SLOW BOAT TO GLENELG
It’s run by the community. Radio Two’s Ken Bruce is a fan. So, too, Nak the sheepdog. And why, after nearly half a century pottering between Skye and the mainland, a trip on the Glenachulish remains the most magical of journeys...
TO leave the main road, south of Broadford, for the twisting, climbing highway to Kylerhea always feels like leaving the 21st century. The serpentine single-track climbs hill after hill, bordered at more precipitous edges by low drystone wall, then begins to plunge dizzily.
Oncoming traffic – three cars, in all – sighted several bends ahead. We all dip courteously into passing places and squeeze by, with faint half-smiles and a flap of touristy hands.
Then I am at the hamlet of Kylerhea proper and pull up at the top of the ferry slip. There is no other traffic waiting and, at the moment, no ferry; 500yds away, at Glenelg on the other side of these tight straits between Skye and the mainland, a colourful craft is roped fast to the opposite slipway – and in no evident hurry to sail.
‘Hurry’ is not a word in the local vocabulary. I have been travelling this way for decades. I have often waited patiently for the ferry and, even when aboard her, there is rarely much urgency about sailing.
The crew and I have, on varied occasions, watched the thrashings nearby of a large and excited bull seal, listened to a Scottish football international on a tinny little transistor radio – how could Gary McAllister miss that penalty? – or shared the odd sandwich.
The tide is on the flood today; determined waves wash over the old stone slipway and, across the water, I can see two border collies scampering importantly about – a detail that, at a glance, confirms Skipper Donnie is today in command. I see a car and trailer roll down the hill; its driver emerges.
Handshakes are exchanged. There is long conversation… and, after an age, he resumes his seat and drives aboard. Ramps are raised, the vehicle deck is turned, the sheepdogs bounce aboard and, at last, the Skye ferry is on her determined way.
Though not the most convenient – because of the mountainous approaches on either side – this is the oldest, narrowest passage to the Isle of Skye. Johnson and Boswell came this way in 1773, so did Lord Cockburn, that Edinburgh lounge lizard, on his holidays in 1841, noting snootily that his was only the third carriage to cross that year.
And the straits of Kylerhea are also notorious for their tides. Sometimes the current runs at eight miles an hour, with froth and eddies and dramatic little whirlpools. Rarely can the ferry nip straight across like a car. Her master uses the tide, rather than fighting it. He comes over at an angle, until his command is caught in the surge, then lets it carry her down and over into slacker water where she can power clear.
AND so the 49-yearold Glenachulish rumbles over today, pulling up daintily by the jetty as the ‘first rope’ jumps ashore, tying her fast to one of the large mooring rings on the slip. In fact, the dogs land first – Nak, Spot – sidling up to inspect me. Skipper Donnie – he has a ruddy Highland face and a stockman’s big tough hands – stares. ‘Well,’ he says pleasantly, ‘it’s yourself… I wasn’t sure.’
The Glenachulish has for many years now been the very last of the sturdy little turntable ferries which, even in the late 1960s, seemed ubiquitous in the West Highlands on such passages as Cuan and Corran, Kyleakin and Strome and Kylesku. She can carry six cars, two abreast, on her revolving vehicle deck, allowing her to sideload from slipways at any state of tide and spare drivers the inconvenience of having to reverse.
Built for Ballachulish service by Ailsa of Troon in 1969 – this lean, minimalist car ferry was an apprentices’ project – she spent some years as a relief vessel for various Highland Regional Council ferries after the Ballachulish bridge opened in December 1975.
INDEED, it was there, more than a century ago, the turntable ferry was invented – and we still have a fantastic photo of the first, the 1912 Glencoe, wading the straits with an enormous lorry, loads of besuited unsmiling men in Edwardian moustaches and almost majestic disregard for health and safety.
And when yet another new span, at Kessock, made her redundant, she was bought by Murdo MacKenzie of Glenelg, as his new, seasonal Kylerhea ferry from the spring of 1983.
She has been here ever since and, since 2005, has been run by local enthusiasts in a community interest company who bravely acquired her despite the enthusiastic pessimism of local doomsayers.
The Glenachulish has, on the contrary, flourished – being shrewdly marketed not just as an alternative route to the Isle of Skye, but as a tourism attraction in her own right.
She sails from Easter to October from 10am to 6pm (and to 7pm in June, July and August), crossing every 20 minutes when traffic is steady. Visitors pay £15 for a single crossing of car and passengers, but locals can buy a six-journey ticket for just £20 – and local OAPs pay only £1 for passage.
The Glenachulish has appeared in a movie and in several commercials. Not a few couples have been married aboard her, and in 2012 the Glenachulish Preservation Trust – its patron is Radio 2’s honey-toned Ken Bruce – was among charities to benefit from the sale of the original Bella Caledonia painting, by Alasdair Gray, that had adorned Alex Salmond’s official Christmas card.
In 2016, she carried more than 36,000 vehicles and had a record £190,000 turnover. The Glenachulish features frequently on TV, conveying in 2017 alone celebrities such as Christopher Timothy and Peter Davison, Cleo Rocos and Don Warrington on assorted motoring jollies.
Such publicity does the Isle of Skye Ferry Community Interest Company no harm at all, and the Glenachulish pulls thousands of visitors annually into a quiet, lovely corner of the Highlands they might otherwise bypass.
You can admire the shaggy feral goats in Glen Shiel and be awed by the amazing views near the summit of Mam Ratagan as you batter over the hills to Glenelg. The village – sheltered, leafy, friendly – boasts Pictish brochs, a friendly inn and ruined Hanoverian barracks.
There is a lovely beach; you can trek south to Sandaig where Ring of Bright Water’s Gavin Maxwell lived in a brief Fifties idyll with his pet otters.
Indeed, you can see impressive wildlife from the Glenachulish herself – seals most days, otters near dusk, dolphins and porpoises if you are lucky and a pair of resident sea eagles.
‘Aye, Victor was out this morning,’ says Donnie, after long discussion of cattle, and the lambing, and old MacLennan the retired vet buying back some of his former cows, and him near 80. ‘Victor the sea eagle?’ ‘Yes. They have put a carcass up that hill for them, a dead deer’ – Donnie points to high, distant cairns – ‘but of course the golden eagles want their share too, and Victor and the goldies have some fair fights, boy.’
With two cars now waiting at Glenelg, someone diffidently suggests we might be thinking of moving.
We raise and lock the ramps, swing the turntable back into place and secure it with a couple of stout steel pins. The happy dogs
leap aboard as we cast off, pulling astern and out with a hearty rumble of Kelvin T6 engine. In signal favour, I am invited into the new wheelhouse.
Ferry profits are not disbursed to grateful shareholders, they are invested each year in overhaul and improvement of the ship.
The engine was painstakingly renovated in 2013 and, in 2014, the Glenachulish was imaginatively repainted in her original Ballachulish livery – green and red, superbly suited to the ravishing local scenery and much nicer than the black and grey she had sported for years.
The initial, rather lurid rhubarbrock green has since yielded to a darker, more coniferous shade… once pots of impulsively purchased paint had been used up.
Early in 2017, her wheelhouse was replaced for some £80,000.
Though superficially similar to the battered original, it is brighter and more elegant, with stylish new steering wheels – one port and one starboard – and some state-of-theart navigational technology.
The company invests in people, too. Calum Stiven, from Glenelg, still not 30, is now a fully qualified ferry skipper.
He helps out at weekends and 21year-old Isabelle Law from Kylerhea (a volunteer from the age of ten) has nearly completed her chargehand training.
Other young crew include Donnie’s niece, Anna, and her brother, the whipcord-fit Peter, as his law degree studies in Edinburgh permit.
But the most celebrated – right now he is sat on his haunches at the bow, beaming as only a border collie can beam – is Nak.
Nak stars in local postcards, gets his own fan mail and has his own Facebook page, with 454 friends and many photos of him (and other canine crew) looking winsome.
We hit the tide race; there is a surge of foamy sea starboard, as Donnie turns the helm a little and lets the current do much work for him.
If you are about my age – born in 1966 – it is strange to think the Glenachulish the very last of her kind. There were then some 14 in service, though they were already under pressure.
Despite the ingenious convenience of the design, they could not carry the very heavy vehicles by then increasingly on Britain’s roads – the Glenachulish courteously declines anything with an axle weight over four tons – and on the most popular crossings the sheer volume of summer tourist traffic had overwhelmed them.
It took the three craft latterly at Ballachulish longer to load than to cross and, faced with daunting queues – in the last full season, 240,00 cars were bravely borne over these straits of Loch Leven – fuming Type-A drivers simply drove the long way round by Kinlochleven.
Or expostulated at the fare set by the Ballachulish Ferry Co Ltd, helmed by local laird Cameron of Lochiel himself – latterly 30p a car.
‘Yes,’ purred a lady purser once, in gentle Gaelic diplomacy as she walked up queuing vehicles exacting the toll, ‘if he’d charged like that at Culloden, he might have won…’
At Strome and Kyleakin, others found themselves having to wait overnight for passage. Strome, in the end, won a bypass road and Kyleakin huge new drive-through ferries. It, Kylesku and Ballachulish were eventually bridged.
It was not quite the end of the Strome ferry – for, in December 2011, that vulnerable new road was blocked by a landslide, and for several months the startled Glenachulish, roused from her annual hibernation at nearby Kishorn, shuttled across the narrows of Loch Carron, sparing locals a 140-mile detour. o H, the old Strome ferrymen loved it,’ Donnie remembers. ‘We had quite a few down – former skippers, full of advice…’
Local children took avidly to the novelty (and, of course, to Nak) and the Glenachulish proved that despite her maturity she could still provide a lifeline service when called upon.
Assorted Lochcarron grannies came daily with more home baking than her crew could eat and the unexpected and welcome winter earnings covered the subsequent refurbishment of her machinery.
She has been managed with increasing confidence and flair. A decade ago a redundant steel lighthouse was erected by the Glenelg slipway, where you can buy refreshments and souvenirs by a charming honesty box system.
There are now plans to erect a bigger café (and office) by the car park overlooking the ferry and assorted initiatives by the company’s Johanne Crawford have done much to win publicity.
They include alfresco entertainment by the Budapest Café Orchestra (‘the finest purveyors of Balkan music this side of a Lada scrap heap!’) in June 2013 and a visit by The Lochiel himself – Donald Cameron, 27th Clan Chief – the following year.
In August last year, the ship was after 40 years reunited with her original bell – another excuse for a knees-up. And the service seems to thrive the more each year, and without a penny of public money.
Next year the Glenachulish turns 50 and, among yet more celebrations, will be added to the National Register of Historic Ships.
But we are at Glenelg: dogs, rope are already ashore. The pins are pulled; the deck rotated. Ramps crash.
Several tourists look on avidly, filming all on their mobiles. I drive off and away with nervous aplomb, feeling mildly famous myself.