Kilmelford happy time and a rescue

We all had the most relaxing night swinging gently around the mooring buoy. Calm, quiet, even Sheila the insomniac had a good night. An earlier start than normal was needed to take Penny the doglet ashore in the RIB for the obvious, then breakfast in the sun, with the doors open and a sunny vista over the loch. All looked well:

We headed ashore, and admired the wonderful old Caterpillar D8 'dozer still in use by the yard:

together with the rig used to launch and retrieve boats from the slipway:

So little change since our first visit here 11 years since. The JCB used to level the yard after the dozer has messed it up was still around, only the sad old crane has finally gone, replaced by a telehandler that looks way too modern in the setting of this timeless and lovely boatyard. 

We avoided the death defying walk along the main road to the village as Sheila took us there by car. Then we walked up the loch shore to Melfort village and found that the traffic on the road (no pavement of course) was way busier than we remembered. Was that just our advancing age or does Saturday holiday let changeover make a big difference? A local reassured us that our memories were intact.

You get nice views of the moorings as you wander along - another but this time pretty easy "spot the Nordhavn" moment:

We arrived in the Melfort Village holiday complex which sounds like a Butlins, but is actually a few pretty old cottages developed into a tasteful holiday area. We planned to raid the well rated Gunpowder cafe place for coffee. Much needed on such a lovely warm day. Only we had failed on our basic research, it doesn't open until noon. Not wanting to sit around for an hour or so, we dejectedly chatted and decided to park ourselves on a picnic bench near the office, grumble about the lack of coffee and consume the less tempting but way better for us water we'd brought along.

A large and kind of "Jolly hockey sticks" lady then appeared from the office:

Fully expecting to be told to go away, we were more than pleased when she told us that there was take away coffee and ice-cream available from the little shop within the office. She then said that she was the manager, the staff were busy cleaning (change-over day) but if we knew how to use the Nespresso machine we could have a coffee. She got fresh water for it, but then found there were only two coffee pods left. She tried (and failed) to find more but as three of us opted for ice-creams that was not a problem. We fear that her maths was pretty bad though for a manager. She kindly gave us a free coffee for Niall as there was no milk and nobody bar us who knew how the machine worked. For three ices, we paid £3.50. Kind of supermarket prices, not with the normal mark-up that somewhere with a tiny turnover and a captive market makes. We didn't argue though and the refreshment was much enjoyed.

We walked back, dodging the odd car and then were driven to the Loch Melfort Hotel for a splendid lunch. The hotel was dog friendly, had well trained and helpful staff and stunning views. All was good. Have a look at the hotel website link. The restaurant and terrace area has views like this:

which all the diners (bar perhaps Penny) enjoyed. She seemed partial to a bit of venison burger instead. The lure of soft toys with a local flavour from the little shop was resisted, but a table of German visitors seemed most taken with their sheep and Nessie, inviting them to their lunch table but denying them the lovely loch views:

We were dropped back to Kilmelford, had a chat with David the owner and another boat owner John, sorted out the arrangements for a supermarket raid the next day and returned to the boat by RIB. The excellent, warm and sunny day was rounded off by a calm evening with a beautiful sunset which started like this:

and ended like this:

All in all one of those special days.

On Sunday we joined David, the owner of the boatyard, two other boat owners and one of David's daughters for the half hour drive into the bright lights of Oban. Lucky that he has a 7 seater car. Lidl and Tesco were raided and a very full car returned. That was so kind, not many places where the owner would offer a lift to help prevent scurvy. We returned to the boat to stow away our fresh produce and had a chilled Wimbledon tennis orientated kind of afternoon.

Monday was a real mix of activities. The genset was busy topping up the batteries, we were busy doing a few admin bits and then we headed ashore to see David and pay him for the mooring buoy use. Arriving on their pontoon in the RIB we chatted to another yacht owner (Scott, who had also been on the supermarket run) then up to the office, David was in good form but before we could sort out the high finance, a woman came in, slightly panicked,  Her husband was in a little Shetland motor boat, the main outboard had cut out and would not restart and the backup wasn't pumping any cooling water around so had to be shut down. He was close to the rocky shore, anchored and stressed. So, we took our RIB and rescued him, carefully towing him into deeper water then putting the boat in an alongside tow (our stern well aft of his!) and bringing him to a little spare space on the pontoon.  They were so grateful for the help which was willingly given. Here is the "casualty craft" safely moored:

The owner remarked that he had just completed his Level 2 powerboat certificate - sadly that does not make an outboard engine behave any better.

After a very late and strange lunch on board we took our life into our hands and walked along the main road into the village as far as the Cuilfail hotel:

All main road, the bit up to the start of the village has no path so as the articulated timber trucks come thundering along, you have to dive into the hedgerow. Lovely. We went to the Cuilfail hotel for old time's sake. When we were here in 2013 / 2016 we had some good lunches there and good local beer too. The reports from locals said that the place was seriously run down now, not serving lunches, closed Sunday and Monday for evening meals and generally in dire need of modernisation. Well, we opened the front door, found the bar area in darkness and a general air of decay about the place. Then the owner who we'd met and chatted to before (just after he had bought the hotel) appeared, turned on the lights for us, served drinks and chatted, It was clear that they are in wind down mode, doing what they could as a couple and with one chef. He mentioned the trouble in getting staff locally and how they had given up now, cutting down on their offering of food and the number of rooms they let out too. Sad to see, the place used to be the centre of the village and frequented by the locals - not any more. 

Once more braving the trucks we returned to the yacht haven and enjoyed lovely cuddles with Missie:

a wire haired pointing Griffon. She was on a visiting Dutch yacht and loved attention which was happily given. All in all, a good day. Returning to the mothership, we recovered the RIB ready to head off relatively early in the morning. You have to respect the tide times here!