A new dawn for Portencross castle

After leaving two cars at Ardrossan ferry terminal, we drove 10km up the Ayrshire coast to Portencross.


It was high tide, so most of the evil, slippy rocks that characterise this shore were covered. Tony and Phil launched my kayak, then helped me into the cockpit. My recently injured knee was hurting, just at the sight of those rocks.


A lovely dawn light reflected on the little waves.


Soon we were on our way, paddling past Portencross castle, which is currently swathed in scaffolding. Centuries of weather and neglect had caused the castle walls to decay to a perilous state. It is now undergoing a restoration thanks to the Friends of Portencross Castle.

A trinity of tideraces: circumnavigation of Scarba

Circumnavigation of Scarba: a day trip of 38.5km from Crinan, October 2009.


We rush to pull the kayaks out of the clutch of the sucking white tendrils of the Corryvreckan whirlpool!

The seakayakphoto.com school of sea kayaking: lesson one, paddling in a current.

Crossing the Rubicon in the Dorus Mor

A whiter shade of pale in the Sound of Jura

Pool of the Song in the Sound of Luing

Sleeping Grey Dogs

Friends to watch over you

Free fall on Scarba

Menace hung in the windless air, even for the most daring and venturesome.

Showdown with a goat in the Corryvreckan!

Calculating slack water in the Corryvreckan

The mystery of the goats of Reisa an t-Sruith

Back for more in the Dorus Mor!

End of another Glorious Dorus Day

Crinan's pyroligneous past.

Dawn till dusk

We paddled from dawn till dusk.

Crinan's pyroligneous past.

As we entered Loch Crinan, the setting sun lit the north shore with a crimson light. The lonely farmhouse of Ardifuir nestles in a bowl in the hills. The agricultural land between it and the sea is a former raised beach.


Further into the loch we passed below the ancient walls of Duntrune castle.


We entered the shade at the head of the loch and, as we paddled through the yachts in Crinan Bay,I thought I caught a whiff of woodsmoke. A tall chimney betrays an interesting facet of sleepy Crinan's past. It was a factory for making pyroligneous acid. The process involved distilling wood and it operated between about 1840 to 1890 until the market for pyroligneous acid evaporated.

It was high tide and we pulled our boats up the little slipway in the heart of the village as darkness gathered round us. It had been a really great day. We had covered 38.5km, albeit with some tidal assistance!

End of another Glorious Dorus Day

The Sound of Jura, beyond the Dorus Mor, is a beautiful place but the tides still run strongly as the ebb from Loch Craignish mixes with that from the Dorus..


Despite her powerful engines, this fishing boat was slewed sideways several times by the strong eddies.


The temperature began to drop as the sun...


... dipped towards the western horizon, bringing to an end another Glorious Dorus Day.

Back for more in the Dorus Mor!

From Reisa an t-Sruith we were transported on a tidal conveyor belt across the Sound of Jura.


We were propelled through the Dorus Mor at 12km/hr.


We broke out into a counter eddy on the north shore of Garbh Reisa and went back for more, several times!


Once through the Dorus Mor we were on the home straight to Crinan.


To the south, the Paps of Jura soared above the dark rocks of Eilean na Cille.

The mystery of the goats of Reisa an t-Sruith

We now were on a course back to the Dorus Mor and Crinan but first we had to clear the north end of tiny Reisa an t-Sruith. Its name means something like the race of the torrent.


Initially we were carried north but very quickly the ebb started carrying us south and we just scraped past its north end under the eye of watchful goats. How they got out here I can't imagine. Either goats are very powerful swimmers with a built in ability to understand tides and ferry angles or they were brought by man. I can understand sheep being left on small islands until they grow for market, but goats?


Overhead, these pink footed geese seemed to know where they were going.
They will recently have arrived from their summer grounds in Spitsbergen Iceland or Greenland. If they get the weather right it does not take them long. This year a mute swan with a GPS tracker took 14 hours to cover 800km from Iceland to Scotland.


Rounding the top of Reisa an t-Sruith, we took a quick look back at the Gulf of Corryvreckan before we were swept onwards to the Dorus Mor.