Day 51/57 - Caledonian Canal - Laggan to Banavie (Fort William)

Day 51 Laggan to Banavie 20th June, 2017
Lunar Sea at Laggan

What happened - there was sun and no wind!!
Laggan was only a small stopover and not much there apart from a few cottages and a small marina, the base for West Highland Sailing - no pub but does boast a floating restaurant (this was closed).  It is on part of the Great Glen Way however, so the main road is not far away.  Pauline made use of this to catch a Coach in the morning to Fort William for her planned trip home.  Before which she managed to fit in a return rail journey to Mallaig which she recommended to us when we got to Fort William.
Lunar Sea and Floating Restaurant 'Eagle'

For us left in board that hadn't jumped ship we were to have a glorious sunny rest of the day.  Would it continue or were there rain clouds and Scotch miss around the corner.  As it happened we were lucky for once and the sunshine continued - at least for today.

We had our first lock to go down at Laggan and then a short passage until we got to Loch Lochy.
 
Eastern Entrance to Loch Lochy from Laggan

This was what we had come up here for.  The scenery was stunning all along the 10 miles of the Loch and the first view of Ben Nevis with its snow still on the Northern faces.  We were motoring all the way at slow speed to fully enjoy all the 'vistas'.

First Sight of Ben Nevis

At the Western end of Loch Lochy is Gairlochy. A lock, swing bridge and second lock. The second lock was open fully and we found out that the swing bridge had a problem.  It made sense to stop at the waiting pontoon and go ashore for a look see.

Gairlocky waiting Pontoons


We found out that the swing bridge was open to Boat traffic just not to Road traffic as the shut interlock was not working.  Good for us so we waited for an opening behind 'Cruiser' a large cruising boat - it was a tight squeeze but we just made it.  Then just one more swing bridge at Moy and a couple of miles to the top of Neptune's Staircase at Banavie the nearest point to Fort William for a pontoon mooring with electricity.

Ben Nevis from Canal

Lunar Sea at Banavie

It was just one of probably only a few lovely days in our whole adventure. 

Lunar Sea at Banavie (Fort William) Ben Nevis behind

It was Tuesday and Mick and Linda were to leave us on Thursday and it was decision time again we still had until Saturday before our licence ran out.  We had already decided that we weren't going to be heading too far North after we left the Canal and not go over the top of Scotland to Orkneys and a further trip in the Caledonian. 
With the weather forecast for the weekend not looking good - nothing new there - we would stay put and look again later.  Mick and Linda left us as planned and so on Friday with no real improvement in the forecast we went and saw the Sea Lock Lockmaster at Corpach and extended our 'licence'  to cover a month until 16th July - we were coming home for a couple of weeks break from the trip and the incessant bad weather and hopefully return to some better weather.

It would also give me a chance to get on ebay to pick up some spares for my return and us a chance to get a look around the area and a trip to Mallaig. 
We were booked on the Caledonian Sleeper on Monday night. . . . . . .


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Preparations

Image
Luckily I have not been in paid work for 6 months so have had time to concentrate on the boats preparations. This has included all the little jobs on an on-going list as well as numerous others as I have found them. The main jobs over the last year have been; fitting a Hydravane wind steering; fitting 2 new port hatches above the saloon to give more light; renewing deck head coverings; extensive inventory and rationalization of all the equipment and spare gear; repainting of deck; fitting an AIS; having a new cockpit cover made. Boat is now stored up and ready for our around Britain adventure. Planned 2 year route
Read more

2022 Fourth Leg - Weymouth to Gosport

Image
  Around Britain – Year 3 – Portishead to Ramsgate – 2022. Day 34 – 4 th July – Weymouth to Poole – 30 miles We stayed in Weymouth for 3 days and met up with Julia’s friends Peter and Barbara who were staying in a hotel for the weekend.   As they had a car, we were able to take a trip to Portland to have a look at the famous Portland Race form above.   You certainly wouldn’t want to sail through it as one sailing boat was doing and getting bashed about all over the place.   The reason for trying to go as close to the Bill as possible became so much clearer from above and the waters to the East were totally smooth.             A boat called Caveman rafted to us for a couple of nights.   They were heading to the Scilly Isles.   He had been to sea as an Engineer also so you can imagine all the Lamp Swinging that took place.             The passage from Weymouth to Poole is fairly-straight forward with just the Lulworth Firing Range to be clear of if they are firing, they were the d
Read more

2022 - Second Leg - Penzance to Plymouth

Image
Around Britain – Year 3 – Portishead to Ramsgate – 2022.   Leg 2 - Penzance to Plymouth Day 13 – 13 th June – Penzance to Falmouth – 36 miles .   Penzance Wet Harbour Our first impression of Penzance wasn’t a good one, in the area around the train station and the main street running down to it.  For the sailor, the wet harbour was still very much a commercial one. With fishing boats and large cargo boats used to carry goods to the Scilly Isle’s.  Some areas were set aside for yachts, but they would always be rafted and in our case, we were initially on the outside of four other boats.  What with the rafting and the clambering over the inner boats and the new vertical ladder arrangements to get ashore, this made it quite a hazardous experience?  One that Julia had decided that we would book ourselves into a hotel for a couple of nights, and with the promise of a bath this was a great option.  The hotel was in Chapel Street which turned out to be in the old part of town and gave us a mu
Read more