The Devil's Thrashing Floor, the White Steeds of the Solway and the wrecks and carlins of Senwick Bay.

As Tony and I paddled down the wooded shores of Kirkcudbright Bay, we were sheltered from a brisk SW wind which was blowing offshore. The wind combined with the flood spring tide made for hungry work and it was time for first luncheon.  The tidal shallows here are called "The Devil's Thrashing Floor" and...

...they were the cause of many ship wrecks, such as that of the two masted sailing schooner Monrieth in 1900. Her wooden ribs can still be seen at low tide. When the wind bows against the tide in these waters conditions are right for the wonderfully named "White Steeds of the Solway" to make their appearance. These may be the Devil's steeds...

...but they can be fun!

However, all was calm this day and we soon came to the delightful sheltered  cove at Senwick Bay. It is not always thus, in 1887 the Preston brig "Just" was lost here as were the Whitehaven brig "Mary Isabella", the Harrington brig "Dido" and the Workington brig "Joshua" all in the same storm in 1822. The other name for Senwick Bay is Carlin's Cove. Carlin is the Old Scots word for a witch. You can just imagine the Thrashing Floor and Senwick Bay on that stormy night. The wind was shrieking through the doomed ships' rigging and the trees on the shore like a wailing banshee...

On this July day the cove was a real sun trap and we enjoyed a long break  as a succession of motor and sailing boats from Kirkcudbright made their way past us on their way out to sea.

All too soon it was time to take to the water again and Little Ross island slowly got nearer. Its lighthouse had been constructed in 1843 in an attempt to reduce the appalling loss of ships on the Devil's Thrashing Floor.

Mistaken location of St Fionnlugh's chapel, Cara?

Having arrived on Cara a day early we thought we might have a long lie but...

...our new neighbours had other ideas and low flying Canada geese can express their ideas very vocally. They started about 5am...

 The early summer flora was more laid back...

 ...and we set off to explore Cara on a path through the bluebells which...

 ...led to Cara House.

 First we inspected the old building to the NE of the house and found that the mortar that bound its ancient stones together...

 ...had been made from sand from the shore. Sea shells were clearly visible. This building looks very much like the mediaevel chapel of Cara. The chapel was dedicated to St Fionnlugh who was a contemporary of St Columba. The OS map, Hamish Haswell-Smith and Canmore all give the location of the chapel as a pile of stones to the SW of Cara house. However, the photograph in Canmore is quite clearly of this building by the house. Also Old Statistical Account (1793) description (quoted by Haswell-Smith) describes lancet-shaped windows with splayed inshots in the east ends of the side walls, which this building has....

Looking from the entrance in the south wall to the splayed inshot window at the east end of the north wall.

The chapel was also latterly used as a kitchen for Cara house and the pile of stones on the OS map is rather far to be convenient for the house. Also, although the pin on the Canmore map points to the OS "chapel", the 10 digit OS grid given by Canmore points to this building.

The corner of the sheep pen marked on the O map as the chapel.

Haswell-Smith himself says that the the OS "chapel" could easily be mistaken for a sheep pen. I think the stone structure to the SW of Cara House was a sheep pen. It measures some 30 yards by 4.5 yards and according to the OSA the chapel measured some 9yards by 6yards which are the measurements of the building on the NE side of the house. So based on the description of the Old Statistical Account of Scotland, the building close to the NE of the house was the chapel.

Cara House was built in 1733 by the Macdonalds of Largie for their tacksman. It was last used by a resident on Cara in the 1940's when the tennant farmer left.

It is rather grim looking and I am not surprised that the spirit of The Brownie has taken up residence there.

Despite The Brownie's presence Cara House was renovated as a holiday home in the 1990's.

We left Cara House to the hopefully sleeping Brownie and pressed on through the bluebells.

The Brownie of Cara; the correct way to greet him.

 At long last we paddled under...

 ...the steep rocks of the Mull of Cara. In 1756 part of the cliff collapsed and a tidal wave swept right round the island destroying the houses on the north side of the island. Maybe it was an earthquake or maybe it was a meteorite strike no one knows. In the middle of the grassy shelf on the Mull's shoulder we could just make out an isolated block of rock known as "The Brownie's Chair".

 We passed Cara house which has a resident ghost called "The Brownie", he of the eponymous chair. The Brownie is a mischievous spirit and it pays all visitors to stay on his right side.

At long last we pulled into a white, shell sand beach on Cara. We had covered 78 km since leaving Campbeltown just 24 hours previously and now we had arrived in the Hebrides! This might not seem like much to proper sea kayakers but to us, who merely dabble our paddles, it was quite a lot more than we were used to!

 If one lands on Cara (and especially so, if one intends to stay the night) it is a wise sea kayaker who knows the correct protocol for greeting The Brownie. It is vital to do this before doing anything else. One needs to raise one's cap then doff it in a suitably deferential manner while at the same time saying in a clear voice "Good Evening Mr. Brownie". The only acceptable variation to this protocol is to change the greeting to suit the time of day of one's arrival.

Failure to satisfy The Brownie on this matter will result in him interpreting your arrival as a serious diplomatic faux pas. All manner of mischief may then be unleashed upon your party by this unhappy spirit. Campbells need to be particularly careful as The Brownie is the spirit of a MacDonald who was murdered by a Campbell. Best advice would be to never disclose your surname on Cara. If your first name is Campbell then you must use a nickname or visit Gigha instead. The annals of Scottish sea kayaking are full of tales of The Brownie's mischief; kayaks floating away in the night, paddles being hidden in the bramble bushes and much, much worse.

Fortunately our greetings seemed to be acceptable and our camp was established without mishap or incident. But the uninhabited Cara House was just out of sight, over the bluebells and...

...as night fell...a light came on in The Brownie's room...

Visiting the spirits of my ancestors.

Rounding Brown Head, we came to a green valley that ran into the hills. The south facing slopes make this one of the most fertile spots on Arran. The village is called Corriecravie.

Until  the 1860's, generations of my mother's family were crofters here. They farmed two fields, which still have the same boundaries today, though all evidence of the croft house has gone. My great, great, grandfather moved to Glasgow to start a new life in 1864.

Corriecravie has a long history of settlement. The mound in the middle of this photo is Torr a' Chaisteal, the remains of an Iron Age dun.

It was time for second luncheon in the land of my ancestors.

There is a story in my family about this beach. Many years ago, about 1800, there was an evening of music in the croft. At  the end of the evening one of my ancestors and a neighbour lit lanterns and escorted several of the older neighbours back to their houses near the shore. It was a stormy night but above the sound of the waves they all heard a slow intermittent tapping noise coming from the shore. Although they were very religious people, they were also very superstitious. Fearing an evil spirit in the darkness, they rushed back to the croft. The next morning when they finally ventured to the shore, they found a drowned sailor lying on the cobbled beach. He still had a rock clutched in his hand. He must have been too exhausted to cry for help and had tried to attract attention by tapping the rock...

On our visit all was calm and quiet and we felt at home.

Away with the fairies in Vaul Bay, Tiree.

High above Gunna Sound, cirrus clouds streaming from the north confirmed that we were lying between an intense low pressure system lying over Denmark and a high pressure system lying in mid Atlantic.

It was now time to go. We hoped to cover another 20km and clear the north coast of Tiree before the wind increased in the evening.

 I had hoped to show some more photos of an idyllic Sound of Gunna, like this one 2 years ago. However, the ebb tide was running strongly  through the sound from NW to SE, so we had to eddy hop up the skerries. Once we emerged onto the north coast of Tiree, beyond Urvaig Point we had hoped to find the ebb tide running SW down Tiree before the NE wind. However, there was so much water flowing into Gunna Sound that the ebb tide was being sucked NE up the Tiree coast and into the sound.

So we had a foul tide against both us and the wind. This resulted in some glorious bouncy conditions, which Phil described as somewhat reminiscent of the Mull of Galloway. Unfortunately I couldn't take any photos in the sound but this one was taken after the water flattened off, about half a kilometer beyond the point. You can just see Phil on the right edge, I didn't compose this shot!

Once onto the north coast the wind was from the NE and we fairly shot along to Vaul Bay. Its west coast was sheltered by the extensive reefs and since...

...we hadn't slept at all the night before, we stopped for a welcome second luncheon.  Belief in the fairies was deep rooted in Tiree. There was even a word for it in Tiree Gaelic: "siobhairean" To this day the island is famous for stories about fairies. They often lived in green knolls round the coast and sometimes they would kidnap people, especially children, hence the expression "away with the fairies".

Whoever our new neighbours were, we found ourselves in a sun trap, sheltered from the wind and had a great view to Eigg and Coll.

Soon David was fast asleep and away with the fairies.

Away with the fairies and an unconformity on Arran!

Ahead of us, the Cock of Arran suddenly emerged into the sunshine from the thick mist of early morning.

All was grey looking back along the north shore of Arran.

High above us, the mountains were still wreathed in mist.

 We now paddling west past beaches dominated by giant boulders.

This part of Arran is known as Fairy Dell.

It was seen as the entrance to another World, a World inhabited by fairies.

Fairy Dell cottage is in private ownership and is not a bothy.

An Arran legend tells of a group of local fairies who decided to set sail for Ireland. Unfortunately they were not the best of navigators and their boat was washed up on a mysterious island, just off the shore of Arran. They never got to Ireland and have remained on the island ever since. Every so often the island reappears out of the mist. If you should find an uncharted island off the coast of Arran, it is probably best not to land as the fairies will steal your boat and leave you marooned for a very long time. This old boat would be no good to the fairies, it has seen better days. You might not believe in the fairies but consider this. What do you do when you have finished eating a boiled egg from the shell? You probably stick the teaspoon through the bottom of the empty shell... so that the fairies can't use it as a boat!

In 1787 the rocks on this coast gave James Hutton, the geologist, the idea that the Earth isa much older than it had been previously thought. The steeply dipping Cambrian Dalriadan schists in the foreground are overlaid by more recent Carboniferous Old Red Sandstone seen in the cliffs behind the shore. This was the first unconformity that Hutton discovered and based his theories upon.

Life and death on the Clyde.

From the former Yarrow's shipyard at Scotstoun we paddled to Renfrew on the south bank. This is one of the oldest ferry points on the Clyde. Higher up the river we had already encountered the old chain driven "Renfrew", which served the route as a vehicle ferry from  1952 until 1984. Vehicle traffic had steadily fallen since the construction of the Clyde tunnel upstream in 1963/64 and the Erskine bridge downstream in 1971. You can see old photos of how Renfrew originally  looked here. She was replaced by two passenger ferries, the Renfrew Swan and the Yoker Rose and they remained in service until they were withdrawn in 2010.

Fortunately for the many people in the north that like to nip over the Clyde to shop in Braehead, a new private operator, Clyde Link has taken over the route. This is their aluminium landing craft, Island Trader, which operates from the old car ferry slipways. The crew were very friendly and we had no problem landing at the edge of the wide slipway. This was our first stop as most of the Clyde had either been vertical quays or steep rubble banks. The crew had not been informed of our passage by estuary control but were pleased to hear we had contacted estuary control and they noted our VHFs.

The reason that the old Renfrew dragged itself across the river on chains and the Island Trader has two very large outboards was now very obvious, the ebb tide was running past at 5km/hr! This is why we had been prepared to spend time higher up the river!

We again crossed to the north side of the river and paddled alongside the river quayside of the huge Rothesay dock which opened in 1907.  It is now a yard for recreational boats! Downstream of the dock entrance stands the Clydebank Titan crane. This is all that is left of the John Brown shipyard, which at one time was the World's biggest yard. In 1906 the yard launched the Lusitania, which was then the World's largest ship. In WW1 it launched HMS Repulse and HMS Hood.  In 1940 it launched HMS Duke of York. The yard also built the Cunard  "Queens": the Queen Mary 1934, the Queen Elizabeth 1938 and the Queen Elizabeth 2 1967.

The Titan crane was completed in 1907 by Sir William Arrol and was strengthened to lift 200 tons in 1940 during the building of the Duke of York. The crane was restored and opened as a visitor centre in 2007. All round the crane looks like a bombsite, the yards were demolished and cleared in 2002. The recession did to the yards what Hitler failed to do. On the nights of 13th and 14th March 1940, Hitler ordered a bombing raid on Clydeside and the Clydebank shipyards and munitions factories were targeted in what is known as the Clydebank Blitz. 260 bombers arrived the first night and while rescue operations were still continuing, 200 returned the second night. Most of the factories and shipyards escaped but residential areas were ravaged by incendiary bombs and 528 civilians were killed and 617 seriously injured. Almost every house was damaged and 48,000 people were made homeless. The hardy people of Clydebank recovered and went on to build more fine ships but what a cost their industry had brought them.

During WW2, my Grandfather had a senior job in the Dunlop Rubber company, which was engaged in the war effort, but he also volunteered as a part time special  constable. On the night of 13th March, he was on duty in Clydebank. He was horrified by what he saw, the next day he told my grandmother it was even worse than his experiences as a soldier in the trenches of France in WW1. He never spoke of it at home again.

The Golden Jubilee Hospital lies downstream from the former John Brown's yard. It was built as a private hospital but was taken over by the NHS in 2002. It serves to reduce waiting times for all the Health Boards of Scotland. The hospital stands on the site of the huge Beardmore shipyard that had a mile frontage on the Clyde. William Beardmore bought this site in 1900 and the yard and its cranes were built over the next few years by Sir William Arrol. It went on to specialise in battleships and oil tankers. In 1917 the yard built the World's first aircract carrier with a full length flight deck, HMS Argus.

The south bank of the Clyde we were now passing is undeveloped, in fact it is a nature reserve called Newshot Island, which is an area of intertidal mudflats and salt marsh frequented by wildfowl.

Two great pylons carrying power lines across the Clyde announced our approach to Erskine.

We took a break on a little beach just upstream of the old Erskine Ferry jetty and its replacement bridge, which is now the lowest crossing on the Clyde. Historically the Clyde at Erskine was shallow enough to ford before the navigation channel was dredged.

We had landed in the silted up old harbour of Erskine and had fully expected foul, stinking mud but found ourselves standing on firm, clean, reddish sand.

This is the slipway of the old Erskine ferry, which dragged itself across the currents of the Clyde by two chains strung from one side of the river to the other. The ferry last ran in 1971 when the bridge opened. These swans now had sole possession of the slipway, while a mixed flock of waders, redshanks, oystercatchers and curlews foraged on the sands exposed by the rapidly receding tide. There is an excellent car park here with easy access to the beach above. Erskine would make an ideal start or finish to a trip on the Clyde, either upstream or downstream depending on the tide.

The Erskine bridge was built in 1971 by William Brown. It is a concrete box girder bridge but shortly after it was built two towers and steel cable stays were added. This followed the collapse of a similar concrete box girder bridge in Australia. We saw some very large icicles dangling from the bridge and as the main span is 38m high we were careful not to paddle under them. Very sadly the bridge is a common spot for people to commit suicide. Many years ago I parked my motor bike near the bridge and walked up the passenger path to the middle with my camera. I was waiting to get a photo of the PS Waverley when a very nice policeman cycled up and asked if I was alright.

On a brighter note, we found a little tide race to play on in the shallows round St Patrick's Rock, which is marked by the green navigation buoy in the above photo. St Patrick was born in Old Kilpatrick on the north side of the river. Apparently the Devil was displeased to hear Patrick was leaving for Ireland so he ripped a bit out of nearby Dumbuck rock and cast it after the departing saint.

If you are enjoying this modern trip down the Clyde, then you might be interested to compare it with an excellent imaginary trip assembled from old postcard photos by Chris Jones.