Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ters during the season, and very relaxing it is too; it's generally insect-free out on the loch
and anyway the Sileas , though it always seems very quiet and even sedate as it putters
along, is easily faster than any midge.
I do have slightly mixed feelings about this stretch of water, all the same. When we
had the Drascombe rigged we discovered Loch Shiel has extremely capricious winds. Ca-
pricious is what Les christened them, anyway. I believe my term was 'fucking annoying'.
You could be tacking happily across the loch in a fine strong breeze one second, only to
have it disappear utterly in the next moment, and then, a random and therefore completely
unpredictable amount of time later, just as you were beginning to think about firing up
the motor, the wind would come back. Usually from exactly the opposite direction from
before, necessitating some rapid resetting of sails. We put this meteorological eccentricity
down to the numerous tall mountains at the Glenfinnan end of the loch; they get in the
way of the wind and make it swirl.
Sometimes the wind wouldn't come back at all and we'd be left sitting there in per-
fectly calm water, as though we'd been deposited on the world's biggest mirror. This led
to behaviour that Les designated - rather unkindly, I thought - as Speculative Sailing.
Speculative Sailing consists of sitting in one's boat in conditions of absolutely zero
wind speed, with no appreciable movement whatsoever, save possibly that of the general
mass of water in the loch moving from its head towards its distant outflow (worth, oh,
a good millimetre per day or so), under a sky that is either cloudless or, if clouded, ut-
terly still, Then, when one's chum (played here by Mr Leslie McFarlane) - understand-
ably bored after an hour or so of languishing becalmed like this going nowhere - suggests
starting the damn engine, oneself has to jump up, point three or four miles down the loch
and saying something like, 'Why, no! Look; there's a wee sort of ruffled looking bit of
water way down there. See? There is! No, really! And it's sort of heading this way. Let's
just leave it a bit longer …'
Pitiable, really.
My other resentment dates from the time of Joanie's party down the loch. This was
last summer (2002 as I write this). Donald-John and Joanie, like Les and Aileen, are both
teachers who live in Glenfinnan. For Joanie's 50th, Donald-John thought it would be a
laugh if the party was held at one of the pebble beaches a few miles down the loch, so
people set up a makeshift pier, an oil-drum-size barbie, a couple of shelters in case it
rained (it didn't) and we all took boats and drink, food and fold-up camping furniture.
Ann and I went with Les, Aileen and their daughter, the lovely Eilidh. A very fine time
was had. My principal memory is of Ian McFarlane (no relation) piping energetically
while his dad Charlie tramped back along the shore with an unfeasibly large tree trunk
perched on his shoulder, bound for the fire. That and Donald-John's T-shirt, which bore
the legend 'The Liver is Evil and Must be Punished .'
Search WWH ::




Custom Search