The Glasgow Fair bank holiday Monday was a cracker, weather-wise and I found myself with car and completely free of family commitments so wanted to try somewhere completely new to me, a bit more off the beaten track and potentially in salt water.
I had a quick browse on the web and found an amazing list on the Unicorn Paddle website. The site lists places all over Scotland with minor (but enough) detail on parking/access etc. You can fill in the gaps with further Google searches.
I’d always fancied Garelochhead as it’s probably one of the closer sea lochs to my house and after checking the tides (high tide in 2 hours) and wind direction/speed (very calm), I chucked my kit in the car and headed up there.
Turning off the A82 at Cameron House, it was a glorious drive over there. Stunning scenery and a great road to drive on. It gets a bit grim as you get into Garelochhead as you drive through the middle of the Faslane Naval base. Barbed wire fences and lots of serious looking signs on each side of the road,, quite oppressive until you pop out of the other side. Following on from the Unicorn’s instructions, I drove through the village and followed the road round the other side of the loch until I got to a fairly decent sized layby that stank of fish. Plenty of room to get set up though.
There aren’t obvious steps down to the waterside from the layby but it’s fine if you’re careful. Wasn’t long until I was on the water and starting to paddle down the loch. Awesome day for it, hardly any wind so the water was very, very calm. Had decided to do without the shorty wetsuit for the trip because it was so sunny and was glad I’d made that choice or I would have been sweating.
I kept fairly close to the shoreline and as I made my way down the loch I passed a beautiful house right on the shore and started chatting to a woman who was sitting on her balcony. She was telling me that she could see a submarine coming into the loch so that piqued my interest to batter on further down the loch and head out towards the Faslane side a bit more to get a better view!
it was a bit underwhelming really as, whilst it was big, it wasn’t travelling very fast. I think it was getting towed in. I’d noticed what I initially thought were fish farms in the middle of the loch. With hindsight, I doubt very much it would be wise to eat farmed fish that are reared so close to nuclear submarines but I think at the time I was just so blissed out by the sun, sea and general bank holiday freedom that I wanted to go explore them anyway. Also, it’s nice to have an objective to aim for when you’re paddling.
So, there I was heading out to these big structures in the middle of the loch and it was at this point that I noticed I was being watched…. A couple of Royal Navy police boats were tailing me from a distance and as I got closer and closer to what I was soon to discover were missile silos masquerading as pontoons, so did the police boats.
Have to admit, I loved the game of cat and mouse that followed. As I dipped out of view behind the pontoons, a boat would suddenly appear round the other side. I hid one more time, sat sideways on my board and started eating a biscuit and waited for the Sea Fuzz to arrive.
They were firm, but nice. They kept their distance so as not to create a wake and asked me if I knew much about the loch. I played dumb (very easily) and they asked me what I was doing so close to Royal Navy property. I explained I’d chosen the pontoon as an objective and was planning on heading back soon. They said “if you climb onto the pontoons, things get a whole lot more serious very quickly” and that I should stay to the non-weapon-of-death side of the loch then they were on their way.
They trailed me for a bit and then were gone.
Great paddle back, chatted to some nice folk who were having a drink in their yacht, had a swim and saw a couple of seals who had showed up because there was quite a lot of mackerel fishing going on.
Apparently the Queen owns Garelochhead and you should stick to the non-nuclear side if you’re paddling. Wise advice.
Lovely roll and bit of cake in Garelochhead afterwards. That village would be such a great destination to visit and hang out in if it didn’t have Faslane right next to it but I found it fairly easy to blank out.
