Hill walking on Arran and revisiting Bute

At the end of the last blog we were moored in Brodick Bay on Saturday morning and were unable to get ashore because the wind was too strong to get the engine on the dinghy and motor ashore. The wind and driving rain kept us on the boat for the rest of the day. By the end of the afternoon another five yachts had joined us to shelter from the weather, the last one towed in by the Lifeboat! We caught up with a lot of little jobs which had been hanging around for a while. With the use of a 240 volt inverter we even watched a film, "The Theory of Everything"' on the laptop. Very good!

Brought in by the Lifeboat. We had our RNLI flag up!

Sunday was a little better, still windy and wet in the morning but improving in the afternoon so we got ashore to do some shopping, a large Co-op close to the slipway, and visited the tourist information office to plan our Monday.

Monday was a great day, Caledonian MacBrayne had a left luggage room at the ferry office which meant that we could swap sailing kit for walking kit and head for the hills! Fortified with an early lunch at the Fiddlers Music Bar and Bistro on the seafront (more of which later), we decided we would walk up Glen Cloy and maybe take a Forestry Commission track towards Lamlash before heading back to Brodick. Navigating by a Tourist Information map rather than a proper OS map meant that we got more than we bargained for! First we turned off the main road one turning too early and walked about half a mile before finding that we were at a dead end, then the Forestry Commission track climbed out of the Glen Cloy valley and over into the next one. Considerably more up than we had bargained for! Once committed we had to push on as we had a dinner booking at the Fiddlers Bistro with live music. We made it in time to get our kit from CalMac and return to the boat for a quick wash and change before heading ashore again for our dinner booking.

Rest stop on Glen Cloy walk

Forestry Commision trail.

 

Holy Island from the top of the Forestry Commission trail.

The Fiddlers was the highlight of the day. An excellent dinner and a great live music set. Acoustic guitar and fiddle from 8 until 10 with a great selection of some old folk tunes, Scottish ballads and more recent songs, finishing with a glass of 14 year old Arran malt and the whole room joining in the chorus of The bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond, great stuff! The entire restaurant decor had a music theme, even down to the loo's! Making our way back to the boat in the rain didn't feel so bad after such a good evening.

Music themed throughout!

Brodick had proved to be an excellent stopping place with the wind in the West and South West, flat water, only disturbed by the wash from the CalMac ferries, and a good dinghy landing, a concrete slipway with a small beach alongside protected by a stone breakwater where we could leave the dinghy. This morning the wind had veered around to the North West with a small swell entering the dinghy beach, not quite so comfortable. Nevertheless we had to head ashore for a visit to the Chocolate Shop, which Debbie only managed a fleeting visit to yesterday!

Back on board we prepared to leave and head back to Bute to shelter from a forecast NW 5-7 which was due overnight. Leaving Brodick Bay we had 15 knots with big shifty gusts but as we cleared the lee of Arran we were heading into a solid 30+ knots of wind with 3 reefs in the mainsail and a partially furled genoa. We said that we weren't going to do any more beating our brains out to windward so we opted to bear away and head for the East side of Bute, a longer trip but easier across the open area of Bute Sound and then more sheltered in the lee of Bute. We still had some hard sailing to windward with strong gusts but in flatter water. We motored up the last stretch of the East Kyle to anchor in Caladh Harbour, a tiny enclosed harbour not far from the Burnt Isles where we had anchored just over a week ago. The harbour is very sheltered and so small that if another boat joined us it would be full! The weather is predicted to become a bit more settled from tomorrow so hopefully we can get some good sailing in.

Peaceful in Caladh harbour.

 

 

 

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