Category Archives: Travels

All my waterproofs packed and it was off on the SouthWest airline flight from Newcastle to Plymouth. The board gate information gives a counter down in minutes labelled ‘Time to shop’. Musing at the queues of woman holding plastic sacks of toiletries to maintain them during short flights I boarded to find my manly waterproof jacket smothered in flowers as a woman packs a large bouquet into the overhead locker.

I had to get to Southdown Marina near Millbrook which is a long taxi ride (fortunately I shared the first part of the ride to Plymouth station) then onto the chain ferry at Torpoint and an exciting ride down single track roads as the taxi driver is adjusting his sat nav. I joined the boat – which is a lovely catamaran, scaring Jim on board who was busy fixing his heater as I bounce on board. Andy an RAF Hercules pilot/navigator arrives, followed by Jordan a Bulgarian Yachtmaster examinee (and not Peter Andre’s ex).

The first night is a simple motor down the creek to an anchor point, where we learn about anchoring a catamaran with a claw to adjust its pivot point and settle in for the night. My cabin has its own toilet (head) and shower (in the same space which makes toilet cleaning easier…) and a ladder with which I chimney up between the wardrobe and the ladder and hurl myself into the narrow gap which is the bed.

Breakfast was fried cheese with plum tomatoes – what a start to the long day (they were all long days – starting early and finishing with lectures on diesel engines or navigation – this was no joy trip this was serious learning). Sailing around Plymouth Sound off the scary looking breakwater whilst naval destroyers cruised around. Busy little place. Captain Jim got us all together with the weather forecast – it was not looking good. Force 7 gusting Force 8 and in the wrong direction too. So he asked us in turn ‘would you consider going on a trip down the coast in weather like this, without me on board’ – we each in turn replied ‘absolutely not’ – and he said ‘Good, so lets go then, we need to be out of Plymouth as Jordan is getting tested there’. Gulp. We got the boat ready and drove through the four posts marking the exit to Plymouth and into a very rough English Channel.

We were being chased by HMS Daring at one point doing its manouvers and after an hour of bouncing around all over the place whilst I was in looking at charts it all got too much for my anti seasickness bracelets (I had forgotten to take my crystallised ginger as I had assumed we were just going to be in the calm waters of Plymouth Sound) and I promptly threw up over the back rail losing breakfast in a trice. I was put on the helm as looking at the horizon helps but lunch followed over the back and I was timing the projectile vomiting with helming quite well until I had nothing left to give to the fishes.

The entrance to Fowey harbour was impressively scary but Jim took over and we were soon in calmer waters. We parked near the lifeboat (they weren’t going out in weather like that) and I took the chance to go for a walk on land that doesn’t sway in all directions. We had to move up river to avoid the worsening wind and settled on a pontoon for the night.

Black wet suited Customs officers visited us in the morning on their scary black rib – possibly wondering about Jordan’s endless supply of Bulgarian chocolate and asked us various questions about our course before wishing us luck and heading off in their black boat again to interrogate someone else.

We had to pop into town to the post office (whilst it was not on strike) and another chance to wander around the picturesque town of Fowey (home of Daphne Du Maurier) – we had tied up and Jordan and I were strolling off the pontoon when another yacht came in at speed, in the same direction as the river current and smashed into the front of our catamaran. It had turned out that Mervyn (or Swervin’ Mervyn as he came to be known) had picked up something round his prop and didn’t have the ability to stop – he tried scuba diving but got told off for not having a diving licence. We suggested we could tow him tomorrow to a dry dock which he took up and we left to do pontoon bashing and mooring in the river to our hearts content.

Time for the annual flying club outing to Plockton which yet again saw no-one flying there from East Fortune (one intrepid soul had left for Gigha the day before and managed to reach Plockton up the west coast) due to very low cloud over the munro height mountains. George had been up there for a few days before and took the chance to get 5 engine failures, one over the unforgiving heather and rocks of Applecross, before retiring to the hanger to take his engine to pieces and find a piece of rubber in the carburettor.

Kim and I drove up via the Real Food cafe at Tyndrum for lunch and wild swimming in the whisky coloured water of the River Etive. Kim shivered on the rocks as I lowered myself into the strong current – she had checked I was fully insured and asked me to swim down the waterfall – I declined her kind encouragement. Swimming in the pool felt great once the cold wore off. It felt great getting out finally after swimming in whisky.

Cake and beer at the Cluanie Inn and Plockton arrived soon enough for an evening of beer and wine and seafood at the Plockton Shores then back to the Plockton Inn for a bucketful of alcohol until we were all asked to leave the bar. Yes we were back in Plockton.

The weather was still bad the next day – I stayed in the hanger to erect my kayak as the rest spread themselves around parts of Skye. The kayak construction which in the sales literature takes 30 minutes – at Achiltibuie took 2 hours and in the hanger on the concrete floor took 6 hours and was squint (possibly causing the additional delays). But hey I worked through various strategies on construction so was a step forward and had an assembled kayak ready to launch. The hanger was rocking in the wind – the weather was no better.

I walked down from the airfield to the water – it did not look far on Google Earth but in reality it was over the runway, through a locked gate down a field of cows and a windey narrow stony path through gorse bushes to the stony beach. Taking a 16.5 foot long and quite a wide kayak that way was not going to be fun so I decided to abandon todays launch and attach it to the car and take it to Plockton harbour for a 10am launch. Unfortunately I let this be known over a few drinks to the rest of the club.

Everyone appeared at 10 on Plockton shoreline – laden with photographic equipment and cheers of encouragement. There was a paddle crisis solved by Kim as I dressed in a bright yellow dry suit, put my booties and gloves on and now PFD enhanced strode down with my constructed paddle to the shoreline. My bright red chariot awaited – but I wasn’t going to simply get in and paddle.

I had made this thing up and it was squint I had no idea of its ability to float or steer in a straight line or if I could get out when it inevitably capsized. So it was easy does it and I sat on top and tried some paddling measures.

It was surprisingly stable – with me on top and legs dangling over the side i could rock from side to side without it tipping excessively. Paddling forward and back revealed a turn to the right probably from the squint.

I lifted my legs up to slip them in and the resultant instability tipped me into the drink and the kayak was upside down. It’s sea sock meant there was minimal water in the kayak and it was easy to dump the water from the seasock out. Back to shore and this time getting in properly. This time it really did feel stable and I paddled around the island – until I discovered that as the tide was going out towards low tide the island was quite shallow in lots of parts and wasn’t entirely circumnavigable without portage. So I returned to shore to cries of “deploy your rudder’ – pulled the white rope and to shrieks of laughter my rudder flopped into the water – the only moving part of the boat and it worked!

Lutine is a French lady fairy with the rather reassuring attribute of  ‘you penetrate the abysses of the sea without drowning’

It was also the name of the boat that we jumped ship to – it is a 60 foot wooden restored boat which used to be owned by Lloyds of London and had won the Fastnet race twice. It is a Camper & Nicholson built boat (1954) with lovely wide wooden decks and more sails than crew. Skippered by a man born for the sea (noting an Onedin Line lookalike with Captain Baines) our first meeting was turning up on his deck with all of our luggage and some french sticks and cheese for lunch. Gob smacked wasn’t the correct phrase as he shouts ‘What the hell are all these bags? Are you in transit?’ and ‘this is a big ship but I don’t know if we have enough room for these!’. We did offer to stow them in the marina offices but his son had already kindly cleared a bunk for us to temporarily bunk them in.

Hanging from the mizzen boom I was chatting to one of the professional looking crew who admitted he had been press ganged for the day too and had only come on board 5 minutes before our dressing down, that was before he had admitted to drinking urine by mistake on another voyage. A spoon playing Irishman,  a young cabin boy, another irish lad who was a Cornish graphic designer and a chap who used to live in the same street in Edinburgh as myself made up the crew complement for the race around  Île-de-Bréhat, off Paimpol.

We were locked out of the dock and followed the boats to the start line, then we wooshed around and almost crossed the start line to find out that in France that is the 10 minute warning poop on the horn so quickly came about and circled in readiness. There was no stopping this boat or crew – once the race was off we were well in the front of everyone with James navigating off charts below and everyone pulling sheets and changing sails – I managed to put away the Ensign (not flown during a race) and returned it at the end and was responsible for the Mizzen Sail. We even saw a dolphin off the bow.

‘I thought you said you were sailors’, gnarled the skipper to his new crew as he barked questions at his navigator. You go 240 degrees Dad he shouted back. It was great to see a professional crew all come together and everything happen (not seamlessly, but effectively and problems routed around quickly). With the large downwind sail out we flew and it was great seeing every other boat in the race so far behind. Sadly it was only once around the island as we were all getting into the feel of the boat – the race had finished we were first (handicapping meant we were third in the race – if we had gone around again we would have been first due to increasing distance all the time with the competitors) and we anchored off a lighthouse for rest and recreation as we couldnt lock in again at Pampoil until 7 in the evening.

The anchor didn’t feel right as we were moving so it was brought up and the anchor hook appeared with a tyre attached. Paddy hung over precariously and it was unceremoniously dumped into the water. We moved a bit further on and dropped anchor again. This time when we brought it up we had a lobster pot complete with lobster and spider crabs hanging off the hook. We also had the lobster fishing boat on our port side and had to swiftly get rid of this before they attacked us. We didn’t think anyone saw us but in the bar in the evening it appeared the entire race did and our anchoring was commented on. We were anchored outside a pub but couldn’t get there – this was some circle of hell. The weather was gorgeous so we all lay around sunbathing and chatting and dozing as sea kayakers paddled past, as the huge ferry boats offloaded tourists to the pub, as a dredging boat went past and the lobster fishermen returned laying out traps.

We had to take the passage back slowly as the tidal range is huge (9 metres) so moves fast and rises rapidly but Lutine’s draught was 9 feet so the depth gauge was nervously beeping. Locking in was with some Breton boat who almost decapitated a photographer in a rib in front of him, and we were all photographed by a lock side full of tourists as Breton dancing went on and pipes played. We disembarked with all of our luggage but with an invite to the race to Guernsey the next day which we gratefully accepted.

We all booked into a hotel at the marina side which in retrospect was a mistake thanks to the Breton festival that was on and the Europop band that played non stop until after 1am. But it was nice to get showered down and head out for some beer, snails and steak tartare, before retiring for some well earned sleep. An early start meant trips around the bakers and Marche for water, bread, cheese and batteries for my GPS.

Locked out and at the start we were raring to go only to find that the forecast force 4 to 5 winds decided to go on holiday elsewhere. There wasn’t a breath of wind so Clive the skipper said bugger this and started his engine and headed off. 5 minutes later the race was abandonded and everyone else followed Lutine on the long motor to Guernsey. We went the pretty route – near the rocks and lighthouses, and saw floating weed in abundance. My phone was more informative than the GOS – Welcome to Jersey it said and then Welcome to Guernsey. I was nodding off and retired downstairs onto a free bunk with my arm out as if demanding tariff for the heads. I awoke and we had reached Guernsey harbour, I strode on deck just to hear the boat come to a complete halt and a bit of a scrape on its bottom – we had scraped rocks in a buoyed channel into the harbour – the harbour rib came out and said that the tide was rising quickly so we would be off soonish – just to have the rest of the regatta fleet sail in wondering why we were stuck there.

We disembarked said our thanks and jumped into a rib taxi to the Jersey ferry which was sitting there. We raced up to the ticket office to be told she was dealing with a customer, who turned out to be disabled and so we had to wait as the ferry is sitting there. She came back – and we said jersey ferry and she looked at us as if we were stupid and said ‘We don’t deal with that here you need to go down there’ …. groan. We got to the booking office as the ferry was leaving the dock. Fay the friendly ferrygirl had us down as Mr Condor, which I think I shall use as my non-de-plume from now on, and got us tickets for tomorrows ferry (we would just make our flight) and she recommended a hotel that her boyfriend was sous chef at.

We dragged our bags until Gill found us a taxi and arrived at the hotel exhausted but still ready to negotiate room rates. A sous chef appeared at the desk and I asked if he was Fay’s boyfriend and he was astonished – we should have made out we were psychics. The room was comfortable and I went for a swim in the heated outdoor pool with some guy looking at me strangely – I am guessing it was my impressive array of bruises a consequence of hanging off backstays during propwash and the girls hitting me with a boathook to stop me snoring.

Dinner was as expected, what was unexpected was the food poisoning from the starter that Alison and I had – I must have been hit badly because I spent most of the night peppering the loo with explosive diahorrea and feeling sick (I imagined it was because I took my sea sickness wrist bands off and it was all catching up). I was speaking to the Maderia staff (all the hotel staff were from Madeira) who told me about their conditions – get pregnant get deported, and the way the island licences accommodation based on employment requirements, and there was some birthday party on with Essex girls and boys (’just cos your 16 doesn’t mean you can go off fucking in the bushes’, one ballroom clad lady hollered across the Guernsey night)

The next morning the taxi rushed us (the island has a speed limit of 35mph which makes buying from one of the islands Porsche and Asron Martin dealers a bit of a joke) to the ferry. I asked her if she was from Guernsey – yes I have lived here all my life she said proudly. There were accepting murmurs from the girls in the back. I then asked if she remembered the war – sharp intake of breath from the back, but she said she remembered it well. I then asked ‘which side were you on’ and a choking sound emerged from the back as in ‘why do we have to travel with this idiot?’ but the driver smiled and said ‘can’t you tell from my litle moustache’. She didn’t tell though, which was telling.

It was all plain sailing now or so we thought. The ferry would appear to have lost an engine, how careless of it. So it was going to be an hour late. That meant we had about 3 minutes to catch the plane at the other end if all went well…. being FlyBE we had to inform them 2 hours before hand of any changes. The only thing we could do was to change form Aberdeen to Edinburgh which was a later flight that day. Kim handled all the ticket rearrangements in her role of getting me home again.

The ferry people were very good in that they signed a thing saying the ferry was over an hour late and made sure we were at the front of the queue for getting off – we ran down the gangway picked up our bags and got into a taxi and straight into a traffic jam. We arrived to waht I assumed was Bombay Intgernational Airport – it certainly had the population to warrant it. God I hate the great unwashed British travelling public – flying used to be about style and elegance – now it is reminiscent of a bus station. Long queues which we strode to the front of to see if we could blag a seat on the aberdeen flight – the woman looked like we were insane, and we hadlt eve told her about our channel crossing, saying I was a pilot didn’t help either (I had forgotten that baggage handlers earn more than pilots in low cost airlines). We were on the Edinburgh flight so checked our bags into left luggage and took the pretty FlyBE customer care girls advice and walked across the staff car park and int the mermaid tavern for the rest of the day. It is often very difficult to stifle pub converstiaon but you could have cut the silence with a nife onc ehte girls got into their conversation about autoerotic asphyxiation and its prevalance in suicide cases.

There was almost a flight between an old glaswegian couple and someone who had the temerity to prebook and so could walk tothe front using his prebooked queue. Alison said – it is just as well the knives are in the hold baggage. The British abroad and we are not even properly abroad. The flight was uneventful, the porridge was yummy and I drained remaining euros on wine and gin. Stuart picked us off and we dropped the girls off at Inverkeithing where it appeared the line was closed and they had to get a bus with my waterproof jacket still in one of their bags….

I got back to find out that in my absence our gardner/fencer/chainsawer had been killed by a sheep  (not one of mine) and had been resurrected in the ambulance by a paramedic and defibrillator; the neighbouring farmer had rolled his tractor and had concussion and sadly a father and daughter had died in a dinghy accident on Keilder which put our own sailing adventures into a much dimmer light altogether.

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea;

Not the Jumblies this time but the plan was for 3 girls and Charles, the skipper owner of Aurai, and myself to set off on the Classic Channel Regatta. With a crew and boat coming from all corners of the UK – Aurai sailing (or more accurately motoring) along the south coast to a pontoon at Dartmouth with Alison and Gill flying from Aberdeen to Exeter airport and spending about the same amount on a taxi from Exeter to Dartmouth. Patsy was missing in action and never turned up, she might have googled and found my blog though.  I flew Edinburgh to Exeter, fuelled with cinnamon and raisin porridge,  but my thoughts of hitching a ride fell rather flat as the torrential rain poured down the baggage hall windows. Dragging my two weeks of baggage, and snorkel, onto a bus I invested in a £6.50 all day ticket with the hope to arrive in style on a steam train into Dartmouth marina. Every bus required a wait or an inelegant  dash to just make the bus platform including leaping on one bus with my bags as it was pulling off. That particular bus driver, still recovering from the shock of a leaping mike, wasn’t going to be fooled twice and refused to let me off at the railway station and insisted on seeing me dash over a busy road hauling my heavy bags and over the passenger bridge to an empty platform. At the end of the platform a puff of smoke gave away the clue that the steam train was leaving soon but hadn’t left yet – I yelled over the fence to find someone answering back and threw my bag at him and clambered over the fence – my bag wallah and I ran to the platform to find the train had left the station and I was left sweating and breathless – out of training literally.

The taxi drivers were going to charge an arm and leg so it was back to the bus station to naturally find the Kingswear one was leaving in a few seconds and another race along the Paignton platform and waving wildly at the bus driver before it leaves I leapt aboard the bus full of white haired ladies. The bus arrived at the marina at the same time as the train so at least I saw the front of the steam train this time. That left dragging the luggage down a slippery iron bridge to the marina office to find out that Aurai was due in a couple of hours, it had started to rain and the marina office was just closing. I figured I could drag the bags down to the end of the pontoon, stick them under my waterproofs and retire to a pub to dry off. When I got there Aurai had arrived early and was being tied up and a south african skipper and a swedish blonde were on deck when Tom popped his head up and said ‘anyone for wine?’, I took an instant liking to Tom. The delivery crew were cold and wet so after wine we retired to the marina showers to freshen up, yomped down the tuna and rice and marched off to the Steam Packet Inn to wait for the girls. Bags arrived with girls hidden under them just before last orders and as gentlemen Tom and I carried Alison’s bag between us until we got back to the boat whereupon, with no hint of the dramatic, Tom fell into the marina waters. Fortunately I still had a hold of the bag and in a trice a hold of Tom’s shoulder too. He dragged himself out trying not to think of what goes in the water and dripped off for a clean shower. With delivery and race crew aboard and with everyone’s luggage we were tight on personal space.  ‘Lucky Gill’ slept on the floor which had the benefit of being close enough to kick me when I erupted into snores, the boat hook was also deployed as sleep deprivation set in.

It was going to be a challenge to make breakfast in the confines of Aurai’s galley – I arose early and went for a reconnaisance tour of the area now it had stopped raining and found that the Royal Dart hotel was offering a 1.99 breakfast which we all devoured along with the optional extras such as tea and beans and hash browns (unlike FlyBE at least the seat was free, yes the airline charge for a seat). The hotel is next to a fantastic ferry – this consists of a tug boat attached to a floating barge, which performs a a balletic manouevere and pushes the barge from shore to shore of the River Dart. The girls weren’t keen to go walking in the rain – when the more observant amongst us spotted that it was only raining in one window – the one with hanging baskets. The weather turned out to be fine and sunny out of the other windows so we offered the delivery crew the chance to go sailing after their long motor in fog and rain as the girls and I wandered the streets of Dartmouth.

When I say streets of course I mean the charity shops and yacht clothing stores as if on a day release from shopping prison they were hunting for feminist books and blankets – although they didn’t seem keen on the muff cosy I pointed out.  We soon exhausted Dartmouth’s retail sector and swapped Charity shops for a church. Our interest in the 1633 beams was met by a very helpful chap who gave us a potted history before he was told that he was disturbing the blessing going on in the corner and we were all asked to leave. So we retired to the less Christian but more welcoming traditional Cherub pub where an ex RAF chap from Lossiemouth swapped flying stories of his Sea Vixen days. We walked and walked and ended up at the mouth of the Dart with its castle which used to hang a chain over the mouth of the river (I had rather hoped they had remembered to remove it before we went steaming out the next day).

Wimbledon was on with Andy Murray playing in the semi final so this was a great excuse to find somewhere to watch it, preferably with some liquid libation – the Royal Castle Hotel offered an almost empty lounge with two flat screens all tuned to Wimbledon and Pimms on tap, so we settled in for a short stay and ended up booking rooms for the night, price renegotiating after each rivetting set. Bizarrely we had a bar that was full of English supporting the Scot Andy Murray with the only Scots in the bar supporting Roddick, and a dog who would bark loudly along with the shouts of the crowd. The girls had a four poster bed with a chaise longue overlooking the fabulous atrium of the hotel and I had a large metal bedstead perfect for handcuffs (just the Gideon Bible supplied though) and overlooked the kitchen exhaust chimney.

With a splendid breakfast overlooking Dartmouth, and a spot of provisioning in the local shops, we returned to the boat to bid farewell to the delivery crew, along with the news that Clinton, the south african,  had asked the now smiling swedish blonde to marry him by arranging bamboo sticks in a park, oddly enough just around the corner from last week’s Dartmouth murder scene where police were appealing for witnesses. We fitted all of our stuff in – the girls taking the forehead bunks, me perched in a narrow bunk with a thoughfully left teddy bear and with Charles luxuriating in his captains bunk (prime position with head adjacent to the heads so you are awoken by any midnight incontinence pumping).

The wind was up and the race was on – we motored down the Dart and out to the appropriately named Start Bay where the committee boat, an old lifeboat, held sway and raised flags dictating the course and which direction you go around the buoys and friendly waves and a poop of the horn when the races started (or you struggled over the finish line). I was the least experienced of the crew (to say the least) and it was a bit of  fast learning curve as I managed to get everything wrong, but at least stayed on board. The radio bleated out messages from another boat with a threatening stance – “Your intentions are unclear, stay clear or we will be forced to retaliate” – I naturally assumed it was us that was being threatened but being last we didn’t have a boat near us and it turned out to be a photographers rib that was going to go through a repel boarders drill. The girls unravelled the winch that I had tangled up and tidied up our headsail and we were making great progress with me pointing in the correct direction until the turn around a buoy where it all went a bit Pete Tong (I also managed to do exactly the same bad manouvere in front of the committee boat at the end of the race – always good to finish with a memorable moment) and we ended up losing a good 5 minutes – to be honest the nearest boat could only be seen through high power binoculars so I am not sure it would be fair to point the fickle finger of why we came in last at me.

The winds had dropped and the three times around the course (which we had now memorised after the first time round) turned into twice around the course and back for drinks at the club. The prospects of drinkies had us all roaring round the course and we got pooped in at the finish line and headed up the Dart where in the middle of the river it was decided to drop the sail and maximise ourselves as a navigational hazard. We had been thrown out of the marina and had to come alongside a floating pontoon, which we found out was not attached to Dartmouth, requiring a ferry boat taxi service (discounted for us regattans). By heeling over so much during the race our sieve had leaked under pressure of so much water and in particular my narrow bunk bore the brunt of the sea. Since it was suggested that I might have to bunk in with the girls they, with indecent haste I have to reflect, immediately set about drying my bunk and racing off to the launderette to tumble dry it. They had also by now invested in ear plugs.

Charles and I abandoned the girls to kindly swab the decks and disinfect the boat down and leaving ‘Lucky Gill’ to make the heads more pleasant, as we headed to the yacht club for a snifter and to meet some of his relatives, who had sailed into Paimpol 55 years ago and more impressively were off skiing at the grand old age of 88. We also found out that we had somehow sneaked into fifth place, thanks to various competitors rudder breakages and people simply not turning up – perhaps they couldn’t find Start Bay. The Regatta party was in Dartmouth so in absence of any mobile comms with the girls we sent a river taxi to pick them up and to rendezvous with us – that was where it all went wrong – the river taxi said the boat was all locked up and no girlies to be found – we had the tickets although had no idea where the place was. Eventually they called, unsurprisingly for Aberdeenshire gals, they had found a bar and we met them there for Pimms and then into the meaty BBQ with lots of music, chatting to other sailors and standing in the toilet queue chatting to other sailors.

Being slightly tiddly it is amazing when your powers of rational thought just disappear. We got back to the pontoon but with no idea of how we were going to bridge the several metre gap between us and the pontoon with our boat and bunks. ‘Steal a tender’ was the obvious irrational solution and as we were untying one conveniently located nearby, Alison said ‘wait, someone is coming’. Gill was a bit more informative – ’shite, it is the owner of this tender we are untying’ so a quick undo on the untying and we were standed around whistling as the gentlemen arrived and kindly offered us a lift (thankfully their tender hadn’t been nicked). We accepted and grabbed a bottle of malt to share from our now tidy boat and boarded their motor launch for a tour.

The next days race was a rerun of the first – we even had breakfast in the Royal Dart again, although this time we had snaffled third place winning a tin mug with some Possers rum to fill it. The BBQ at night was a Spanish theme which meant eating late so we Scots got first in the queue followed quickly by the lads from the boat Windstream who shared a similar appetite to us. We must have been more tired and emotional as we ended up dancing an ill configured, and ill advised, eightsome reel to the Breton pipes. That was when Charles remembered that we had left our lifejackets in the bar at the yacht club – I volunteered recovering them and headed through streets full of saucy schoolgirls (there was a saucy school girl party on in Dartmouth which was somewhat distracting) so ended up on the last ferry over to the Yacht Club and told I had 30 seconds before it departed for the last time back that night – doing my 6 million dollar man impersonation I dashed over to the Yacht Club, grabbed the life jackets with a flourish, and was gone leaping over the gap onto the departed boat and over its safety rail in a trice. With a similar look to the bus driver whose bus I had leaped on as it pulled out, the ferry guy shook his head in general disbelief and charged me the fare. My protest that you shouldn’t pay the ferryman till he gets you to the other side fell on deaf ears.

Alison had previously washed our clothes in the marina launderette and my heavier shirts were hanging out – that would explain why at 4am there was a massive thunderstorm and a huge deluge and my shirts were now wetter than before. I know the storm was bad as I was urinating off the back of the boat into the River Dart, remembering fondly the Royal Castle Hotel with its ensuite bathroom, and couldn’t work out my pee-stream from the rain fall. The channel crossing that day was looking wet and horrid but that is another <a href=”http://www.mikeforsyth.com/index.php/2009/07/lost-in-france/”>story</a>.

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeforsyth/collections/72157621370501283/”>Photos of trip</a>

The plans were set when the weather was stunningly marvellous and the forecast was brilliant, fly to Colonsay and have a BBQ on the beach and fly back. Waking in the morning a cursory glance at the met forecast told a very different story – gusting 30 knots forecast for Islay (near Colonsay) and even the shipping forecast was for force 5 or 6 (in case we missed the island). We arrived at the airfield in glorious sunshine and our major worry was taking off with NO wind and a humid warm temperature (the gusting 30 knots seemed like a fairytale as we basked in the sun). We packed up snorkels, masks, fins, BBQ equipment and orange juice, programmed the GPS and all three planes backtracked 11 and took off once or twice on the grass and low over the concrete before clambering into the sky laden with Mike, Kim and BBQ equipment.

The flight over was uneventful skirting the south of the Edinburgh zone, over West Linton seeing a white plane below us and the shadow on the ground of a larger plane above us, crossed by the nuclear power station over to Bute then up and over to Jura to where I had swam a year ago. Down to Islay and crossing the sea to the island of Colonsay passing first over Oronsay the tidal island linked at low tide with Colonsay with a Priory and a now abandoned airfield. From there it was obvious that the Colonsay runway had been redone – a large welcoming tarmac runway was visible. Graeme landed first and on radio warned of bad turbulence on landing, followed by Richard who gave a ‘Wooooo ooooooo aaaarghhh’ on landing which wasn’t encouraging.

I was next – but had a problem actually getting the plane to drop – eventually after a few spirals over Oransay I joined crosswind, downwind then out to sea over the water crashing onto the reefs and turned for finals – as soon as I dropped below the hills the roughness started in the 30 knot gusting wind over the 300 foot hills surrounding the airfield and it was very difficult keeping the plane in any sense on track. The windsock was vertical across the runway so I was trying a diagonal approach and was over the runway too high and going sideways down it – looking like hitting the fence it was a goaround and climbing out way beyond the hills surrounding the airfield and made another approach with sweat running down my forehead.

This time it was as bad but felt more lined up, but wasn’t, lower this time though and went for it and helicopter landed and bounced onto the runway and ran along the runway. Taxied back in to be met by the others who definitely didn’t like the gusting wind landings (one guy was heading off to Coll and decided not to after the landing at Colonsay).

We tied the planes down and walked across the runway (no-one else was goingto be mad enough to land today) and over a rabbit hole covered dunescape to a deserted beach. The tide was going out and the beach was becoming more and more visible and as the others constructed the barbecue and food I donned my mask and snorkel and submerged myself on a sadly fruitless hunt for scallops. The water was surreal filled with parts of seaweed and it was difficult to tell the difference between the sand and the seaweed debris filled water. As I emerged from the deep with mask and snorkel it was heard that this was my ‘Daniel Craig moment’ – although the Wayne’s World NOT! seemed to be appended so I guess they just confused their movies. Besides although Mr Craig posseses and displays a 6 pack I am the proud owner of a firkin.

Sausages and chicken kebabs instead of scallops were a good compromise and cheesecake meant we were flying with most of the weight inside us now instead of in the hold.

Since there wasn’t any fuel on Colonsay so we had each brought a jerry can with 10 Litres of unleaded for each of us as an emergency ration. The plan was that when we reached Strathven, if we were heading south, or Glenrothes, if we were heading north, we coudl re-evaluate our fuel requirements and land and refuel at either airfield.