Disappearing breakfasts, otters, sharks and islands in the Kilbrannan Sound.

We awoke the following morning to low water. A feature of the Firth of Clyde is that spring tides tend to occur at midday and midnight.Arriving at a campsite in the early evening and leaving in early morning is therefore associated with LW and a long carry. Many of the "beaches" you see on Google Earth are only accessible at HW.

This is the long rocky gully we carried our boats up the previous night. It was taken with a telephoto lens so it is foreshortened and is longer than it looks.

A decent number of calories were required for our forthcoming labours. In case any one is concerned about any dietary imbalance, I consumed this lot in a whole meal wrap. Yum Yum!

Although the sun attempted to break through, a thick bank of fog rolled in. I just missed the otter in this photo but with the eye of...

...considerable faith I hope you can see the large basking shark through the fog!. I have never seen them in the Clyde so early.

After considerable humphing we set off from Rubh a na h-Airde Baine which roughly translated means "point of the pale high beach"
.

We set off across the Kilbrannan Sound but of the Isle of Arran, which is...

surprisingly large, there was not a sign!

15 year old malt and baked potatoes in the Kilbrannan Sound.

From Skipness Point we continued our voyage down the Kintyre coast of Kilbrannan Sound. A pesky headwind had got up which slowed our progress somewhat. Being gentle-persons of a certain age, we decided not to continue to our original destination, which was still over an hour away.

We had spotted a good camp site, sheltered from the prevailing wind, above a shingle storm beach. However, it was low water and the only access to the beach was a 77 meter long, slippery, rocky channel which narrowed to less than 1 meter. We unloaded our gear into our trusty IKEA bags at the water's edge and made several journeys up to the HW mark. We then used one Karitek portage strap to allow the three of us to carry each empty boat up the beach.

 Somewhat exhausted, it took a little while to set up camp and get changed.

 It was good to get the evening meal on. I was grateful that Ian and Mike gathered wood for the fire as my knees were rather painful by this stage.

After dinner it was time to crack open the whisky. It was challenging deciding which we preferred, the 15 year old Dalmore or the 15 year old Dalwhinnie. As the night wore on we declared a draw...

...as we tucked into baked potatoes and salted butter.

Je suis prest in Skipness Chapel graveyard.

 Skipness or Kilbrannan Chapel is a short walk from the beach at Skipness Point on the Kintyre peninsula.

 The chapel dates from the 13th century though details like this lancet window in old red sandstone probably date from later. It was dedicated to St Brendan (Kilbrannan means church of  Brendan).                                    

 The chapel was abandoned for regular worship in the 18th century but the graveyard is still in use.

 There oldest memorials are carved mediaeval grave slabs and...

...the older grave stones date from the early 18th century. This one was erected in 1710 to the memory of Archibald JOHNSTON sailer and Agnes McMILEN his spows. 

Later stones date from the late 19th century like this Fraser stone with the clan crest and motto "Je suis prest". This  translates as "I am ready" which is rather appropriate on a grave stone.

As we left the environs of the chapel we looked over to Skipness Castle which also dates from the 13th century. The oldest parts were built by Sven the Red, a Viking who founded the McSween clan. The castle is open to the public but time was getting on, so we made our way back to the boats.

Skipness bombing range and the Tirpitz.

We made our way up from the beach at Skipness Point to the Old Chapel and its walled graveyard. Just to the east of the graveyard we came across this old concrete arrow.

It can be clearly seen in this view from Google Maps.

The arrow points straight down the Kilbrannan Sound and it formed part of the Skipness bombing range in WW2. RAF and Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilots based at nearby RAF Machrihanish practised dropping bombs and torpedoes here.

They were observed by a team of about 45 Wrens who recorded the bombing runs from a lookout post on the west side of Skipness Bay. In March 1944 the Skipness range was used to train squadrons for the attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz. After a series of partially successful raids using aircraft carrier based light aircraft, Tirpitz was eventually sunk by heavy RAF Lancaster bombers in Tromsø fjord on the 12th of November 1944. Afterwards, a RN Vice Admiral visited Skipness to congratulate the Wrens for their part in the effort to sink Tirpitz.

The horror of WW2 seemed very far away as lambs grazed the fresh spring grass growing round the old concrete arrow.