The decay of the Little Cumbrae lighthouse, does anybody care?

We approached the Little Cumbrae lighthouse from the sea. It is positioned...

...on a raised beach which lies behind a low cliff rising from the current sea level. The "Nature Reserve No Access" sign was put up by one of the previous owners who was more interested in privacy than nature.

A large winch hauled supplies from the landing stage up a light rail track to the base of the cliff.

A jib crane then lifted the supplies up to the top of the cliff.

The boathouse is still remarkably dry inside.

At the top of the cliffs, to the south of the lighthouse, a white washed building houses the long silent diesel generators.

Behind the generator house a plain concrete building houses the new automated light which was built in 1997.

From the new lighthouse we walked up to the walled complex of the old lighthouse and the keepers' cottages. Robina McLaren tells of her childhood in these cottages from 1960-63.

Most of the windows were still glazed...

...but sadly some of the sashes had collapsed, letting rain into these fine old buildings of pink sandstone.

The detail and workmanship was astounding.

Inside the empty rooms, the rain had done surprisingly little damage to the hardwood floors and even the plaster on the walls was in reasonable condition. The gentle moaning of the wind at the empty windows now replaced the voices of generations of keepers and their families that once lived here.

The upstairs rooms had a marvellous view of the lighthouse and Arran and Bute beyond.

We walked from the keepers' cottages towards the lighthouse, topped by its beautiful copper cupola. It was built by  Thomas Smith and Robert Stevenson in 1793.

From the balustrade round the base of the lighthouse we looked south past the crane, and the new lighthouse...

...to Holy Island and distant Ailsa Craig

Entering the lighthouse through a door that was jammed open we found the control panel for the battery charger ...

...and the banks of lead acid batteries.

In the basement of the tower another panel controlled the operation of the light and its lenses.

We now climbed up the spiral...

...staircase and ladders to the gantry that runs...

...round the  inside of the lantern room. Sadly the light and lenses have been removed. To the west, the view extended right across the Firth of Clyde.

To the east, the lantern room overlooked the keepers' cottages which we had recently explored.

Even the chimney pots had wonderful detailing.

Beyond the cottages, a track snaked up the hillside towards the houses on the east side of the island.

The base of the lighthouse had small open "portholes" that went right through the wall.

If you stuck your eye up to the hole you could look right through the tower and out through an identical  and perfectly aligned porthole on the opposite wall. I wonder what they were for?

It seems such a pity that these beautiful old buildings are being allowed to decay. The people who designed and built them showed more care. The keepers who kept the place spic and span for the regular inspections would have been horrified.

Looking down, we could see the rising tide had nearly reached the kayaks; it was time to leave the lighthouse to the elements and to its inevitable decay.

The far side of the Cumbraes.

At the north end of Great Cumbrae we entered the broader expanse of the Firth of Clyde. The Arran mountains soared above the lower hills of Bute.

Alan was just as keen to capture the scene as me! You can see his photos on his blog here.

We now paddled down the west coast...

...of Great Cumbrae before the short crossing of the Tan, ...

...the channel which separates it from Little Cumbrae. Our destination was the Little Cumbrae lighthouse.

Out to sea we could now see Arran, unobstructed by the south end of Bute.

We paddled under low cliffs until we came to the lighthouse...

It's behind you, on the Clyde

In Scotland the snow tends to arrive with the Pantomime season.  It was quite cold when Tony, Alan and I arrived at Largs marina on the Firth of Clyde. I didn't dare take the short road over the hills, I took the long way round by Kilmarnock, Irvine and Ardrossan. In the distance, the mountains of Arran rose above Great Cumbrae island.
  

 The "pencil" celebrates the Battle of Largs in 1263. This conflict was between the Vikings and the Scots. The outcome was not clear cut but ultimately led to the withdrawal of the Vikings from Scotland.

We warmed up once on the water. We didn't cross the path of the MV Loch Shira ferry, as it steams back and forth across the channel to Great Cumbrae quite a bit faster than...

...we could paddle. She was built at the Ferguson yard just up the Clyde at Port Glasgow and entered service in 2007. As it was early there were few passengers the ferry had a fast turn around...

...err, Alan, perhaps you should be looking the other way. As they say in all the best pantos, "It's behind you!"

Five fingers and a long way to fish in Loch Linnhe.

 The sun set long before we reached our shuttle car, which we had left just north of the Corran narrows on Loch Linnhe.

Looking back up the loch we got a fantastic view of Ben Nevis. Just below the summit you can see the infamous five finger gully which traps the unwary on their descent of the Ben.

An Irish trawler, W297 Caronia II, registered in Waterford, passed us as she was making her way up the loch. She was heading for Corpach pier where she would tie up and spend the night before entering the Caledonian canal the next day. She was bound for the fishing grounds in the North Sea. At this point she was already 600km from Waterford and still had a long way to go. I hope her long trip was worth it but it makes you wonder, have her home waters been cleaned out of fish? It makes you appreciate where your fish fingers come from.

Night was falling as we approached Corran narrows and its lighthouse. From NE to SW the light flashes green, once every 4 seconds.

Finally, our day on the water was over but we still had a 42 mile round trip to recover the other shuttle car at Loch Eil head. We were well satisfied, we had come to photograph the Ben from the water in winter and had succeeded. Given it spends 80% of the time under cloud, we thought we were very lucky.

Sea kayaking desktop wallpaper calendar, December 2010.

December, resting at Rainbow Rock, Rhins of Galloway, after an exciting trip round the Mull!

The seakayakphoto.com December desktop wallpaper calendar (in a variety of screen resolutions) is available for download here.

We paddled off into the sunset in Loch Linnhe.

The River Lochy discharged us into Loch Linnhe, which stretched away to the SW and the distant Corran Narrows.

We soon came to Fort William, Scotland's outdoor capital. The town is not just a tourist centre it is also an unpretentious working place and so is not, perhaps, one of the most scenic of coastal towns.  It is hemmed in to a narrow ribbon of land by Loch Linnhe on one side and Ben Nevis on the other. The only space to build the town bypass was along the shore, the town shows its "derrière à la mer" as they say further south. To be fair, when they built the bypass, they did not demolish a curving street of "but and bens", nestling round a silver strand with peat smoke curling into the still highland air from their lums. Rather the bypass was built where the railway used to run! Neither is the town pier a tourist attraction. There was no funfair at the end of this long pier, only some heavy barges.

We left Fort William and set off down Loch Linnhe...

...it was a glorious winter evening as we...

...paddled off into the sunset.

Luncheon on a gravel bed in the River Lochy.

The sea lock of the Caledonian Canal opens to Loch Linnhe beside Corpach pier.

For a little while, the canal follows the shore and we paddled below some fishing boats.

We now crossed the head of loch Linnhe towards...

... Fort William. Unfortunately we turned left instead of right.

The first warning of our mistake was that the kayaks' seam lines were closer to the water, and talking of water, it was decidedly the lo-salt variety.

We had entered the River Lochy, which drains the wettest part of Scotland and so is quite big.

Being in a dryish spell, we paddled below great banks of shingle, which rather restricted our horizons.

It was quite surreal, every so often our eyes rose above the shingle bank and  suddenly the landscape was revealed to us. In this photo I am looking straight up Glen Nevis, where much of the shingle will have come from.

We eddy hopped upstream but eventually the current became too strong. We ferry glided across the main flow to take a break on a shingle bank in the middle of the river. Jim had hoped to get up to the "smelter play wave", where the water exits from the hydro power station that provides the electricity for the aluminium smelter. It opened in 1929. The pipes carry the water for 24 km under the mountains and exit from the slopes of Ben Nevis. The plant produces 40,000 tons of aluminium each year and employs about 174 people.

It was a well earned break for a luncheon on an exposed part of the river bed.

The view up Glen Nevis to Sgurr a' Mhaim (1099m) made this one of the best lunch spots ever. However our sojourn was cut short, the river was rising due to the high tide in Loch Linnhe and our little world steadily shrunk. It was time to go...