Good news for Saturn.

This time last year, three and a half months after my last knee operation, my first paddle took me to the Gareloch. At the Rosneath breakers yard we came across MV Saturn which had been laid up since 2011. It looked like she was doomed.

Saturn was the last of three Streaker class CalMac ferries that ran on the Clyde. She was launched at Ailsa Shipyard in Troon in 1977. Her sister ships Juno and Jupiter were scrapped in 2011 at Rosneath and Denmark.

The Orcadian newspaper has carried some good news for Saturn. She has been sold to Pentland Ferries and will be refurbished and used to carry freight traffic across the Pentland Firth and round the Orkney Islands.

A calm evening in the Gare Loch.

 We were now on the final leg of my first sea kayaking trip in seven months. We paddled down the outer Gare Loch...

 ...passing the outer boom of Rhu marina where a flock of...

 ...oyster catchers had gathered to roost for the approaching night.

 The sea was like a mirror as we approached Cairndhu Point...

 ...and Kidston Park where we had left the cars. In the late nineteenth century this was called Neddy's Point. Neddy was the Duke of Argyll's fisherman and lived in a cottage on the point. There was a plan to build a large villa on the point but in 1874 a local businessman and politician William Kidston, a landowner Sir James Colquhoun and Provost Breingan of Helensburgh donated and raised money to buy the land for a public park.

Although we only covered 18km in calm conditions, I was delighted how both my shoulder and knee stood up to sea kayaking after my two brushes with the orthopaedic surgeons. Time for some more sea kayaking!

Ebb tide in the Rhu Narrows.

Our peaceful reverie on the shores of the Gare Loch came to an end as the VHF crackled into life on channel 73 as HMS Raider asked QHM Faslane for permission to pass through the Rhu Narrows. HMS Raider is an Archer class armed fast patrol boat operated by the Royal Navy in a Force Protection role with her sister ship HMS Tracker.

As the tide had now turned it was time to make our way back to Limekiln Point where...

...we looked right then left then right again before ferrying...

...across the Narrows and the shipping channel.. As the tide was ebbing at 2 knots we crossed at quite a high angle before...

...breaking out behind the special purpose light that...

...marks the end of the tidal spit on the east side of the narrows. You can see the blip in mid channel where I stopped to take the 4th photo.

Then the ebb tide slowly but steadily carried us away from the mountains and the inner Gare Loch.

The elephant in the loch.

Once through the Rhu Narrows we paddled into the inner recesses of  the Gare Loch. After the constriction of the Narrows, the scenery opens out here and moody clouds hung low over the snow flecked mountains of Argyll. Although we were paddling on salt water, we were  completely surrounded by land. Only the 250m wide Rhu narrows connected us to the Firth of Clyde and we were 120 kilometers from the open sea at the mouth of the Firth of Clyde.

This remoteness from the sea and enclosed location was chosen to site HMS Neptune, the land based site for Britain's nuclear deterrent. We could see the base at Faslane Bay near the head of the loch.

As instructed by QHM Faslane, we kept to the west shore of the Gare Loch and although the MOD Police launches and RIBs gave us the once over with binoculars they left us in peace. We stopped for second luncheon on a little beach of...

 ...shingle and mussel shells. As we munched our sandwiches we looked over the Gareloch to the Faslane base. It was sited here to minimise the chances of a stealth attack by a Russian submarine.

Some 6,500 service and civilian personnel work at the base. By the time you add in their families you can appreciate that this base is a very significant part of the economy of the west of Scotland. Of course it doesn't make ploughshares and so it has attracted much protest from CND since it was established in the 1960's. For many years there was a big Peace Camp at the gates of the base but enthusiasm for that seems to have died out a bit over recent years.

In the late 1970's I did GP training in Helensburgh with an excellent GP called Dr Robin. He was GP to Faslane and arranged for me to get clearance to visit the base and see onboard a Repulse class Polaris carrying nuclear submarine and a smaller nuclear submarine with conventional armaments. I met a number of officers and crew and I doubt I would manage to live and work in such confined spaces for months at a time. The Repulse class submarine was cramped but the conventional submarine had a tiny living space, almost all the internal space was filled by tubes and machinery.

This is one of the current Vanguard class of Trident missile carrying nuclear submarines making her way up the Clyde to Faslane. It could be HMS Vanguard, Vigilant, Victorious or Vengeance but I don't know which. Subs like these do not have name or number plates.

One of the SNP policies, if the population in the forthcoming referendum votes for independence, is to do away with the nuclear deterrent. By nature I am a pacifist, I don't watch boxing or violent TV shows. I had my fill of street violence attending to its victims when working in Glasgow A&E departments. But I am also the first generation of my family that has not had to go and fight in a war. I have been researching my family history round about the time of First World war. Reading letters sent back from the front. Hearing about death, injury, disability and psychological trauma in the family and the loss of generations as maiden aunts' boyfriends were killed, leaves no doubt about the horrors of war. A great uncle who was left disabled and deaf after being blown up by a shell was awarded a medal for...

...meritorious service in Egypt during 1915. He went on to fight in Gallipoli where he was left for dead after the shell struck. He was so affected by what he had experienced in the war that he never discussed it afterwards and never told anyone about the medal. We only discovered about the medal 99 years later.

I believe that the presence of Faslane has helped to avert further war during the "Cold War" years and so (paradoxically as a pacifist) I support its presence. I wonder how the many thousands of people who work there will be voting in the independence referendum?

Swanning about in the Queen's Harbour.

As we paddled north towards the restricted zone at the Rhu narrows another MOS Police launch proceeded through followed by...

 ...this swan. Neither asked permission from Queen's Harbour Master, Faslane.  However, even the swan would have shown up on...

...the Queen's Harbour Master's radar!

 So we stopped before the narrows on got the VHF out...

...the regulations include: "Craft entering the Gareloch or Loch Long at any time, or if in doubt,
should contact the QHM Duty Controller on VHF Channel 73 or 01436 674321 (Extension 3555)." 

Before they were taken over, Clydeport used to have a nice PDF for recreational users with the various regulations, signals and prohibited areas in the Clyde. Unfortunately it has yet to make an appearance on the new Peelports.com website. You can download copies of both sides of the original leaflet from my public Dropbox folder here and here.

If you do not ask permission of QHM, you can expect the attention of one of the many armed MOD Police launches. The Royal Navy are very sensitive about sea kayakers in the Clyde. In the 1960's Hamish Gow used a kayak in a CND protest against Polaris nuclear submarines. He tried and climb the anchor chain of an American Navy supply ship in the Holy Loch. Later he and his wife became the first sea kayakers to paddle out to St Kilda.

The man eating heron of Rosneath pontoon...

The sign says it all really...

Sad ships and wrecks at Rosneath Pier.

We crossed Rosneath Bay in a flat calm. Another MOD Police launch  made her way slowly and steadily up to the Rhu narrows. It is not always so calm here. The Sugar  Boat is not the only wreck in these waters. In 1947, the motor launch Ocean sheltered here from atrocious wind over tide conditions off Rosneath Point. After a while she tried to round the point again but foundered and 20 people drowned.

At Rosneath Pier we came across MV Saturn. She was one of three "streaker" ferries in the Calmac Clyde fleet.

We often saw her on our sea kayaking trips. This was in January 2010 off Dunoon. Sadly she has sailed off into the sunset as far as Calmac is concerned, just like the Inverkip power station chimney which was demolished in July 2013, MV Saturn is no longer part of the Dunoon scene.

So Saturn is slowly deteriorating at Rosneath pier, how her star has faded. Now she shares a berth with the sad remains of ...

 ,,,the tank barge Furness Fisher. She was nearly 100m long and was originally built in the Netherlands in 1955 as a Rhine barge.

She was sold to a buyer in Lerwick in about 1976 but was based in Liverpool since 1982. She is currently being broken up and was only about half her original length when we saw her.

Also tied up at the Rosneath Pier was this sad old fishing boat. Ruaridh Morrison at West Coast Fishing Boats (Past and Present) thinks she is the "LK purser Zephyr built by Forbes in Sandhaven mid 70's, I'm 100 per cent sure of her builders but stand to be corrected on the name."

 We paddled under Rosneath Pier and...

...came across the ferry MV Isle of Cumbrae.

Again we have crossed wakes with the MV Isle of Cumbrae many times such as in Oban in March 2010....

...and crossing between Portavadie and Tarbert on a summer evening in June 2013. I hope she is just resting rather than waiting to be broken up.

The sea was flatter than Argyll's Bowling Green.

The calls of the Rosneath curlews were drowned out by the approaching thrum of heavy diesel engines. It was SD Reliable, an azimuth tractor drive tug, which is capable of handling the largest warships.

The tug passed quickly leaving the wooded shores of the headland at Robert Ness in silence, apart from a blackbird in early song.

The peace did not last long as a MOD Police RIB sped up the Gare Loch towards the Rhu narrows.

Ignoring a large caravan park on our left, we paddled across a glassy Rosneath Bay. Beyond the Rhu narrows, the Gare Loch was backed by the snow streaked peaks of Argyll. These are locally known as Argyll's Bowling Green but as you can see there must be a degree of irony in thus describing such a mountainous  switchback. Perhaps the eponymous Duke was so mighty that he could play bowls in the mountains? Perhaps some sarcasm was intended by implying the Duke's lands were so poor and mountainous that this lumpy ridge was his the best ground? Alternatively, the literalists argue that the name comes from a phonetic translation of  the Gaelic "Baile na Greine" (village of the sunny pasture) but that just refers to a tiny strip of land at the foot of the mountains.

I will finish by saying, without a hint of irony, that the sea was flatter than Argyll's Bowling Green.