Corpach Sea Lock to the Isle of Mull
Midsummer’s Day dawned beautifully for those up early to see it, for sunrise was at 4am today and sunset not until 11pm. During breakfast we cast our moorings and made our way down Neptune’s Staircase, the most remarkable engineering feature of Thomas Telford’s Caledonian Canal, a flight of nine locks raising the canal some sixty feet from Atlantic sea level. The canal was built between 1803 1822, the large government grant offered during the Napoleonic Wars diminishing after the Emperor’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815. Telford, the son of a Scottish shepherd, had already distinguished himself as a road, bridge and canal builder with the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct over the Dee and the world’s first suspension bridge over the Menai Straits (both in Wales) to his considerable credit. As we waited for the top of the tide in the sea lock at Corpach, we were treated to a close-up of The Jacobite, a steam train of 1950s vintage that runs on the West Highland Railway from Fort William to Mallaig in the summer season. We exchanged whistles and then moved out into Lochaber with fine views of Fort William to port. Fittingly, since Fort William records the highest rainfall of any town in Britain, the rain that was to be a fixture for the rest of the day had begun to fall.
After a talk on Celtic Christianity, we enjoyed the scenery of Loch Linnhe and the tidal races around Lismore. After lunch, with porpoises in attendance, the dramatically-situated Duart Castle, ancestral home of the Macleans, provided a splendid photo opportunity. Our afternoon excursion from Craignure on the Isle of Mull took us back to the castle for a detailed visit of the interior. The original mediaeval tower house was delightfully restored in the early twentieth century by Sir Fitzroy Maclean. A walk led by our naturalist Ian Bullock investigated a small copse planted in the year 2000 with a rich variety of native trees and shrubs plus a very friendly toad. The castle tea room is justly celebrated in the locality and tea and cakes were consumed in quantity to tide us over to evening dinner.
After dinner we had a visit from Wings over Mull, a raptor rehabilitation charity. They brought examples of their birds into the lounge after dinner, including a Snowy Owl, Harris Hawk and Barn Owl, a rare opportunity to see some of these magnificent creatures at close quarters.
