Better Days in Loch Leven!

Back at the end of February, when I was still able to walk, Tony and I drove with our families to the excellent Isles of Glencoe hotel on the shores of Loch Leven. We were bound for the Scottish Canoe Association, luxury weekend.


The hotel is most conveniently situated on a little peninsula that juts into Loch Leven and was once the spoil tip of the Ballachulish slate quarries. A railway from Oban was constructed in 1903 and terminated here at the quarries. In the 1950's I remember seeing steam engines on this line but it closed in 1966 and all that remains is a solitary signal. The line of the railway is being used to create a new coastal cycle and walk way.


I am always on the lookout for boats that have seen better days and this one is an absolute cracker! Clearly, although the owner may not have been very good at parking the thing, he (and I assume it was a he) was quite handy with a welding torch!

27/02/2009

I don't feel safe in a dinghy!

David, my regular paddling buddy, used to paddle off the Ayrshire coast with John Young in the Kyle Canoe Club (now KKC). John designed and built his own Kyle, skin on frame, sea touring canoe. It was a fast boat as he was interested in speed and trained with Alistair Wilson of Lendal paddles, who competed in kayak sprints in both the 1964 and 1968 Olympics. John also introduced his son Jock to kayaking at the tender age of two. Jock went on to develop an interest in surf kayaking and was Master Longboat Champion at the 2008 British Surf Open.

Back in 1976, Jock took part in a film of a "coastal journey" from Glenfinnan down Loch Sheil, down the River Sheil and falls, into Loch Moidart, then round the Ardnamurchan peninsula and into Loch Sunart. John paddled his father's Kyle kayak. His three companions, Rusty Baillie, Sue Edwards and Liz Elliot paddled composite Valley Anas Acutas which were the latest development at the time, though they did not have either bulkheads or hatches.

The film is beautifully shot and features a great scene where they ask the Ardnamurchan lighthouse keeper (think Peter Sellers does Thunderbirds)for a weather forecast.

The closing seconds of the film feature Jock and Rusty paddling along the dark rocks of Ardnamurchan in a huge swell. Jock turns just in time to meet a monster wave and his sea canoe gets tossed high into the sky, with big air below his keel. As the film fades he is heard to say "I don't feel safe in a dinghy."

When you see this clip you will know what it takes to be a Master Surf champion!



I would love to track down the original of this wonderful film. It deserves to be shown again, perhaps at the Perth Canoe show. Simon Willis was not aware of this film but has kindly agreed to use his professional contacts to try and track the original down.

The Cave of Knockbrex is no longer lost!

I had decided to look for the lost cave of Knockbrex, not at the current shoreline but at the back of the ancient shoreline of the raised beach. I found the cave almost straight away, though I had passed this spot many times before. Ivy draped itself over the rocks round the cave. An ancient bough, above the mouth, had recently broken thus possibly exposing the cave for the first time in many years.


Inside it was one of the driest caves I have ever been in, the floor was so perfectly level, I suspect it had been made by the hand of man. The beaches in these parts were frequented by the Solway smugglers and almost certainly this one would have been piled high with casks of claret and rolls of tobacco from the Isle of Man. There were even flat rocky ledges to store a bottle or two! It may well be that the covering ivy had been "planted" by the smugglers for the purposes of concealment.


I paddled home with a sense of satisfaction that my short 9km pasddle had solved a long standing mystery. I think Lucy Walford would have written another novel about it.

09/06/2009

The amusing story of the novelist and the lost cave of Knockbrex

I paddled across Fleet Bay and took a break at the sandy cove of Knockbrex. Not far from the beach is a fine large mansion which was built by a Manchester businessman Mr James Brown in 1895. It was built on the site of an older mansion, which was part of the Selkirk estate but Knockbrex dates back to at least the 1650's when it belonged to the Gordon family.


The Scottish novelist, Lucy Bethia Walford (1845-1919), lived here for three years when her father took a tenancy from the Selkirks. She described Knockbrex (which was one of the the finest mansions in these parts): "though unpretending, was very much the kind of house we liked. Every window had a view : on the one hand, of a wild and storm-beaten district, wooded after a fashion on the hillsides, with the hills rising into mountains beyond ; while on the other was the famed Solway Firth, across which we could at times distinguish on the far horizon the faint outlines of the Isle of Man."


She and her brothers had "arrived at Knockbrex full of the wonders of a sea cave containing fossil remains said to be of great antiquity, of which he had heard as being in the neighbourhood." Despite much searching, she never discovered it. In her book, Recollections of a Scottish Novelist (1910), she recounts an amusing (though a century has not been kind to the humour) story of how she attempted to find it.


She and her family were all dressed in their finery on their way to a gala when they heard they were passing the house of the elderly man who owned the cave and looked after the fossils. There was a large number of carriages outside the man's house and they thought the fossil museum must be very popular. The house was crowded with men in black clothes and she thought they must be a gathering of ministers, though some looked very young. She became annoyed when her requests to be taken to the owner of the cave were ignored. Finally a young man ushered her in to a darkened room and said "This is the owner of the cave!"

The man was dressed in his Sunday best but was clearly well past his own best as he lay quite dead in his coffin. She recounts "We fled indignantly and precipitately ; nor did we once give way to mirth till far away and out of sight. But we never saw the cave, then or thereafter."

Well Lucy sounds very much like the kind of gal that describes a mansion as "unpretending"!

I have been visiting the Knockbrex shore regularly over the last 40 years and I have never found the cave either. It was a quite lovely afternoon so I decided to take another look for the wondrous cave....

09/06/2009

You're not paddling down here son!

Regular visitors to these pages will know that our local, and most frequently paddled waters, are those of Ayrshire's Carrick coast. Well last weekend, Tony, David and Phil went for one of our usual outings on the coast between Dunure and Turnberry.


No sooner had they rounded the Point than an all black RIB roared up at high speed. It was manned by big blokes in all black drysuits with dark glasses and black berets with big, black automatic guns.

"What do you think you're doing?" the leading maritime, anti-terrorist officer asked politely.

Tony looked at the kayaks and then at the sea before giving a considered and equally polite reply, "We're paddling."

Never taking his eye off Tony's paddling knife, the man in black replied (even more politely this time) "Well you're not paddling down here son."

Obviously outgunned, Tony, David and Phil turned their bows and made their way reluctantly back to the pub at Dunure.

With good excuse, David and Phil spent some time appreciating the Guinness in a very crowded Dunure Inn. They were soon perspiring in their brightly coloured dry suits, (Phil in red and David in plum). After a time, their mood was lifted when a female American golf journalist asked for their autographs!

Photos by Tony.

Clear Solway tide

I slowly paddled east from Rumblekirn to a break in the cliffs.


By its nature the Solway Firth, with its extensive sand flats at low tide, tends to have cloudy water...


... but a period of light easterly winds had allowed the sediment to settle.


I enjoyed a peaceful swim in the unusually clear waters.


Another 14km Solway paddle.

08/06/2009

Full Moon at Rumblekirn!

It was a full moon when we arrived at Fleet bay on the Solway Firth. That meant a spring tide and that gives access to all sorts of interesting places at high water!


My destination was "rumblekirn", an amazing rock formation, which I recently found. Here the vertically aligned strata of sedimentary greywacke (Hawick rocks) tell of enormous forces that compressed and distorted the Earth's crust in these parts. The name "rumblekirn" means "rumble churn" in Scots. I would certainly not relish being churned round in here at the height of a storm. Waves smash through the back of rumblekirn creating an enormous blowhole.

08/06/2009