the mountains behind, the more the land cools down in the evening to send bolts of cold air hurtling down the slopes onto the loch below.
Our smugness at working this out was tempered by the realisation that all week we would be motoring in a flat calm early in the morning, then facing an increasing wind on the nose all day as we headed north and then turned into a loch, and so it largely did, but we began to pat ourselves on the back by choosing anchorages based on what the wind was going to do next rather than what it was doing now.
Loch Torridon was a good case in point. This is a famously wild loch where last year I’d been knocked flat by a gust. Today it was all calm and sunny when we got there, but we tucked ourselves into the corner of a little-known bay under some trees and as soon as we set the anchor we could see the wind starting to blow down the loch outside, with white horses roaring past. Under our tree-lined hill we sat firmly at anchor in a flat calm.
Suddenly sheltered we realised just how hot it was: the sun had been out continuously for a week now and we were surrounded by pine woods: it felt and smelt more like Greece than Scotland, an effect confirmed when we went ashore and found the pine-scented woods full of colour, bird-song and humming bees.
We sat in the cockpit in shorts admiring the scenery until the sun went behind the hill, when it was as if the timer had run out on the patio heater and it plummeted back to 10 degrees or so and we retreated downstairs.
Being anchored firmly was important as next day we had a mountain to climb, so we left the boat snug in her bay and headed off into increasing heat. The crew had sensibly vetoed my suggestion of an eight-hour scramble up the mountains opposite in favour of a more sensible hike of five-hours-including-sitting-down-for-lunch up the one behind. This was a grand day out: the mountain (Beinn Damph for the interested) had spectaular views from Kyle of Lochalsh to Plockton and all the way around to the mountains behind Loch Ewe where we were headed next.
There were only two drawbacks: one was that it was irritatingly just a few metres short of a Munro, made even more irritating by the fact that we had climbed it literally from sea level, and the second was that it was ridiculously hot, illustrated by a photo of two people in shorts and sunglasses standing on top of Beinn Damph in mid-May:
By the time we got down we were hot, tired and incredibly thirsty which was just as well as we were booked in for supper at the terribly swanky Torridon Hotel (note to wives: in the affordable brasserie out the back) and they have a rather nice pub on the premises.
I’m conscious that by now I will have lost all goodwill from any remaining readers simply by desctribing a rather lovely week’s sailing, so I think we should draw a veil over the rest of the week as it involved more of the same: anchoring out of the wind in various lovely lochs as it got sunnier and sunnier and hotter and hotter. We did this in Gairloch at Badachro…
…at Inverewe Gardens in Loch Ewe…
Good of them to provide a bench for people with taste to admire anchored yachts
…at Aultbea in Loch Ewe which looked a bit dour but they do make the best haggis…
…and finally in Ullapool:
Lovely as Ullapool is, my previous visits have been characterised by rain, wind and cold. Yesterday it was 23 degrees. Andy and Roger climbed up one more near-Munro while I had a couple of meetings. We ate Aultbea Haggis in a taste-off against Simon Howie’s and declared that on the one hand we had had a brilliant week, but on the other any chance of the blog being voted anything other than a tedious, jealousy-inducing travelogue had gone out of the window.
Roger and Andrew went home this morning., The temperature is dropping already and tomorrow’s forecast is for 10 degrees and even feistier winds from the north, which is where I am headed. Perhaps something more eventful will come up, but right now I would pass up on the awards and the mishaps for another week of wall to wall sunshine and no dramas at all.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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