On Wednesdays Liz doesn't work, so that's another day for some bucket list trips. This time, it was the paddle steamer Waverley which is the last sea going steam powered paddle boat in the world. It's based out of Glasgow and has a summer season here on the Clyde and surrounding Lochs and Kyles, as well as touring the country as far south as the Isle of White.
We'd booked tickets for a tour boarding at Dunoon and heading for views along Loch Goil and Loch Long. As we headed over to Dunoon, despite it being early July, the weather could only be described as 'foul' with horizontal rain, however our window cleaner had optimistically predicted that the weather would improve in the afternoon!
Boarding the ship at 1pm it was still pretty dire so we stayed in the dining saloon and had something hot to eat: fish and chips for John and sausage casserole for Liz - not bad. We set off and we were surprised at the speed of it, and how smooth it was considering the choppy water. As the afternoon progressed we started to got some breaks in the weather and some lovely atmospheric views of these two lochs which are like unspoilt Norwegian fjords.
The ship was built in 1946 and remains sympathetically maintained in that original condition and style, including the power house itself (now diesel making the steam rather than coal). A fantastic piece of engineering! You can stand and watch the engine workings in the cosy engine room, just feet from the beautiful machinery.
After heading up the Clyde to Kilcreggan and then Blairmore for more passengers (like four coach loads of 'Lochs and Glens' tourists together with a piper!) we sailed up Loch Long and then Loch Goil. The weather started to clear a bit giving better visibility and some really beautiful and relatively untouched part of our world - castles and steep forests rising up from the Loch.
Although unspoilt, there are two pretty unique things on Loch Long - the first is Coulport which is where the Trident nuclear warheads are stored and loaded onto submarines, that coupled with Faslane on Loch Gare means there's quite a bit of naval activity both visible and hidden below the surface! The second is Finnart Oil terminal, where bulk oil tankers discharge their cargo. The terminal has a 58 mile pipeline to Grangemouth refinery on the East coast. Quite interesting that such large scale operations of pretty nasty stuff coexist with such wonderfully beautiful surroundings - neither impinging on each other.
At 2.45pm we found out that we couldn't escape death even on a 'date day' as an announcemnt came over the tannoy telling 'those here for the scattering of the ashes, please make their way to the back of the boat'. The horn sounded at 3pm and the deck fell silent for a few moments. Liz spent a minute trying to hide her tears from the other passengers who might wonder why she felt any connection to a total stranger's memorial.
Luckily we were cheered up quickly as along the way we also saw dophins, initially riding the pressure wave of the Waverley, then playing in its wash. Leaving the Lochs for the Clyde we saw a rare weather phenomena - a dew rainbow - basically a very low rainbow with just its top visible above the surface. We've never seen anything like this and the internet is pretty dry as well.
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