Lismore Island

Lismore Island. Photo by Neil Buckland

On the map Lismore is an stretchy splinter, a bony rock finger pointing to Duart Castle on Mull. From the Oban/Mull ferry that finger is pointing to a turbulent race around Lismore’s outliers, Eilean Musdile and Lady’s Rock. Approaching Lismore from Port Appin the island looks fluffy edged, green and decidedly friendly especially if you’ve just come from the fearsome buttress walls of Eilean nan Ron and Handa. Today, from where I sit in my kayak it looks like a relaxed, sensible farm that happens to be surrounded by salt water.

Trees! Photo by Neil Buckland

It’s just the sort of place that would have a yellow sign for a “Garden Open to the Public”, and it does have such a sign. It’s The Secret Garden, in the heart of a biodynamic farm about a kilometre’s walk in from the pier at Acnacroish. The garden encourages native flowering plants that support pollinating insects. That’s how Col and I garden back home. I could easily get homesick.

Neil and I could park up the boats and take a walk to see the garden. We could have a bowl of homemade soup or a cream tea on little tables surrounded by roses. But we have a weather window of less than 24 hours. It’s just ok for today but a big change is coming by tomorrow lunchtime. We can either explore the island on foot or paddle round it. The coming wind will rule out paddling for a good while so we tootle on, enjoying blue skies and taking in the sights.

Castle Stalker. Castle Stalker looks familiar, nagging away in my diminishing memory files. A pocket sized, elegant mediaeval block surrounded by mud at low water. Aaah yes! It’s Castle Aaargh from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Think flying dead cow. We should be paddling in to a fanfare cascade of brassy trumpets and a flotilla of swallows. “Our Quest is at an end!” declared Arthur, King of the Britons. A British King and one other jolly good British chap called Patsy should be able to reclaim the Holy Grail. Remember? But they’re met by a deluge of schoolboy French accented insults, followed by the cow, a good farmyard of lesser animals and a lot of ordure. Foreigners just don’t know how to play the game. Perhaps not the best of Monty Python but still  a lovely, silly film.

We take a little potter round Shuna Island, with its “luxury 5 star accommodation” hotel. I want to see what people who pay lots to stay on an island look like. None show themselves so we take tiny island hops back down to the west side of Lismore. You could circumnavigate all of them but we’re dedicated to having an easy pootle of a day.

Approaching Castle Coffein. Photoi by Neil

When we reach Castle Coeffin we’re both drawn to setting up camp. There’s a storybook tight curve of bay, looking south west to where the setting sun will light up Mull. The lumpy ruin is waiting to be explored, nothing too challenging and a driftwood beach below. It would make a perfect campsite and campfire, for next time. It’s too early to stop unless we give up the idea of a circumnavigation. We're less than a third of the way down the west side. We need, if we can, to get much further down, to the south side of Bernera Island.

Day 1 Strava by Neil Buckland

There’s a blue sky. And there’s a freshening relentless headwind. We nearly make it. But not quite. Our camp is a deep vee inlet, smothered in wraic running up to a shelf of rough grass wide enough for two tents. Great place for midges but it’s too windy for them. We’re on the north side of an isthmus connecting Bernera Island and Lismore. If it were silvery sand it would be a tombola beach and we’d be pleased to be there. But it’s un-loveable, mucky rocks with a bit of fishing and farming jetsam. At our backs is a stone wall propping up a farm gate reinforced with tangled rusty barbed wire.  

Camp Mucky of the Dead Sheep. Photo by Neil Buckland

Bernera Bay, so much more desirable, is close enough to lob a small-sized farm animal  over to it. And there is a slight smell of rotting something. “Will it be ok?” We ask each other. “It’ll be bloomin’ marvelous.” Because neither of us feels like facing that wind again this evening. You soon get used to dead sheep smell.

Above Bernera Bay, in our envious view, are some luscious fields enclosed by sturdy stone walls. No barbed wire. If we’d’ve done the extra mile that’s where we would have been. “Very tidy” my old neighbour Emrys would call it, a very tidy farmscape. The fields are spacey and gently sloping. They’ve had just the right amount of grazing. It’s a nice, south west facing camp site.

We’re a bit jealous really perched up on our ledge two tents, nettles, and not much of a view. But the main thing is our tents are up, everything is set up for the night, we’ve eaten and Neil has pulled out some beers from his miraculous holds.

And then the main entertainment of the evening arrives: two men with two tents. Arthur, King of the Britons and Patsy? Or it could be Lord Bedivere. But I prefer Patsy. Lord Bedivere is a bit silly don't you think? Their tents go up smartly. One red, guys lines twang tautly, palatial by our standards, one modest yellow but still tidy and very upright.

 And then the cows arrive. That’s cows, calves, heifers, bullocks and…oh here we go, a very large tan bull. “Fetchez le vache” as the French knight said. These bovines are calm and beautifully behaved but King Arthur less so. He doesn’t like it when they start to lick the palace tents as if they were just giant, shiny salt licks. Our man starts leaping around and running at them at them waving his arms and yelling. He'd be waving Excalibur if only he hadn't stashed it in his tent.

Two things happen. The cows start a little half-hearted stampede. And Neil and I start to laugh. Soon we’re helpless with laughter. It could be the Holy Grail effect. The flying cow. It’s not very nice of us. It’s actually nervous laughter. Surely the King knows better? Would it be worth us going over and having a little chat? Something about his demeanour suggests not.

Cows are inquisitive but not vicious. My children’s Dad used to lie in the middle of a field of cows to show me that cows are curious, they will come right up to you, encircle you and sniff warm air over you, but they won’t tread on you. I didn’t believe it till I saw it. But if you run at them shouting you confuse and frighten them and then the risk is that the herd’s single brain cell will set them in stampede mode. And then they have no idea what they’re doing or what they’re trampling on. Tents, King Arthur and Patsy, they don’t notice. They’re hysterical. And they’re really big animals. And when calves are in the mix there’s double trouble.

The performance goes on for hours. We finish the beer and go on to a bit of Bunnahabhain. I have small hatches in Ethel so I bring the whisky flask and Neil the beer. We’re weak with laughter. It looks to me as if those tents are in the cows’ favourite evening spot. They always go there of an evening.

I have special tent moving skills. Because I'm strong and sturdy. And indecisive.

It’s not hard to move a tent and that’s what I would do. But these guys are determined to make a stand and somehow Neil and I laugh ourselves into a stupor and the cows must have finally moved off because when we get up in the morning the cows are gone and the tents are still there though the guy lines are definitely a bit flappy.

Next morning we meet up with Arthur and Patsy launching from Bernera Bay. It’s a very nice beach. They could have set up camp there. A little camp fire would have deterred flying cow attack. To our surprise they are not at all pleased to see us. Arthur can’t bring himself to look straight at us. “We heard we amused you last night.” Oh dear.  Sound carries further than you might think.

As I don’t have my hearing aids in I have actually no idea what he’s just said so I point out, in a friendly way, that cows and calves together can be a dangerous mix. These wise words are definitely not welcomed so we scuttle off. By the time we get back to Port Appin their van has already gone. Probably just as well.

Neil's second day Strava

Why is the wind always on the nose? It hasn’t really been a pootle. We’re promising ourselves that we’ll go get a table at The Pierhouse Hotel and sit down and eat and have a beer. Or two. It’s an award winning restaurant. Oh heaven. The smell of garlic and butter floats to us across the water. Happy eaters look down at us as we carry the boats up the beach. But the kitchen has closed. We are too late. Punishment for mean laughter perhaps.

But we have circumnavigated Shuna, Lismore and Bernera (as far as it could be circumnavigated at low tide) and slept on Lismore. So I owe Aban, the charity that gets young people out on adventures, £13 and I owe Neil a big thank you for coming up from Wales to share this adventure with me. It was fun. It was a laugh.

I've been to Lismore before, years ago with Amy and Rosie. Aren't they sweet? They wouldn't have laughed meanly at Arthur and Patsy. Photo by Pen

By early evening the forecasted rain and wind had arrived. Next morning Neil headed home to Wales and I headed over to Rosie’s north of Glasgow. It was fantastic to spread out emotionally and physically with people that I love, Rosie, my son in law Mark and glorious much loved granddaughter Robyn. There were cartwheels. We had a picnic. There was even a party with nice people and amazing cooking.

My personal compass was set North for Orkney and then Shetland. The weather had settled a bit but not enough yet for the far North. Oban was only a couple of hours away. After a serious discussion with young Robyn I decided to head back to Oban, take the ferry to Mull and nip over to Fionnphort and an easy sheltered crossing for Iona. “The thing is,” counselled Robyn, aged 7, “Where do you really want to be? You have to listen to your heart. “ Iona, I decided. I definitely have unfinished business there. And the crossing is sheltered from the wind and swell.

I was on my way to Oban. I nearly got there. And then I found I had pulled into a layby and I fell apart. I made a phone call to my man, all slobber and incoherence. “I think I might come home.” I blubbered. “Now.” I couldn’t say why because I didn’t know except that quite a lot of my kit was falling apart, and my phone, my lifeline to him was falling apart and now I was too. My head didn’t know why. But my body knew.

I pulled up at the top of our track, home again, some 9 hours later. And 24 hours later I was flat out, literally, in bed. I had Covid. Luckily, even though my brain couldn’t work it out, even though my heart wanted something different, my body had the sense to turn me round and get me back to the safety of my Man and my Cats. 

If I stay away too long Col develops special Juke Box Repair Skills actually in the kitchen.

And Igs develops special compost bin skills with advanced tummy twisting.

Covid this time was quite bad and has persisted. Five days of total wipeout, five weeks till I felt properly better. Thank goodness I didn’t have it in a ten or a campsite. The virus has definitely outstayed it’s welcome but today I tested negative. I gave it to Col too and he got thru it in less than a week. Luckily the cats were impervious.

My next step is a quick nip down to Devon where Amy is working before back to Pembrokeshire and Ramsey. That’s the plan. I have had absolutely no success with persuading any Devon island owners to let me camp. They don’t seem to do charity. But a wonderful Bristol paddler called Margarita has come up for an idea for circumnavigating Spike Island. Where? Spike Island?

All the best photos are by Neil, as ever

https://www.tinmanphotography.co.uk/

Castle Aargh, for your enjoyment

https://youtu.be/2PckeXD7Xyc