An apology first to the loyal reader. These posts have all landed today, the 20th, the moment we found halfway decent wifi, or indeed any wifi at all, and no loos or other pressing matters getting in the way.

Monday dawned bright over Canna and once again demanded an early start. We’d called ahead to the marina at Mallaig to check we could leave Heydays there for a few weeks, and were told to arrive before lunchtime if we wanted a pontoon berth for the day, useful for unloading. No matter, we’re well used to early starts by now, and there is something particular about that early morning light…

…the mist still lying in patterns over Rum and the Cuillins of Skye before the sun got round to burning it off, provided a stunning and everchinging backdrop to our last day on the water…

The wind had all but given up, so the old girl went back to being a motor boat for the four hours or so to journey’s end, for now. A small pod of what looked like juvenile dolphins crossed our bow, but breakfast held rather more appeal for them than we did, and they carried on about their business. Rounding the Point of Sleat at the southern tip of Skye, a minke whale put in a brief appearance, ambling northward, evidently already fed and entirely unhurried, beautiful and faintly magical even for the few seconds we had it.

Mallaig is busy with ferries and small workboats busying themselves, let alone the fishing boats and tourist sightseeing trips…

A radio call for permission to enter, and by elevenses we were moored and beginning to unwind before the business of tidying and packing took over.

Mallaig is well served with restaurants, and we tracked down a bowl of Cullen Skink without much difficulty. The waitress advised us to be seated before 12.30, as that’s when the steam train comes in. We took the interval to hunt down soil pipe for the heads, and came away with the last 7.5 metres in the shop. At 12.30 we were the only souls in the restaurant, complete with an incongruous coil of pipe under the table. By 12.31 it was full, with a queue out the door. It turns out the train’s fame rests on its run across the Glenfinnan Viaduct into Mallaig, as any of the thousands of visiting Harry Potter enthusiasts could have told us. The town, we now realise, runs to a respectable trade in witch, wizard, and broomstick paraphernalia.

Some final notes and thoughts. The end came rather more rushed than planned, but we count ourselves fortunate to have cruised the Hebrides and Canna at all. The enforced stops in Stornoway and Tarbert, forced on us by weather rather than choice, gave us the chance to get properly into Lewis and Harris in a way we’d never have managed moving on every day or two. Tomorrow, two of us head up to Ullapool to collect the car, while the boat is readied for the thirteen hour drive back to Hampshire and Dorset. As the crow flies, Mallaig to Ullapool is nothing much, by car it’s three and a half hours, and the fastest public transport option has you leaving Mallaig at 8am and arriving at 16.30. The lochs are beautiful, but a considerable nuisance if you’re not travelling by water.

We’ll be back in early to mid September, before the equinoctial gales if we’ve timed it right, to cruise south via Oban and the islands to our winter berth, once again in Coleraine.

A final, final footnote. A Moody a couple of feet shorter than Heydays came in and moored a little further up the pontoon. Some time later, a knock on the cabin. Word had evidently got round about our toilet troubles, the coil of pipe rather gave the game away, and it turned out they had exactly the same problem. We traded plumbing anecdotes and remedies over the guardrail, and having bought up the last of the pipe for miles in any direction, handed over what we could spare, keeping back only what we urgently needed ourselves. Somewhere up the pontoon, there is now another fully functioning Moody heads.