It was a sparkling three-mile run over to Ardrishaig. At this township on an arm of Loch Fyne is the start of the Crinan Canal, and the passage of this link would deliver us into the heart of the Western Islands. We travelled in the company of a cool sun, which makes all travel endurable. Arran and Ardlamont Point were again to the south, with the excellence of picture postcards.
There were glittering lumps of waves, mere superficial sports of water with no weight behind them, and we took time to photograph each other, the blue-painted canoes merging into the sea’s colour, and behind them the heights of Knapdale. During most of the journey we were also engaged in a planning conference relating to our progress on the far side of the canal. The canal itself we faced with an almost apologetic sense of anticipation, hoping that any public we might have by this time would excuse our passage through these tame waters, and set off their soft seclusion against the strenuous routes which lay ahead. This attitude, as we were to discover, was a serious underestimate of the effort necessary to negotiate the Crinan Canal, and we would shortly know more of this.
The canal starts at a sea-lock in Ardrishaig harbour, and runs almost due north for about two miles parallel to the main road, along the shallowing shore of Loch Gilp. One of our early confident theories had been that the passage of canals would not only be extremely simple to us, but would demonstrate in a conclusive way the special merit of our canoes. This was another claim which had been prominently featured in that celebrated first article written by Seumas: ‘Our canoes are portable,’ he had declared. ‘We carry them round the locks!’ Since the penning of these brave words, a warning note had been struck by our arm-wrenching experience at Bowling on the day of departure. But, we felt, we had travelled far, and hardened, since then. We were now salt-water men, and it would take more than canals to affright us. We cunningly steered a course as far into Loch Gilp as the tide would allow, and grounded eventually at a spot half a mile north of the pier, thereby skipping the first group of locks, and leaving only a stretch of shore, sand, and canal bank over which the canoes would have to be carried before they could be launched in the canal.
The tide was at its lowest, and the stretch of jagged foreshore which lay between us and the road was long indeed. A group of young men hastened off the highway and gathered above the tidemark to watch us arrive. We splashed ashore, each man getting his canoe as far out of the water as he could manage single-handed. Then we bent to our toil.
We had found by this time that the best method of lifting a loaded canoe by a two-man snatch was for us to stand, one on each side of the cockpit, bend and reach well below the hull, and with fingers hooked over one of the keel strips, lift, walking crabwise in the direction of the pointing bow. On a slimy foreshore at low tide, in light canvas shoes pulled on over bare feet, and on a footing which – as on most west-coast shores – was sharp and sizable boulders rather than pebbles, this was a galling labour. Each of us, lurching for a foothold, found it impossible to avoid nudging the other in mid-step, so that a safely braced stride was achieved only by a rigid push or pull which staggered the fellow-bearer. Toes were bent excruciatingly into sharp clefts; ankles and shins were ravaged; and we passed the higher boulders, not by stepping up on them, which would have tilted the whole four-legged beast to destruction, but by kneeling on them, offering the shrinking flesh to the convex caress of limpets and barnacles. There is also, in the whole posture of two people straining together above a narrow beam, a facial proximity which tries the humour. In this way we wagged up the shore with the canoes in relays. At the limit of endurance we would lower one burden on to the beach, and go back for the other, hoping to carry it farther. Between each relay we paused to recover, for lengthening intervals.
To the lads on the beach our distress was obvious, and at first only their shyness and our pride prevented a rally of helpers. Eventually their diffidence broke down only a moment before ours. ‘Come on and give them a hand!’ said one, and they plunged in a courteous flock towards us, sensibly shod, and heaved the canoes up the beach and over the road like battering rams going for a city wall. We were left behind, weak and shaking in the knees, shouldering our paddles like pikemen discarded in a foray.
We saw the canoes parked on the sloping canal bank, surrounded by a growing crowd of which our helpers formed a proprietary nucleus. Seumas and I went to the canal office to bargain for the use of the water, bringing a still persuasive enthusiasm to our assurances that none of the lock gates would require to be opened for our passage. ‘We carry them round the locks!’ Mr Livingstone, the very able executive who ushers the varied traffic of the canal on its way, had read the words himself in the Daily Record a week ago. He charged nothing, and sped us on our way in an encouraging manner, as he does to such a range of craft.
Shortly, we were dipping the canoes afloat, and were off paddling up the canal. We were glad to be moving, for a cold wind was coming from the north-west, strong enough to push at our faces and to set us swinging strenuously at the paddles. There seems always to be a wind, and a headwind at that, in our Scots canals, channelled as they are in the isthmus clefts which nature has not quite finished off. It is always a cold wind, and, lacking the rhythm and the courtesy of the seawinds, plucks frontally at a canoeist and tries to break his heart.
A canoeist on a canal is a very low form of nautical life, overlooked by even small children on the banks, while the waterway, edging past the ends of villa gardens, rarely loses a suburban character. It is no place to enjoy the spacious privacy which is at least one of exploration’s assets. We hastened on, hoping to be quickly done with this useful but ridiculous journey. Ladies lifted aside the curtains of their back windows to watch us battle past, fighting headwinds and red in the face. Strollers on the towing path paced up more briskly to talk to us, and we had pains to let them fall behind. These self-inflicted combats with pedestrians brought on a sense of exasperation which the wind fanned to a disproportionate fury.
Soon Oakfield Bridge appeared ahead, and with it a piquant navigational problem. The bridge has no more than a foot or two of clearance above the water, and as we had left our masts stepped, their trifling height was sufficient to prevent a passage under. Numbers of passers-by accumulated to watch us surmount the obstacle, and their speculations were as vague as our own. We attempted first of all to lever ourselves under by grasping the girders and heaving the canoes over on their sides so that the masts lay almost parallel with the water, and so out of the way of the overhead obstruction. We were all disappointed when this failed, baffled by the sheer buoyancy of the canoes. With sweating nonchalance Seumas and I came alongside in mid-canal to unship each other’s mast, a ruse which would have been acclaimed, had it succeeded. But the unseasoned timber of the broom handles had now stuck them in their sockets, and we revolved slowly in the water, baffled and tiring, and twisting in vain at the mast-poles with desperate fists.
A later reflection bade us paddle to the bank, land, and partially unpack the canoes, as the only sure method of freeing the masts. As we landed, a young girl came forward, presented each of us with a bunch of white heather, and asked for our autographs. It was a kindly act; and especially at that moment. It gave us, even in our impotence, some sort of standing on the remote fringes of celebrity. We tied the heather to our bows with gestures as courtly as we could perform; signed with a cramped flourish; ripped the masts from their bedfast lairs; bundled aboard, and, paddling like steamboats, surged under the low girders of the bridge and onwards inland.
Here we turned to the westward among the hills, leaving Loch Fyne behind. The towing path was now left to cyclists, going down to the cinema in Lochgilphead. As the light dwindled we came up towards Cairnbaan, and the long ladder of locks on which the canal climbs to its summit. Below the first lock we came ashore, flipping the canoes half on to the bank while we prospected the hurdles ahead. A rapid cunning was now informing our minds on the transport of canoes. Already the ‘carry them round the locks’ theory was without
credit. Any canal banks we have met are steep and slippery pitches, affording to the bearers of a loaded canoe every refinement of a prodigious labour as they manhandle it up and down. As for the spaces between the locks of a series, they are just too short to justify the scramble up and down to make paddling use of the intervening stretches of water. A group of five locks, as at Cairnbaan, will cover about 500 yards. To pass it without sailing through the locks, one of two labours must be undertaken. The first is to emerge at the first lock, portage along the whole towing path, and re-enter the water beyond the last lock. The second is to paddle over all the intervening water, leaving a total portage of perhaps 200 yards – enough to go round the lock gates only – as well as five cliff-like launchings and landings. These are hard alternatives indeed.
We had, however, as we thought, learned our lesson. So we strolled up to the top of the ladder of locks, and there chose a site for the tent, in view of the canal and of some of the picturesque houses which are here ribbon-built along the water. A brief foray among the houses yielded a borrowed wheelbarrow, and this we trundled with some smugness back to the canoes, wearing the aspect of men whom experience has taught, but not embittered. Shortly we were awheel with the first canoe up the considerable incline towards Cairnbaan village and our campsite.
We did our transportation here on the main road, rather than on the towing path. The canoe lay beamwise on the barrow, which had to take the crown of the road while its 14-foot cargo spread its horns abroad, blocking the passage of the road to all other transport. Nevertheless, this was a luxurious form of portage, and we were at once devotees of the barrow. At times a car would sweep on us with the verve of Highland transport, forcing us to a quick turn of 90° and a panic trundle towards the ditch, into which our barrow’s wheel bit to the axles. But the labour of hauling it up again to the summit of the considerable camber was trifling to what would have been involved in launching and landing. We made the journey twice, and got the tent up. It was an evening of lovely calm, but murderous with midges. The tent door had to be closed, denying ourselves the view, while turf and fragments of peat, reeking on the top of a stove, set up a choking diversion. With the return of the wind in the night the menace blew away.
In a fresh and splendid Sunday morning we got away again, hoping to make Crinan and an early afternoon flood-tide on the same day. Crinan Canal is a sweet waterway, carved here over a narrow neck of country which once, before the land tilted, was probably a tidal sea-way. It runs round the bases of heather rocks and through lochans which feed the channel from the hill burns. There was no lingering possible for us in the darling nooks which cried for lazing among the willows and the reeds, and we flogged on to Dunardary and the next ladder of locks. These stepped now downwards to the sea-level, and from the top the sea itself was visible, out towards the Sound of Jura. A southeasterly wind was gentle but steady. We would be there for that tide and that wind.
At Dunardary we went confidently to find a barrow, and failed. There was not a barrow in the place, or at least, not one which would come out on Sunday. The keeper of one of the top locks was helpful in remembering a handcart which lay in a nearby quarry, and we went with him to inspect it. It was not difficult to find, with its solid iron wheels bedded deeply in the mud and grasses. A great tree with a crosspiece formed the traction system, ready for the grasp of mighty hands and thews. It had no sides, and the massive planking which formed the flat platform of the cargo space was thickly coated with ancient dried cement. It was like a vehicle which might have been used to haul stones to the Great Pyramid. We had been wiser to leave it; but the triumph of wheeled transport remained with us from the night before, and we laid inadequate hands on the find. With the lock-keeper and some boys helping and heaving, we worked the thing loose from its setting and got it, creaking hideously, on to the tow-path. With one of the canoes poised and rolling slightly on the flat top, the cortege heaved down the incline to the end of the locks. It was long since our tumbril had moved, and to push it downhill took as much effort as should have been necessary to push it uphill. We pressed onwards heavily, too proud now to admit failure, while watchers from the cottages regarded the penance, some of them no doubt with satisfaction, thinking of the day it was. The unloading of the canoe at the other end caused no discernible lightening of the load, and the return journey was ghastly to contemplate. We bent to it at last: and when, after an infinite effort, we reached again the quarry entrance, we sent our vehicle lurching down towards its former bed. It is questionless still there. We carried the second canoe down.
The Crinan Canal sea-locks: the Dorus Mor is the gap on the near horizon above and a little to the left of the fishing boat in the loch. Craignish is on the right, and far behind it the hills of Mull. On the left above the hotel a dip in the skyline marks the Gulf of Corrievreckan.
From there we had a lock-free run to Crinan, fringing the great moss where kings used to hunt below the walls of Dunadd, and where now the herds of cattle feed and grow fat. We were the only traffic, since the canal closes on Sunday. Nowadays the Crinan waterway is known only to yachts and puffers on their various business up and down the West Coast. At one time, when canals were popular and cars had not begun, there was a ‘roomy, elegant, and well-appointed steamboat’ linking with steamer services at both ends of the canal. These were once busy tourist waters, and may well be so again. Even the Comet, the first steamboat that ever went to sea, made passenger runs here, and was wrecked in the tide race of the Dorus Mor.
We swept in independent triumph below the bridge at Islandadd, where canal boats have baffling experiences as they await the opening; on through the strange surprise of Bellanoch Bay; and then, on a shelf of water, round the base of Crinan hill and on to the last locks before the sea. Here we lifted the canoes out and carried them down to a landing-stage, to leave them lying among the seaweed. Saving time, we ate lunch in the hotel, among the Sabbath crowds of car parties from Glasgow and other urban centres, ourselves bare-legged, and slippered in canvas shoes from which our toes were peeping, to anticipate a fashion since popular in superior hotels.
From the dining-room window could be seen the whole start of the road to the West where we were to go: Loch Crinan and its near islets; Loch Craignish, a charming diversion into the heart of the land; the rougher road seaward through the Dorus Mor, where we would turn sharp to the north; ahead still, and farther, was the gap of Corryvreckan, pillared by Scarba and Jura; still and away beyond was the promise of Mull; and in our scraps and slats of canvas and wood we would leave all these far behind. So at least ran the programme; and so, in the event, it was to be. But on such a day, with the sea and the wind going well too, it looked easier than we deserved.
CHAPTER 6
THE DORUS MOR
This was our time that we took
We, on that day, and no others;
The wind was a friend for the look
He laid on the sail as it shook,
And the sea said – ‘Come then, brothers!’
The Dorus Mor (the Great Door) was likely to be our biggest immediate difficulty. We knew of it already. Campbell the Pilot had told us to pass it at slack water, but some local guidance seemed desirable. It is a half-mile gap of water between the mainland Point of Craignish and the island of Garbh Reisa. Here the tide, running irregularly round the island and meeting in the gap on the other side – meeting at different speeds because of the parting it has suffered – tumbles among itself at the reunion and creates a miniature Corrievreckan. We were doubtful whether our craft could negotiate the place, and whether a floodtide would be the best condition for the attempt.
This was the problem we put to a crew of Clyde herring fishermen whom we found by good fortune in the canal basin (going south, the wise men!) and they waved the caution aside with broad and reassuring gestures. ‘Take it at the flood!’ they said it heartily, more than once, ‘and one tide’ll carry you right to Oban.’ This nautical wisdom was confident, and also welcome, and we gladly
laid aside our misgivings. It was now about three in the afternoon, and a bonny blue-skied day, with the tide turning in slack water, ready to flood.
The wind was southerly, looking as if it might remain steadily at our backs for the first time. So we stepped the masts again and rigged sail, looking forward to an effortless passage and a triumphant evening arrival in Oban, about 30 miles away. There was a launching scramble first among the low weedy rocks which the deep tide had left, and then we were away, paddling with the bows on the Dorus Mor, opening for us clear and inviting seven miles ahead.
Within half a mile out from the shore we could feel the insistent help of the wind almost behind us. It was a glorious moment as we shipped paddles, heaved up the sails by their paltry strings, and felt the sudden benevolent twitch as we went on steadily under sail. This was an interval for luxury, and we reclined at incredible ease in our cockpits, never dipping a paddle for the next mile or two, except for a momentary steering correction, while the canoes slid ahead with us at a good paddling pace. There was warmth at last in the sun, and it seemed truly as if our first stages might well prove to have been the worst.
The Canoe Boys Page 7
