Invernessing then Kyle of Lochalsh to Loch Nevis and Mallaig

Despite the rain and greyness, we saw a little weather window emerging and so squelched up to the train station to take the trip to Inverness. This had proved hard to plan as the train crews were on strike on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. The strange "drivers to open the doors" dispute that has gone on for ages. The views form the train (when it runs) are stunning - even with a  grey background. The only less than stunning bit were the two 15 year old girls from Skye sitting opposite us. One had a very loud voice that projected well.  Sadly it just kept doing that and she would loudly talk about anything and everything - we can confirm that she is unlikely to join Mensa.

Although we'd done some entertaining stuff whilst there, it was time to move from the rather exposed mooring since, finally, a dry and warmer day was forecast. A total reverse of the weather earlier in the year where Scotland was in sun and the south of England was flooded. Recently it had been our turn to suffer a little but today a bright yellow thing was peeping out from the word go. Of course, the word go is pretty late for us compared to many working folks.....

Everyone had perked up a lot after the recent deluges. The view of the Skye bridge had improved dramatically:

The Faroese folks on the slightly broken converted MFV used the time to dry out everything they could find it seemed. Perhaps their deck isn't as watertight as one would like:

We were impressed that people who live on islands that are normally between 4 to 11 centigrade and where the climate varies from wet to extremely wet, have shorts and sleeveless T-shirts. Tough race. The women seemed entranced by the multitude of jellyfish around us too:

Perhaps compared to the staple diet of salt fish they had on board jellyfish look active and appealing?

En route south (planning to head to slightly better weather, we have kind of assumed that summer "up north" is now over!) we were rapidly overtaken by Hugh McCaig, the Ecurie Ecosse man in his flying machine. The stabilisers went on so we didn't fall at a funny angle into the large hole in the water that his copious diesel burn was creating:

Heading out of the narrows, we touched 10 knots over the ground at a pretty normal 1475rpm cruise (ie about 6.3 through the water). Sadly, the captain was just too slow with the camera so this image of the flybridge plotter was taken a little too late but you get the idea:

9.9 knots is still impressive. Luckily the little ferry went across ahead of us - no idea how we could have stopped for him really. We made a litle detour into Loch Nevis en route to. Nevis = heaven by the way. The nearby loch is called Loch Hourn and that means hell. Hence the little village on the peninsular stands between heaven and hell.

At the entrance to Loch Nevis, a statue of "Our Lady" welcomes you / protects you looking a little lost amongst the dramatic scenery:

The Loch itself is very scenic and if the wind had been in a different direction it would have been a good spot to anchor (although as usual, all the really good anchoring spots have been filled with feeble 15 ton moorings. Grr.)

We happily trundled into Mallaig and took up a nice hammerhead berth. We even managed dinner outside in the aft cockpit. Wow. Summer returning perhaps? Then we looked at the longer term forecast and realised how wrong we were.

It was just so nice to have a full trip on the flybridge again and to feel warm so all was well with the world.