Our 2019 cruise around Scotland started in Port Ellen on the isle of Islay which won our good variety award as there was lots of good walks in the area, a good point of interest, to go and explore as well as shops to buy your groceries in. After Port Ellen, we went to Gigha which had a good mooring field as well as a small pontoon. We went onto the mooring so that we could get our dinghy Salty Sausage out on the water and not as some people believe, that we were too tight to pay the extra £5. We spent the extra £5 in the restaurant so a good place to spend it, in our opinion.
After Gigha, we went to Tayvallich which was an incredibly picturesque little spot and has an anchorage around the corner. There are only three mooring balls there, but there is a pontoon so that you can get off your yacht to explore. Then it was on to Ardfern as we wanted to but some bolts and some pilot notes. It did have a great chandler as well as loads of mooring balls and a visitor pontoon.
From there we went to Oban and we went to Oban Marina which is on the island of Kerrera, which got our wooden spoon award as the place that you pay for the showers is on the outside of the shower space in the public area, so if your shower cuts out while you are having your shower, you have to go into the public space stark naked to put more money in. There was however lots of points of interest, good shops and for me somewhere you could get a good massage. Not much protection from southerly winds, so we went to Dunstaffnaige which had good protection from Southerly winds but not much else from an interest point of view.
After that we went to Loch Aline which we did not see at its best as the weather was dreadful. If we had managed to get off Salty Lass we could of gone and looked for fossils. From there it was Tobermory, which has loads of mooring balls and a good pontoon. There is also some good shops, some good walks and some good points of interest.
From there we finally dropped the hook at Loch de Droma Buidhe, which was a great place for us to drop the hook, but there was nothing to do there and this is something that we have learned about ourselves in that we want to be able to do something when we arrive at a place.
As time was a marching on, we started our trip down, so we we went back to Oban, but this time we went to Oban Transit marina, it has great access to the shops, but you can only stay there for two nights. The showers here were great and won our second prize for the toilet facilities. We then tried another anchorage before heading to the Crinan canal.
The Crinin canal was a challenge and at the end of the challenge, we can safely say that Beverley is not a canal person. Coming out of the Crinan, we got caught in a blow, so we headed for Tarbot which had a really nice marina in the old harbour. It won the best toilet facilities as they had heated floors and everything.
We then had a really nice sail over to Largs where we got our sail repaired by Saturn Sails. As soon as we had got the sail on, we nipped over to Millport, which got our most surprising award as we had never heard of the place before and it was a rather nice place and had some cracking moorings.
From there we went to Troon, where if you are the owner of a Trans Europe card, you can get five nights at half price, which can really cut the costs of your cruising. We then went over to Lamlash where it was lashing it down. We certainly did not see Lamlash at its best, there was then a weather window that allowed us to cross the North Channel in good weather, which is exactly what we did.
