Crinan Canal

Generally we enjoyed Ardfern apart from a very unsuccessful dinner at the Galley of Lorne pub, which proved Fawlty-Towers-like in its incompetence. The menu might have been ok in the pub itself, but this was in a spacious dining area with astonishingly naff furnishings, including a black Spandex cover for each seat, garnished with a gold boob tube. (You can get similar ones from Sandra Seat Covers for around £5 each). Initially they forgot to take our order, then the one and only waiter guiding people to tables and taking bookings dropped all  his bits of paper in a snowstorm of no doubt forgotten orders, and then the food itself was disappointing at every level - cold, soggy, my mushrooms overwhelmed with tomato and with couscous becuase there were no lentils. Owing to a "systems error" they had no chips, and no cream. Alex and David stayed for a disappointing pudding, which they were not charged for. I went back to the boat and had cheese on toast.

On Saturday 29 June we left Ardfern for the short (seven-mile) journey to the Crinan Canal. It was a grey and rather gusty morning with not many vessels about. The Crinan basin proved delightful, very sheltered, very pretty, with a good coffee shop right on the basin and an interesting hotel with bar, seafood restaurant and art gallery just around the corner. We had the whole afternoon, so I walked the Crinan Trail up to Castle Dounie, with fantastic views across to Jura and down to Tayvallich. Curiously I met lots of people on the trail up and down, but only one lonely cyclist on the upper forest roads.

We left in a relaxed way on Sunday morning in company with another Westerly, a well-used Seahawk. It's an advantage to be in company with another boat, becuase although Scottish Canals provide some help with the locks, they sometimes expect you do do the lock gates and sluices - although we always had help with the bridges. For some reason that I couldn't understand the Seahawk managed to get sideways across most of the locks. Either he had an engine problem or, dare I say it, I was a better helm than the owner, who has only had her for two years. Given the number of locks we have done over the years, I ought to be reasonably good by now. The Crinan ask you to rig your lines with a loop at the outer end, and control the slack on board, which makes me very uneasy because it's so easy to snag your loop – and Alex proved the point the next day by getting a loop caught on a shoreside cleat.

Anyway we planned to do the upward flight of locks and leave the downward flight for the next day but there's not really a decent mooring in between, so we did the downward flight too. We ended up at Cairnbaan which has nothing much except a busy road and a few Bronze Age monuments. I went off looking for them and somehow ended up climing through a lot of bracken and picking up a tick, fortunately only one.

The scenery changes dramatically from the Highlands at Crinan to the Lowlands by the time you get to Cairnbaan, in only five miles. The rain didn't stop though, with plenty overnight and in the morning. Around 1030 on Monday we motored down to Lochgilphead where we stopped to do a shop at the Co-op, which was worth the effort as it's a big store. Then through three more locks to the Ardrishaig basin, which is as dull as the Crinan basin is pretty, with nothing much open on a Monday. I'm slightly regretting mot pressing on to Tarbert, which is our next stop.

Rhu marina is now confirmed from 6 July, Alex and David have their train tickets home booked for the 8th and mine is booked for the 9th.

David working a lock gate

Moored at Cairnbaan

Ardrishaig