25th-30th August, Inverness – Caledonian Canal – Fort William

Invergordon Castle - Loch Ness

Here we are in Fort William having a crew change over a couple of days and, frankly, recovering from some extreme sports and hiking our socks off around Ben Nevis.  We had arrived in Inverness after an 18 hour sail from Orkney and so on Tuesday 26th, after a day wandering around Inverness we got through the first few locks of the Caledonian Canal and bedded down for the night.  Wednesday saw us quickly getting through Loch Ness and into the next set of locks at Fort Augustus.  [Note, the forts are named as such because they were garrisons established at various stages by Romans, English and then the British as different regimes of occupation, suppression and trading took place over the past two thousand years.  They were usually named after the Big Daddy of the day, such as Augustus who was an Italian living in Rome and William who was an orange Dutchman who had recently arrived in England.  The Scots are justly proud of having such a cosmopolitan association and so they retain the names Fort Augustus and Fort William].

The workboat coming free of the lock

Having arrived at the first lock in Fort Augustus we heard that a large workboat had broken down in one of the locks and a swing bridge was being repaired.  Using his initiative, Geoff promptly phoned his son, Chris (a world class, white water, kayaking supremo) to pick us up and take us to a grade 2/3 set of rapids for some white water rafting.  He arrived in his landrover just twenty minutes later to take us to the oudoor activity centre on the River Gary which fed into Loch Oich. Chris stuffed us into wet suits and topped us off with hard hats then took us to the rapids.  The 1 kilometre stretch of river they use is just below a hydro electric dam which occasionally dumps a large quantity of water into the river through a tunnel large enough for regular road traffic to go through.  Chris got us all into an eight man raft and told us not to think but only do what he tells us – quickly – then we set off and had a whole heap of fun with a bit of rapid chaos in the rapids.

Background – Geoff has previously been in the GB kayaking team and his son is fulltime into this sport.  More importantly Chris was looking forward to giving Geoff a dunking to pay back for all the “upbringing ” he suffered in cold water sport when he was a kid.  And Geoff was going to give as good as he got – better still he was going to get his revenge in first!  The result was tremendous fun, and the score was Chris went in twice, Geoff twice, also Jenny and Rob, who had the best “down time” achieved this year – he was under our raft and in the broiling water for a very long time and came out still alive and kicking which is not bad for a spirited 67 year old.  So, it being so wet and heading towards twilight, we have no photographs to show.  We even had a second trip down because we all thought it was so awesome.

The next day we got through Loch Oich and to the top of the final staircase of 9 locks before getting out at Fort William and had a fine supper of Haggis, before going across to the yacht Shimla II to have a drink or two - thanks Simon.  It turned out that Geoff and Simon had friends in common in the world of high latitude sailing, so they talked a bit about Geoff’s trip being planned next year for the Arctic.  Simon’s background includes involvement with Medex which helps to run the medical services for the base camp at Mount Everest. 

The final staircase of lochs to Fort William, and the train to Mallaig that inspired JK Rowling's train to Hogwarts in the Harry Potter novels.

On Friday 28th August we finally got to Fort William and tied up here.  Jenny and I walked for five hours up into Glen Nevis and reached the Deer Dail top which gave us a magnificent view of the surrounding hills, but always with Ben Nevis capped by cloud. 

A rainbow on the side of Ben Nevis

The following day, we went again, but to a walk starting at the southern end of the valley, which meant we were walking a twelve mile round trip before we got to the walk itself and it was at this point that I realised I had been on this boat for a month and not had any walking whatsoever!  But we did do that amazing bicycle ride in Stromness, Orkney – so the legs cannot have withered and wasted entirely.

Paula and Rob left the boat on Saturday (with my waterproof trousers – grrr!) and Jenny left today, Sunday 30th August.  Duncan and I cleaned out the boat, sorted out some preparations for sailing tomorrow and further passages towards Ireland and we now await Jackie to join us at 0730 tomorrow morning.   The rest of this blog will be much more interesting – six days in the canal is too much for any sailor to bear!

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