Ocean Bounty.


The story of another kind of boating.

There is a boat you can charter, called "Ocean Bounty" that is based at the southern end of the Caledonian canal in Corpach, near Fort William. A very nice chap called George Scott-Thomas, who is a partially retired farmer from the Scottish Borders, operates it. He bought the ex-trawler over 30 years ago, and has equipped it for accommodation and will basically take you anywhere you want to go off the West coast of Scotland, subject of course, to weather conditions.

This is where we went:

  

We went for a week, and the numbers indicate the overnight anchorages we took. No mooring points and towpaths here! The only drawback is that this is of course Scotland. Now, I don't want to knock my adopted Country, but the weather here can be, shall we say, unpredictable. We went out into the Atlantic at midsummer for a week, land of the midnight sun and all that, and I was looking forward to the clear skies and balmy evenings associated with that time of year. However, the weather was not kind, and I never saw a star all week. Not one. Hey ho.

It did give me the idea though of possibly what could I do once the inland waterways have been conquered. I am now thinking of trying to get hold of a similar boat to "Ocean Bounty" to explore the coastline of Great Britain. The reason is that I have found there is no better way to arrive at any town or city than by boat, and wouldn't it be fantastic, for example, to tie up at the quayside in Newcastle for a couple of nights to explore the Bigg market? Gotta have a dream, eh?

 

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