hiking

Even after one day, the early morning routine is established….get dressed by numbers, say a bleary good morning as brightly as we can to each other and get the kettle on. The forecast is for showers, a bit of a chill and Easterly F4….more getting togged up and more layers. Just as we are getting ready to slip the mooring, Billy and his son arrive back in harbour and they are really chipper having had a good haul of langoustines. We thank him for the crab, but as we leave the harbour he throws us a big bag with at least 60 or 70 langoustine tails. What a brilliant way to start the day and so we slide out into the new day with not just hot coffee, but a really wonderful warm feeling and broad smiles on our faces.

The easterly F4 does not materialise…in fact there is not enough wind to properly fill the sails. However, the previous night’s easterly has left a rather short swell over the beam and Heydays rolls slightly uncomfortably. We tighten the sails, not to drive us along, but just to dampen the rolling.

The coast is definitely becoming craggier and there are all sorts of cliffs and stacks rising out of a sea with breakers at their foot.

Off shore there is a huge windfarm and we seem to be sailing past it for hours…alternately it is in bright sunshine and at other times we see the rain squalls washing past…some of which get us as well.

Amid all the slop and tossing of a beam swell, some dolphins decide to keep us company for a while. Not as spectacular as Coleraine last September, but they always lift the spirits…

As we approach Wick, there are signs of civilisation appearing on the cliffs, but no sign of the promised fresh easterlies…

We call the Wick Harbourmaster and he is waiting on the pontoon to guide us in and to take lines…another great welcome and service which we have rarely (if ever) met ‘down south.

We lunch on crab linguine, langoustines and a bottle of white…cheers again Billy from Helmsdale…and promptly fall asleep….

We do a short shopping list and head off to the Coop for essentials…2 whites, 2 reds, one gin, one tonic and some spaghetti….its a tough life.

Wandering round town, we get a sense of real decay since even the last time we were here in 2017. There are just so many shops which are boarded up and even the Weatherspoons has gone. It was clearly once a very grand town with huge wealth built on the herring. One information board describes the heyday of the herring industry with a single day catch of over 100million herring and an army of over 3000 fearsome herring gutter women. With over 1000 boats out of Wick in the 1930s we see just a couple of dozen now. The information board seemed to blame the quotas introduced in the 60s, but the reality is that the herring were simply over-fished, and they killed the very thing which made them rich.

However, as we wander back towards the harbour we see some signs for the future…huge wind turbine blades on the dockside ready for transportation to a new wind farm just down the coast. The blades are huge…78.5 meters long according to a young dock steward, and 20 tons, and are carried vertically on specially designed transporter. Great, we think. Maybe there is hope and life for the future, only to be told that these blades have come from Germany, while others come from Mexico and the US. We are left angry and frustrated. Why are we not building them here? Why are we not giving some hope, jobs and prosperity to a town which clearly needs it?

OK OK, this is a sailing blog, but one of the best bits about sailing like this is that we get to visit places which are convenient harbours, but which are off the tourist trail. We get to see bits of our country which we would not otherwise have visited and to confront some difficult truths about post industrial, finance and service sector focused UK.

By the time we made our way back across the water to the boat last night, the weather had already decided to give us a break. The gale that accompanied our arrival had eased considerably, still breezy, still a little lively in the dinghy, but nothing like the conditions of a few hours earlier. We returned aboard well fed, moderately windswept, and largely content…and went to bed without any great delay.

Morning brought a transformation… the loch was completely still, glassy and quiet, with perfect reflections of the mountains, the trees, and the little cottage opposite, in the waters around Heydays.

We had a schedule to keep, however. The narrows at Corran are a tidal pinch point midway up Loch Linnie, and this required us to pass through before the tide turned against us, so by eight o’clock we were underway, coffees in hand, gliding up Loch A Choire in conditions that bore absolutely no resemblance to yesterday’s arrival. We had hoped for a little wind as we turned out into Loch Linnie proper, but the loch had decided otherwise, and we motored on without complaint into what was, in fairness, a genuinely beautiful morning.

The narrows at Corran were quiet, save for a handful of motorcyclists waiting for the cable ferry on the far bank, and not much else. The Corran ferry skipper, we noted, was a more patient individual than his counterpart on the Studland crossing in Poole, where the approach with a yacht has an ambiguous quality…the ferry tending to depart at precisely the moment most inconvenient to all concerned. Here, he waited for us to pass before setting off, and we continued north with goodwill on all sides.

Loch Linnie narrows steadily toward its head, where Fort William sits on one shore, with Ben Nevis looming over…

…and the small town of Corpach on the other. Corpach is, in fact, the southern entrance to the Caledonian Canal, and we tied up at the community-run marina there — one of several such places in these waters, operated by local groups on something closer to goodwill and honesty boxes than the brisk commercial efficiency of larger marinas. Refreshingly so, even if refreshingly is doing some work in that sentence.

Formalities at the canal office were straightforward: forms, insurance details, facility keys, and a nine o’clock lock slot booked for the following morning. A seven-day canal pass, at £277 for the boat, gives ample time for the transit, most crews manage it in three or four days, but we intend to take our time and see something of the country on the way. Conveniently, seven days also brings us neatly to the point at which the four of us are planning to leave Heydays for a fortnight and head home, so the timing works rather well.

There is a small café beside the sea lock. We went in for coffee. This, as so often happens, evolved into fish and chips, loaded fries with haggis, and an excellent bowl of tomato soup, at which point we conceded that this constituted lunch and that, it being Sunday, a proper lunch was entirely in order.

We made our way back to the boat in the early afternoon moving, it must be said, with the slow plod of people who have eaten well. The rain arrived shortly after, and the mist settled low over the surrounding hills. The mountains are not quite the same in cloud as they are in sun, but they remain grand, and impressive, and it remains a privilege to be here, whatever the weather is doing.

Tomorrow: the canal begins.