Enjoying Bute - almost by bike

The two pesky fold up bikes that live in the lazarette and take lumps out of the captain's ankles from time to time were exhumed and the tyres pumped up for the first time this year. A cycle ride into Rothesay beckoned and a little trip to the big Co-op store too. Our cheapo elderly bikes are far from posh - when new they looked like this:

Now there is a little more rust on them. They do get ignored / sworn about regularly. Finally ready we headed off but as we left the marina the captain noticed that he had a squashy rear tyre - on the bike that is. Behave.

Yes, the 20 plus year old inner tube had probably given up the ghost. So, bikes wheeled back to the boat, we walked in instead.  After a major disappointment (finding Musiker the rather good cafe with close by outdoor seating was closed as it was Monday), we managed to get some lunch courtesy of Ambience on the sea front. With no pre-planning, purely by chance,  we had stumbled onto a place with good food and exemplary friendly service.

Upon our return, the captain tried to fix the pesky inner tube but upon removal it was proclaimed as "life extinct". One attempt to patch the leaky area ended up with us realising that 20 year old puncture repair kit glue is not terribly good either.

So, it was walking time instead. That allowed us to admire the local yachts:

We did the obligatory walk into Rothesay so we could raid the Co-op (yes, there are two to choose from here, one is terribly well catered for, as lomf as the Co-op stock it).

Bute has some strange visitor attractions, here are the Trip Advisor top rated offerings:

Having seen both of them before we resisted this time. (To be fair, thanks to Covid the amazing Mount Stuart house was closed to visitors. Pennies could still be spent though)

The weather did not play nicely with us so we had a couple of days purely on the boat thanks to wind and rain. The marina at Port Bannatyne was in no way this busy:

or that sunny, hence a borrowed picture. Ditto for the waterfront:

Despite the best efforts of the weather to dampen things we had a great time on Bute. We also saw the folks who did the video of the fish shoals in Campbeltown, Alan and Tisha. They arrived on their yacht Seagull. This is their first year of retirement and we recognised the happy expressions as they realised that they did not have to rush back for the start of term. Oh yes.

We posted a pciture of the Waverley paddle steamer and commented how it was nice to see her out again after the major repair work. Well, guess what. Have a read of:

Waverley crashes into pier