Portpatrick to Bangor. 07 September 2023

 

Portpatrick Passenger Pigeon 
Ectopistes lazeraterii - new to science perhaps.

Our route


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Calm after the storm Bangor to Port Ellen, Islay 11 August 2025

Image
  Cottages on Port Ellen harbour  It’s hard to believe that Storm Floris was last Monday - today (Monday a week later) was almost dead calm.  Wonderful conditions for coming up north past the Mull of Kintyre.   Our plan is to have a week around Islay, Jura, Ardfern and Gigha. The two lighthouses of The Maidens  Top: Maidens East Tower, constructed in 1829 and automated in 1977. Bottom: Maidens West Tower, constructed in 1829, and decommissioned in 1903. A great place to go shagging.  Both towers designed by George Halpin Senior. All the way up the North Channel it was calm - and reasonably warm ( though not the heatwave being touted for south England).  Lovely travelling conditions, and should have been lovely conditions for seeing cetaceans - but nobody had told the whales and dolphins!  We did see Harbour Porpoises twice, but that was it.  A little disappointing. A low mist accompanied us most of the way.  This is the Oa Peninsula on t...
Read more

Toilets and Trauma Port Ellen, Islay, to Craighouse, Jura 13 August 2025

Image
  The toilets at Ardbeg Distillery.  A wonderful work of art. Another gorgeous day today, though a little breezy.  The day started with reports from neighbouring boats about disturbances on our pontoon sometime after midnight last night - which we were more or less oblivious of - plus a hit and run incident at 07.30 this morning.  A departing boat hit a large expensive American boat causing some damage (though we couldn’t see it) and didn’t stop to exchange details.  Nobody knows which boat did the damage.  There is now a rather unhappy American (justifiably). Our morning exercise was to walk the Port Ellen to Ardbeg whisky path - 3.25 miles each way. On a sunny day like today it was a gorgeous walk.  The Ardbeg cafe (and toilets) at the end making it an altogether enjoyable leg stretch.  No whisky was imbibed today (as far as I know). The courtyard coffee caravan.   We had ours inside because the anti-freeze system kept it cool. Ardbeg on th...
Read more

Romance Lives! Gigha to Bangor 17 August 2025

Image
  This is the yacht moored next to us at Gigha. Early this morning we watched the guy aboard sitting on the foredeck, in what looked like his PJs, fiddling with something for ages.  It looked a bit odd, as if there was a problem that needed urgent attention. Then, he raised a string of flags up parallel to the furled jib. What a romantic!! We delayed leaving as long as we could in the hope of finding out what the answer was.  In the end we had to leave.  Let’s think positive! We left at 10ish in flat calm conditions, to head for Bangor.  It stayed warm and dead calm all the way. Amazing. Mull of Kintyre lighthouse  About 7 miles north of The Maidens we saw at quite a distance, a load (technical term) of dolphins.  There were really quite a lot of them, spread over a couple of miles of water.  At the northern end of the pod I am fairly sure we were seeing Bottle Nosed Dolphins (we had seen a small pod of them near the Mull), and at the southern end...
Read more