Welcome to my weird world!

Nature's poetry

"The poetry of the earth is never dead"
John Keats

On Thursday evening Richard and I left at about 19:30, and headed off towards the west coast. We drove out on the Stirling 'Drip Road' across the flat expanses of former peat bog, which are now covered in crops and cows. We then headed onto smaller, more windy roads as far as Balloch at the South-West corner of Loch Lomond. After that we turned up the road that runs along the Eastern edge of the loch. That is a beautiful road leading up into the start of the Highlands, with the mountains of the Trossachs visible on the right the whole way from Stirling to Tarbet.

At Tarbet we turned away from the loch and headed out towards the coast, traversing up and down the sides of several lochs, past Inverary and Loch Gilphead. At places along the route, the old road can be seen weaving away to the side of the newer expanses of tarmac; single track and with beautiful, sculptural old bridges that are too weak to take the volume of today's traffic.

From Loch Gilphead it is not very far to Crinan, where we were linking up with my family to bring the boat back through the canal. The last stretch of the journey is along single-track roads with passing places, weaving along the side of the canal itself before breaking away around the back of one of the promontories of rock and approaching Crinan from the opposite side. By the time that we arrived it was almost dark, and was well past the point at which headlamps become a necessity.

We parked the car in the almost-empty carpark at Crinan, where there were so many spaces that Richard couldn't decide where to park. Getting out of the car, I was struck by the familiar feeling of 'coming home' that always greets any arrival on the West Coast of Scotland. In that area in particular, the air almost buzzes with history, and much of the landscape has remained unchanged for thousands of years.

My parents had sailed over to Crinan too late to make an entry to the canal, and the fishing boats wished to unload in the sea-lock so the boat was tied up on the pier. That much we had managed to ascertain via text message, after several failed attempts at a phone conversation. Mobile phone signal in Crinan is virtually non-existant, and Dad had wasted his longest period of connection by telling me that he didn't have a very good signal. He was promptly cut off again, leaving me sitting on the other end thinking that he could at least have told me where they were moored!

As we walked down to the pier, the boat was lit up throughout, and we could see several people onboard. My sister was in the wheelhouse with two guys that I didn't know, one of which I assumed must be her elusive boyfriend (every time that I had hoped to see him, something had prevented a meeting, but I knew that he should have been there this weekend). There were more people in the saloon, and when we got on board we discovered that there were even more people down forward, where my Mum was in the process of giving a guided tour.

Dad told us that we were to be staying in the port cabin, and we went below to deposit our bags. Below decks, we met Mum in tour-guide mode, and found that the visitors were the family of one of my brother's tennis-friends. Richard had been round to Mum and Dad's house in a gap between clients earlier in the day, and had collected mail for my siblings. One of Calum's items we knew would be his Standard Grade results.

The assorted family and guests suggested that Calum should open his results immediately. Kirsty and her boyfriend, Neal, were particularly insistant, and I later learnt that this was because Calum had promised to go for a swim, fully clothed, if he didn't get straight A's. Sure enough, he had achieved his straight A's, although this was no great surprise considering the amount of work that he had put into them earlier this year. I spoke to one of the Assistant Rectors at the school a couple of months ago and she asked how Calum was getting on. I could only reply that he was working a lot harder than I ever did. Mum said that I went for the strategy of "simply letting [my] natural aptitude shine through". Well, it was something like that!

As a short aside, and whilst on the subject of school, there is a story in the papers today about one of our 'rival' schools: Glenalmond. Apparently, some of their pupils dressed up in 'fox-hunting' gear, while others dressed as 'neds', or 'non-educated' persons. They then proceeded to record an enactment of the neds being hunted using hounds. The video was then posted onto u-tube.

I make no comment one way or the other on the rights or wrongs of this activity. The thing that struck me was the slant taken on this by the paper (in this case the Mirror). They cite this as clear evidence that class divides still exist in Scotland, but I would seriously dispute this conclusion.

When I was at Dollar, it was not uncommon for people to go 'neeber-hunting': chasing the locals with or without low-calibre weapons. The whole thing was a light-hearted tradition on both sides, and I know of no instance where anyone was anymore harmed than they would have been in a game of rugby. I also very much doubt whether those same 'neeber-hunters' would have walked past one of their 'victims', had they passed them fallen at the side of the road. In fact, I believe that a greater percentage of my school-colleagues would have stopped than would among the general public. As Carrie rightly pointed out, as Private School Pubils travelling to and from school by bus, we received far more abuse from passing locals than we ever gave. If anything, we are all agreed that there is much more of a class divide created by lower classes against the upper than the opposite.

Anyway, that random aside out of the way, I will carry on with my weekend.

The weather reports for Friday were a bit patchy, and we weren't sure whether we would have rain. Come Friday morning, however, we were greeted by a bright, clear morning; sky covered in pale grey clouds with patches of blue sky showing in between. There was very little wind, and the surface of the bay was barely ruffled.

Neal had to be in Ardrishaig by about 1pm, in order to catch the bus back to Glasgow. He had made an error in his dates (again: told you that something comes up every time I am supposed to meet him), and realised that he had rugby on the Saturday. We therefore wanted to be in the canal by about 9am so that we could get as far as Cairnbaan in time for Kirsty (my sister) to take him into Ardrishaig.

Kirsty had driven up to join Mum, Dad and Calum the previous weekend, and Mum had brought her car round to Crinan when the others sailed the boat across on Thursday. While Mum prepared breakfast (scrambled egg, sausage and bacon: a rare treat to give us plenty of energy for working the locks), Dad and I took the two cars (Kirsty's was in the same car park) along the canal. As we passed the set of locks leading down to the Cairnbaan bridge, Dad pulled over and came back to say that he was actually going to leave the car in the carpark at the first of that run of locks just in case we didn't get as far as Cairbaan in time.

This we duly did, and headed back along to Crinan, leaving my car in the carpark there before returning to the boat. As we crossed the upper of the two hydraulic locks there, Dad commented on the fact that one of the lower sluices was up in spite of the fact that the lock was not yet in action. We soon heard that there was a problem with the hydraulics on one of the locks (presumably this one) and that the lock-keepers were waiting for the repair engineer to come out and have a look at the gates.

We ate breakfast and discussed whether or not to proceed with our intention to go through the canal. The weather was fine and we could therefore sail around the Mull (of Kintyre), rather than taking the shorter route through the top of the penninsula. This would make the shifting of the cars more complicated (one would probably have to be left at Tarbert rather than just relaying along the canal) and would mean that Neal would have to be run to Ardrishaig before we left, as the 11-hour sail could obviously not return him on time.

In due course the gates were fixed, and we should have been the first ones into the canal (having been there since the night before), but the lock-keepers had forgotten us and therefore let a couple of newly arrived sailing yachts in first. We decided that we would stick with our plan to go through the canal and were eventually admitted to the sea-lock at about 10:30.

The first two locks require little effort on the part of the crews, due to their hydraulic operation. This does, however, allow a much-needed easing into the rhythm of the canal, giving us all a chance to get used to the handling of the ropes and fenders without also needing to think about the movement of sluices and lock-gates. Crinan's status as something of a tourist destination does tend to result in something of an audience, though, so it is just as well that no mistakes were made.

Sailing along the first reach, I decided to sit on the front deck with my notepad and try to capture something of what I saw around me. This is something that I have not done for a long time, but is encouraged by the Writer's Bureau as part of the discipline of being a writer, so I thought I might as well try. It was an interesting exercise, because I recorded things that normally wouldn't be remembered even ten minutes after they had passed, and certainly not once outside the canal at the other end.

The first corner would be tight in all but the smallest of boats, and ours is both long and broad. Getting her around this corner therefore requires excellent handling (which thankfully my Dad is easily capable of), and still the trees against the cliff-face slap along the side of the boat, catching on each of the hand-rail supports.

Swallows dip low over the water, catching flies invisible to our eyes, and skimming the surface with their wing-tips. Occasionally the movement of a fish can be seen in the water ahead of the boat, and an assortment of birdsong can be heard throughout the journey.

I have always been fascinated by the water's movement as we sail past. It is slowly pulled back as we approach and then pass; the level falling by as much as several inches. Once we have passed a section, the water rushes along behind us, falling back into the spaces from which it has been drawn. Where the sides of the canal are not hewn directly from the rock, they are generally now lined with concrete-filled sand-bags, but it is still this continuous water movement that wears away the banks. This is why the speed of vessels is supposed to be limited to 3 knots, although both our current, and previous, boats had a minimum speed of slightly more than this.

On that first stretch of the canal the view to the left is pretty incredible: straight across Loch Crinan to the Moine Mhor (the 'great moss') beyond. This is an ancient peat bog that 1500 years ago was still covered by the sea. In its heart sits the hill-fort of Dalriada that was the first Scottish capital when Kenneth McAlpine united the Scots and Picts as one kingdom, in 843AD. The surrounding valley, Kilmartin Glen, is one of the most historic in Scotland; filled with burial cairns, standing stones and pre-historic rock carvings.

For some reason, lock-keepers and other canal-side home-owners seem to be adept gardeners. The banks of the canal are often laden with flowers as various gardens slip by, and people will come out to see us, shouting a greeting. Shortly after leaving Crinan, there is a traditional gypsy-style caravan surrounded by signs advertising paintings for sale. From this emerged a rather loud American, clad only in shorts, his hairy chest tanned. He grinned broadly and shouted "Wow! What a big boat! Probably get about 50 people on that!"

Families with young children sauntered along the tow-path, the children skipping on ahead, and cars paused on the road to look at us as we sailed past. As I sat on the front deck with the sun out and the deck throbbing to the engine beneath my feet, I enjoyed a period of stillness, broken only by the rhythmic "psht, psht, psht" of the engine exhausts throwing water out of the sides of the boat.

In the wilder parts of the canal, the banks are lined by an assortment of plant species: pines; oak; ash; beech; rowan laden with bright red berries (the birds in that area certainly won't go short in the winter); ferns; clover; hazel; montbresia; heather; dandelions; and brambles, also laden with fat, juicy, glistening berries. These pass by so close in places that if I didn't mind getting my hand scratched by the thorns, I could have reached out and picked them.

For much of the journey, the road runs right beside the canal, and in one place someone has put up a sign reading "hit the brakes, not the drakes". Sure enough, the pontoon there was playing host to even more ducks than it was boats!

Once the sea-loch is no longer alongside, the near view is instead made up of a mass of reeds, grasses and short, scrubby bushes. At this point a sand/mud-banked river weaves through the plain and a herd of highland cows stood on its banks, two tiny calves nestling under their mothers' bellies for milk. The Moine Mhor is still beyond, with forest and then blue mountains beyond that.

At the end of the reach we came upon the first set of manually operated lock-gates, black-painted with the numbers picked out in sharply contrasting white. The handles on the gates are made of huge, thick, trunks of oak, and Richard commented that there aren't many places that you can see a single piece of wood as large as that, in use.

On the approach to the lock we passed a couple of mums pushing different-coloured prams, a young child running along beside them. The boats ahead of us moved very slowly through the locks, and at one point we were dreadfully held up by another hilarious American. This one had a thick, handle-bar moustache, and wore a proper 'captain's cap', with a crest on the front. He insisted on having his boat pulled into the lock by rope, rather than using his engine, causing havoc in the process.

I know that this is a slightly random place to stop, but I feel that I must. If not, this is actually going to turn into an epistle, and I think that I had better go to bed, particularly as it is now after 12:30am and I have work in the morning. Today was a pretty disappointing day at work, so hopefully tomorrow I will have more news on that front.

Night all!