Glencripesdale Estate

I'm not sure how you pronounce it (I think it's "Crippiss-dale") but it's for sale at offers over £2.6 million through estate agents Bell Ingram - you can download the sale brochure here.

Glencripesdale is 4,580 acres (1,850 hectares) of the Morvern peninsula, eight miles from the end of the nearest public road on the remote south shore of Loch Sunart in north west Argyll. It's history spans the clash of medieval broadswords to the flying of 21st century writs for judicial review: it epitomises nicely the blood, sweat and consultancy fees of Highland landownership through five centuries. 

Since medieval times Morvern had been the territory of the MacLeans of Duart. In the 1670s, they distinguished themselves by becoming the first clan in history to lose their patrimony not by blood-feud but by defaulting on their mortgage payments. Unfortunately their lender wasn't the Nationwide Building Society but the chief of Clan Campbell, the Earl of Argyll, an unforgiving creditor who had assiduously bought up MacLean debts specifically with a view to foreclosing on them. 

In the second half of the 18th century, the Dukes of Argyll (as the Campbell chiefs had become) reorganised their estates, including the former MacLean land in Morvern, by renting them as commercial sheep and cattle farms in place of the communal peasant farming which had prevailed hitherto. This was an early phase of what became known as "the Highland Clearances". That's an expression which covers a multitude of not properly understood sins but, whatever the rights and wrongs, the Argyll estates in Morvern are significant for having left an architectural heritage of 18th century farmhouses built by these incoming capitalist farmers. You can read an article about them here (Big pdf download.)

Glencripesdale was one of these farms and its farmhouse was typical of the genre. It was built by its tenant, Duncan Campbell of Gleunure, around 1775. A farmhouse may seem a pretty mundane thing but the fact is Glencripesdale is one of the oldest farmhouses (as we understand them today) in Scotland. It retains the original wooden sash and case windows installed when it was built 230 years ago. 

Glencripesdale Farmhouse - photo credit Gil Campbell

In the 1820s, it became the Argylls' turn to succumb to debt. In the first half of the 19th century it was virtually par for the course for clan chiefs to lose their estates to creditors, including such illustrious names as MacNeil of Barra, MacDonald of Clanranald and MacDonell of Glengarry. The Campbells managed to retain their core estates around Inveraray but most of the former Maclean lands in Mull and Morvern went under the hammer to meet the gambling debts of the 6th Duke, a friend of the Prince Regent. It was an ironic reversal of fortunes vis a vis the MacLeans of Duart 150 years earlier.

Glencripesdale was bought by Donald Stewart of Auch in 1821 and by the 1840s, the farm belonged to his son, Alexander. Nicknamed "Glenstool" for reasons unknown, he features in the journal of James Robertson, the Sheriff of Tobermory on Mull in two entries in 1843:-

"On my arrival at [home] I found Sandy Stewart Glencripesdale with his pretty bride, and his brother in law Niel Stewart, Foss, and a young Edinburgh lad, Bob Renton, sitting round the Table with a quantity of biscuits, glasses and an empty Wine decanter before them. I procured a reinforcement of solids and liquids, and we passed an hour or two very jovially. Mrs Stewart retired at half past 11 and Niel and his young friend went down to the Inn at the same time to roost. Sandy took his three tumblers of toddy and enlarged wisely and emphatically on the incomparable felicity of the married state which he strongly recommended to my consideration and adoption.

Wednesday 9 August 1843 

When I was dressing Glenstool came in to my room looking drumly and unrefreshed; he complained of our late sederunt [sitting] last night. I denied the premises, upon which he exclaimed hurriedly: "aye aye its well for you to say so, but mind - I had to give a horn to the wife after I went to bed - mind that, mind that - that makes the difference, you see", rubbing his hands and winking ..."

Married life doesn't seem to have agreed with Glenstool, however, as he was dead less than three years later.

In 1871, the third generation of Stewarts sold up. By the later 19th century, the primary interest in Highland estates was no longer as farms but as sporting estates where nouveaux riches could entertain their guests stalking deer, shooting grouse and fishing for salmon - it was the Victorian equivalent of today's Russian oligarchs buying Premiership football clubs. 

The purchasers of Glencripesdale were the Reverend Horace Newton and his two brothers, one also a clergyman. Heirs to a vast fortune derived from the fact that their family happened to own the land a big chunk of Birmingham had been built on during the Industrial Revolution, they immediately adorned their Scottish acquisition with a new mansion house beside the 18th century farmhouse: it was so opulent even the servants' bedrooms had hot and cold running water.

Picture scanned from "The Western Seaboard - An illustrated architectural guide" by Mary Miers which you can buy here

In a pattern repeated all over the Highlands of Scotland in the high Victorian era, Glencripesdale was built into a community of retainers - 100 strong, at its peak - dedicated to the Newtons' summer house parties. There was a school, a shop, church services in the billiard room and annual Highland Games on the lawn. Farming was not totally eschewed and a prize winning herd of Highland cattle was built up although this was hobby farming albeit on a megalomaniac scale.

These Victorian and Edwardian sporting estates never really recovered their former glory after the First World War. During the Second War, Glencripesdale House was requisitioned by the army for special operations training and left in poor condition, a fate suffered by a number of big houses in the West Highlands. In 1955, the estate was sold to the Forestry Commission. Having no use for it, the FC arranged in the early 1960s for the army to return to dynamite the Newtons' mansion house which had been roofless since the late 1940s. This was also the fate of many big houses on estates bought by the Forestry Commission after the War. 

It's said it took the army two attempts to blow up Glencripesdale House due to the fact that it was built of concrete. In the 1870s, the Newton brothers were very early exponents of building in concrete and, while their mansion house is no longer visible, there are still some more humble survivors of their concrete buildings to be seen such as the pier and storehouse by the shore of Loch Sunart pictured below: like the 18th century Glencripesdale Farmhouse, it's a mundane enough structure but it's is one of the earliest concrete buildings in Scotland:-

And that's probably a good point to leave this overlong post at. In Part 2, I'll resume the story with the latest generation of Highland landlords after the Forestry Commission sold Glencripesdale in the 1980s and 90s.

Mallaig to Lochboisdale Ferry

The island of South Uist (pop. 1,950) in the Outer Hebrides considers itself badly served by Caledonian MacBrayne's car ferry services.

SU's primary connection with the mainland is the ferry from Lochmaddy on North Uist (linked to SU by causeways) to Uig on Skye (linked to the mainland by a bridge). There are eleven departures a week in summer and the crossing takes 1h 45m.



But the downside is that, depending where you live on SU, it's a drive of anywhere between 22 and 47 miles - distances unparalleled on the islands served by Calmac - to even get to the point of departure at Lochmaddy. Then, when you ariive at Uig, it's a 230 mile drive to Glasgow.

Total time from SU to Glasgow via Lochmaddy-Uig (including Calmac's vehicle check-in time of 45 minutes) - 8h 55m; total cost (60p/mile plus ferry fare for car and one passenger) - £190

There is an alternative. There's also a ferry from Lochboisdale on South Uist to Oban. At 5h 10m, it's the longest crossing in the Calmac network but on the plus side, Oban is only 96 miles from Glasgow - less than half the distance from Uig.

Total time from SU to Glasgow via Lochboisdale-Oban - 8h 25m; total cost - £130 

Calmac ferry MV Lord of the Isles at Lochboisdale - Photo credit Allan Macdonald

But the big problem with the Lochboisdale-Oban service is that there are only four departures a week (compared with eleven from Lochmaddy to Uig) and one of these sails via Castlebay on the neighbouring island of Barra (pop. 1,000) adding another 1h 30m to the journey (though nothing to the cost). The lower frequency is not just because of the much longer crossing but also due to the same ship also being Barra's only link to the mainland in a "triangular" service to Oban.

What the people of South Uist would ideally like is a dedicated ferry running from Lochboisdale to Mallaig. This is a crossing of 3h 20m and Mallaig is 150 miles from Glasgow so the total journey time is 7h 55m - quicker than going via Uig or Oban. Because Calmac's fares are calculated on the basis of "Road Equivalent Tariff" (i.e. the fare is the same as it would cost to drive to the mainland as if there were a causeway, currently set at 60p/mile to include fuel and all other costs associated with running a car such as tyres, insurance and depreciation etc.), it's possible to predict the cost of SU to Glasgow via Mallaig at £145 - £45 cheaper than going via Lochmaddy. In 2006, Calmac proposed a scheme for a Lochboisdale-Mallaig service with fourteen departures a week (in summer; seven in winter) so let's put the three options on a grid:-

The Mallaig option looks like a total no-brainer until you factor in that Calmac said it would need a new ship to operate the service. This was because the people of Barra had made it clear they wanted to retain Oban as their mainland port (it's a much longer crossing to Mallaig from Castlebay than it is from Lochboisdale) so it wasn't just a question of relocating the existing services from Oban to Mallaig. The prospect of c.£25m for a new ship gave Calmac's paymasters in the Scottish Government a big problem.

For a time there was a suggestion Calmac could charter a ferry called the Claymore. She had been built by Calmac in 1978 specifically to serve Barra and South Uist from Oban but was retired from that route in 1989 and in 2006/07 was surplus to the requirements of Pentland Ferries, a private company running to Orkney. But there were serious question marks over the suitability of a 30 year old ferry to serve South Uist again and the suggestion lapsed.

The Claymore at Castlebay, Barra in the 1980s

And so the Mallaig option remained in the long grass until 2011 when things changed by Calmac taking delivery of a new vessel, the Finlaggan, to serve the island of Islay. The reason why that made a difference to South Uist is that Islay had been being served by two ferries, the Isle of Arran and the Hebridean Isles. With the advent of the Finlaggan, one of these two - it's not yet been decided which on a long term basis but generally assumed to be the IoA - will become available to be redeployed elsewhere. So it can become the Mallaig-Lochboisdale ferry, right?

Well not quite. As ever, things are not quite so simple. The reason is that, before the Finlaggan came along, one of the two Islay ferries was also the fleet reserve, liable to be called away at any time to cover for a break-down elsewhere in the network. This happened in summer 2010 and caused howls of protest from Islay that they were being deprived of one of "their" ferries. But with the advent of the Finlaggan, the theory was that the Isle of Arran would be released to be on permanent stand-by, tied up somewhere but ready to sail at a moment's notice: Islay would never again be deprived of one of its two ferries.

Calmac ferry Lord of the Isles at Lochboisdale - photo credit Allan Macdonald

But couldn't the Isle of Arran not at least be sailing between Lochboisdale and Mallaig rather than be tied up idle when there are no other calls on its time - would that not be consistent with the "pilot study" of the route local politicians are calling for? Well possibly but these pilot studies tend to be genies it's difficult to put back into bottles: as soon as the IoA was called away from South Uist, the same local politicians would doubtless be hurling abuse at Calmac/the SG that "their" ferry had been taken away. And there may be other calls on the IoA - Arran (the island, not the ferry) is looking for a bigger second ferry to run there in summer next year, an option that would doubtless be far more profitable to Calmac (i.e. less of a drain on the taxpayer) than SU ...

So what to do? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Not even please some of the people all of the time ... Glad I'm not the Transport Minister.

Leaving Lochboisdale - picture credit Hugh Spicer

Cladh nan Sasunnach

On the east shore of Loch Maree in Wester Ross, near its head, there's a spot called Cladh nan Sasunnach - it's Gaelic for "the sassenachs' graveyard".

Cladh nan Sasunnach - Picture Credit Nigel Brown

Quick aside about the word "sassenach". It's commonly supposed to be a term of abuse used by Scots to describe the English. Wrong. It's simply the Gaelic word for a non-Gael. So in the eyes of a native of Wester Ross, someone from Edinburgh is as much of a sassenach as someone from London. It's a Gaelic corruption of the word "Saxon".

Anyway, the southerners interred by the shore of Loch Maree were not some isolated troop of redcoats slaughtered by a posse of vengeful clansmen in the aftermath of Culloden. The truth was something rather more prosaic - they were the employees of a local ironworks.

Or so tradition tells. Scholarly investigation suggests the fragmentary remains barely visible in the bracken are of a much older graveyard. But what is undeniable is that there was an ironworks on the shores of Loch Maree in the early 17th century which did employ "English" (which could have meant Lowland Scots). It's reputed the earliest industrial ironworks (as opposed to cottage industry supplying purely local needs) in Scotland: it's not a coincidence there's also a spot called Furnace on the east shore of the loch near Letterewe.

But the lure to this remote spot was not local deposits of iron ore but trees which could be cut to make charcoal to fuel the smelters to produce the metal: in the tree-less land Scotland was at the time, it was a case of the raw material mountain going to the fuel source Mohammed.

It's not the last time strangers have been buried in a remote Highland location in pursuit of a valuable metal. Fast forward 300 years and 70 miles south to Kinlochleven near Fort William. In an isolated spot in the hills a couple of miles above the village, you'll find the Navvies' Graveyard.

Picture credit RCAHMS

It contains the graves of 21 navvies (labourers) who died between 1905 and 1909 building the Blackwater Dam which looms behind the cemetery. One of the graves is marked "Not Known" and another is of "Mrs Riley who died at the dam March 27 1909". I don't know her story but perhaps the navvies (Irish?) lived in a camp on site with their families ...

Picture credit - John Ferguson

The dam was built between 1905 and 1909 to create a reservoir to power a hydro-electric power station for an aluminium smelter at Kinlochleven. At the turn of the 20th century, aluminium was the new wonder material but, once again, it was not deposits of ore locally (bauxite is imported from countries like Australia) which attracted development to this virgin site (Kinlochleven was merely a remote roadless farm before 1905) but the local energy resource. It takes twenty times as much energy to render aluminium from its ore as it does iron and, in the early 1900s, the only way to produce that economically was hydro-electricity for which mountainous and wet northern Argyll is ideally suited.

Just as the iron works by Loch Maree are long gone, so too the aluminium smelter at Kinlochleven is no longer. It shut in 2000 although the power station is still operating, feeding electricity in to the national grid. And the Navvies' Graveyard remains in a nice example of how history has a habit of repeating itself.

The Grampian Hotel, Dalwhinnie

I'm a great fan of 1930s art deco architecture and here's a fine example which is sadly no longer with us: the Grampian Hotel at Dalwhinnie on the A9 between Perth and Inverness:-

The second floor was a later addition as this earlier postcard from another angle demonstrates:-

The Grampian Hotel stood on the road to the station at Dalwhinnie, just off what was the old A9 through the village by-passed since the late 70s. The hotel was still standing relatively recently as you can see it on Google Earth imagery dated 2005:-

But it had gone by the time the Google Streetview car was driving round in 2008/2009:-

I'm sorry to have missed it. Except for the snippet that apparently Barbara Cartland regularly stayed there, there's frustratingly little information about the Grampian Hotel available online - you'd normally expect the demolition of an art deco building to have generated quite a lot of interest

Anyway, the Grampian Hotel was one of a number of road-side hotels built in the 1930s to capture trade from what was, at the time, the relatively new-fangled but growing craze of motoring. They were a sort of new generation of coaching inns and also a sort of previous generation of motorway service stations and "travel lodges". The A9 itself was considerably upgraded in the late 1920s in response to the growth of road traffic having been little changed since General Wade built it as a military road in the mid 18th century.

Another example of a hotel built in the 1930s in response to the growth in motor traffic is the the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, although this was built in a more vernacular style of architecture:-

A new hotel was necessitated here by the realignment of the A82 between Tyndrum and Glen Coe in the early 1930s carrying it round the east end of Loch Tulla and by-passing the centuries old coaching inn at Inveroran at the west end of the loch. (Happily, in more recent decades the Inveroran Inn has gained a new lease of life from walkers on the West Highland Way which follows the line of the old A82 past its front door).

Some other examples in art deco style are:-

The Royal Stuart Motor Hotel on the old A9 just south of Inverness, like Dalwhinnie by-passed by the new A9 since the late 70s. I remember this when the old A9 still went past its front door in the early 70s on our way to family holidays in Wester Ross - passing it meant we were nearly at Inverness and thus at a significant waymarker on what was at the time a long, long drive from Edinburgh. The RSMH is still very much in business today as the New Drumossie Hotel. 

As you'd expect, there are some good examples along the A8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Going from east to west, first, there's the Maybury Roadhouse in Edinburgh situated at what, in the 1930s, would have been one of the most important road junctions in Scotland - straight ahead on the A8 for Glasgow; middle fork for the A9 to Stirling (this was where the A9 used to begin before it was cut by the building of the "new" runway at Edinburgh Airport in the mid 70s: now it's just the road to the airport cargo terminal); and right up Maybury Road to take you to the A90 at Barnton for Queensferry.

Maybury Junction in 1945

Fittingly, Maybury Road and the Roadhouse were named after the engineer Sir Henry Maybury who designed the road in the late 1920s as part of a scheme to bring Edinburgh's road network up to date for the motor era. The Roadhouse is now a casino:-

Maybury Roadhouse - photo credit Pete Cracknell

Further west on the A8, at Whitburn, there's a building I don't know the original name of except that it's now the Royal Regent Cantonese Restaurant:-

Like the A9, the A8 was also re-engineered in the late 1920s/early 1930s to meet the demands of the new motor age. Although built as a single carriageway, the verges and bridges were built wide enough to accommodate a future upgrading to dual carriageway. In fact this never happened and the M8 motorway was eventually built in the 1960s along a different line but you can see this all in the extract below from Google Earth. The Royal Regent is the building at the top and the 1930s A8 is the road coming in diagonally from top right - note its wide verges and the equally wide "ghost" bridge over the River Almond just left of the roundabout. The M8 runs along the bottom.

 

Further west still on the old (1930s) A8 before it was by-passed by the motorway is the splendid Newhouse Hotel.

Note the petrol pumps to the right emphasising the establishment's importance to the motorist. The Newhouse Hotel is still in business as a Premier Inn, although recent alterations have masked its art deco features somewhat:-

And finally, back in Edinburgh, another building in the same genre is the Hillburn Roadhouse on Biggar Road (A702 to Biggar and Abington) on the edge of the city in Fairmilehead. Like the Maybury, it was not built as a hotel but as a bar-restaurant catering to passing motorists. More recently it was known as the Fairmile Inn but has been empty and vandalised for a number of years.

Well, I've strayed quite a long way from the Grampian Hotel at Dalwhinnie - and nowhere near a kyle or a Western Isle - but if you know of any other 1930s or art deco "roadhouses", wherever they may be, then do leave a comment.

Gourock-Dunoon ferry

Last week saw the closure of the first ever car ferry service on the west coast of Scotland - that between Gourock and Dunoon operated by Caledonian MacBrayne which opened on 4 January 1954.

MV Saturn approaches Dunoon for the final sailing - Photo credit Stuart MacKillop

First, I have to define "first car ferry service": I'm not including Stranraer to Larne in Northern Ireland which started in 1939 or the many short crossings (half a mile maximum) across lochs and estuaries such as the Erskine Ferry or the Corran Ferry which had been carrying vehicles since the 1920s or earlier. Gourock to Dunoon was the first "sea-going" car ferry within Scotland on the west coast. This is its story. 

As car ownership grew in the 1930s, the London Midland & Scottish Railway Company's shipping subsidiary, the Caledonian Steam Packet Company (CSP), began to draw up plans for car ferries on the prime Clyde routes. These were interrupted by the War but revived when peace returned and a car ferry service from Gourock to Dunoon eventually opened in 1954 with Scotland's first ever car ferry (by the same definition), the MV Arran. There followed two sister ships called Bute and Cowal and, between them, these three "ABC ferries" as they became known, covered the Dunoon service and another between Wemyss Bay and Rothesay which opened later in 1954. 

MV Arran on passage between Gourock & Dunoon in 1958. Photo credit Douglas Campbell

Vehicle traffic on the Dunoon route exceeded expectations but development was hampered somewhat by the method of loading vehicles onto the ships. This was the "hoist loading" system whereby cars had to drive, four or five at a time, onto a platform which was then lowered slowly by pulleys down to the ship's car deck. The same laborious process had to repeated for disembarkation at the other side. It was a huge advance on the previous system of driving over precariously balanced planks onto the deck of a passenger steamer when the tide happened to be at the right level but far from ideal.

Hoist loading cars aboard an ABC ferry in a line drawing scanned from a late 60s CSP brochure

In the late 60s, a private company, Western Ferries Ltd, recognised the limitations in the CSP's service and laid plans for an alternative car ferry service using the more sophisticated ro-ro system we're familar with today whereby vehicles drive down a ramp adjustable to the state of the tide (called a "linkspan") directly on to the ship's car deck. This service eventually began in 1973 between McInroy's Point just west of Gourock and Hunter's Quay just north of Dunoon.

The CSP (which changed its name to Caledonian MacBrayne in 1973 after merging with David MacBrayne Ltd that year) responded with plans to upgrade its Gourock-Dunoon service involving the installation of linkspans at both terminals and the ordering of two new ro-ro ferries, the Jupiter and the Juno which entered service in 1973.

But the CSP/Calmac had missed a trick somewhat in that its new service (which was replicated at Wemyss Bay to Rothesay in 1977 with a third new ship, the Saturn, which, with the 1973 sisters, were known as "the streakers") was not a totally "drive through" one like WF's (i.e. drive on via the ship's stern and off in the same direction via the bow or vice versa). Instead, vehicles would board over the stern of the ferry at Gourock (and Wemyss Bay) but disembark at Dunoon (and Rothesay) over a ramp in the ship's side landing on a linkspan let in at right angles to the pier face. Again, it was great advance on hoist loading but while the 90 degree turn on the car deck was not too much of a hardship for cars, it was no good for artics so, again, was not ideal.

This view aft down the car deck of the Jupiter (1973) by Dave Forbes demonstrates the 90 degree turn needed to disembark at Dunoon

So, despite the improvements to Calmac's Gourock-Dunoon service, it was no surprise that Western Ferries - with a shorter crossing as well as greater operational flexibility - secured a substantial proportion of the vehicular traffic to Cowal in the 1970s.

One of Calmac's "streaker" class ferries, MV Jupiter, on the firth while two WF ferries cross in the background. Photo credit Hugh Spicer

The next act in the story was political rather than operational. A state subsidised public sector competing with private industry may have been the norm under 1970s style socialism but it was anethema to Mrs Thatcher's government which took office in 1979.  The spotlight soon turned on the rival ferry services to Cowal. In its defence, Calmac pointed out that its was the service of choice for foot passengers in that its ferries departed from the doorstep of Gourock station with its links from Glasgow Central in contrast with WF's rather more "out of town" terminals. In fact, Calmac was carrying about two thirds of the foot passengers whereas WF was carrying about two thirds of the vehicles crossing the firth. There was also a strength of feeling in Cowal that, if Calmac's car ferry service were withdrawn, it would leave WF with a monopoly which might lead to increased fares. So a messy political fudge was arrived at in 1982 whereby Calmac would continue to operate car ferries to Dunoon but, in order not to compete too directly with WF, would be restricted to one crossing per hour and would only receive subsididy for the passenger element of the service. With one hand thus tied behind its back, it's hardly a surprise that Calmac's share of the vehicle traffic continued to dwindle ...

A single vehicle on the car deck of a ship designed to take 40 was not an uncommon sight. Photo credit Hugh Spicer

Matters continued like this until 2000 when the Scottish Government woke up to the fact it was obliged under EU law to put the subsidies it was paying Calmac out to competitive tender. Tendering services hitherto performed by "iconic" public sector bodies is always politically thorny and for a while it looked as if a European court case involving subsidised bus services in Germany (the "Altmark" case) might spare the SG the opprobrium but further investigation revealed that this was not so.

The requirement to tender applied to all of Calmac's routes, not just Dunoon. But what set Dunoon apart was that it was the only route in the network which had a private sector competitor. The solution arrived at in 2006 was that all the other routes were offered in one bundle (Calmac won this tender but that's another story) while Dunoon was offered separately on the basis that the successful bidder would have to operate a car and passenger service but with no subsidy. Not surprisingly, nobody bid for this dubious privilege, not even Calmac! The result was that the Scottish Government simply continued to subsidise Calmac to run car ferries to Dunoon as before (except that the service was now run by a company called Cowal Ferries Ltd. However this operated under Calmac branding and management and with their ships, the familiar "streakers", so this was not a change the travelling public noticed.)

Aboard the Jupiter - Picture credit Hugh Spicer

But if the SG thought it had finessed this irritating thorn in its side, it was wrong: Western Ferries cried foul and.the European Commission initiated formal proceedings for payment of illegal "state aid" (subsidy). It eventually ruled in 2009 that subsidising a passenger service from Gourock station to Dunoon town centre was unobjectionable in principle provided it was properly put out to tender. Hence a new tendering process began in which there would be a subsidy for a passenger service with an unrestricted timetable. The successful bidder could carry vehicles if it wanted to and at its own expense but this would not be compulsory as in 2006.

The result of the tender was announced on 25 May 2011 and the winner was Argyll Ferries Ltd. This is in fact another subsidiary of Calmac although to avoid even the perception of any of the mistakes of the failed 2006 tender, this will operate under its own brand. The underbidders were Western Ferries and Clyde Marine Services (the operator of the passenger ferry to Kilcreggan). Not surprisingly, none offered to carry cars.

         
Argyll Ferries will be offering a much more frequent service over a much longer day than Calmac (Cowal Ferries) did using two vessels. One is a ferry called Banrion Chonamara acquired from Ireland where she had been serving the Aran Islands. Seen in profile on the extract from AF's website above, she has been renamed Argyll Flyer for the new Dunoon service. The other is a vessel which Calmac had had on charter for a number of years to give peak time sailings to Dunoon to supplement the sailings by the "streaker" car ferries: she is called Ali Cat and has now been purchased outright by AF.

Ali Cat at Gourock - a bit of a rubber duck, lookswise IMO! - Photo credit Stuart MacKillop

And what of the 35 year old "streaker" car ferries? One of them was rendered redundant in 2007 upon completion of deployment on the Rothesay route of the third generation of Upper Clyde car ferries, the Argyle and Bute (II). So the Juno was laid up at Rosneath on the Gareloch to act as a source of spare parts for the two survivors, the Jupiter and Saturn. Their roles were now confined to Gourock to Dunoon and summer second ship on the Ardrossan-Brodick (Arran) run. When the Saturn ceased in the latter role at the end of the 2010 summer season, she took up the Dunoon run and the Jupiter was sent to Rosneath as well. As soon as it became clear that the future of the Dunoon run was likely to be passenger only, the Juno was sold for scrapping in situ at Rosneath. As I type this, there's little left of her. Within days of the formal announcement that Gourock-Dunoon was to go passenger only, the Jupiter was also sold for scrapping and was towed away to ship-breakers in Denmark on 25 June. Having been designed exclusively for the relatively sheltered waters of the Upper Clyde, there is no market for such old ships elsewhere (as there has been for other ex-Calmac ships of similar vintage, e.g. Iona (1970) and Pioneer (1974) in West Africa). This just left the Saturn to perform the final car ferry sailing from Dunoon to Gourock at 20.45 on Wednesday 29 June 2011. The Saturn then sailed to Ardrossan to take up a programme of extra summer sailings to Brodick. In the autumn, she will probably repair to "hot layup" at Rosneath and be retained in the medium term on standby to cover breakdowns on the Rothesay or Brodick routes.

MV Saturn sails away from Dunoon for the last time - Photo credit John Newth

Argyll Ferries did not get off to a brilliant start on Thursday 30 June, it has to be admitted: the Argyll Flyer is still not ready to enter service (she was still at Ardmaliesh Boatyard on Bute undergoing conversion) and her place had to be taken by a vessel called Clyde Clipper chartered from Clyde Marine Services at short notice. Time keeping on the first few days has been poor leading to trains for Glasgow departing Gourock before the connecting ferry had arrived - there's a suggestion the late running is due to the boarding gangways being too narrow for the passengers to be able to board quickly enough. It's a problem which has bedevilled many a previous Clyde steamer service! 

All grist to the mill of the nay-sayers - those who believe Western Ferries have been handed a monopoly. Well you didn't "vote with your wheels" and patronise Calmac so a classic case of you didn't use it so you lost it! No doubt the teething troubles of Argyll Ferries' new service will be ironed out shortly. It should be viewed as Calmac having gone back to its roots. The Caledonian Railway Company incorporated the CSP as a separate company in 1889 to circumvent legal diffulculties over, in effect, extending the rail network across the Firth of Clyde with ships. The same thing has been done in 2011 with the incorporation of Argyll Ferries.

MV Arran - first ever Scottish car ferry between Gorock and Dunoon

Taransay

Most famous as the location of the first ever TV reality show, the BBC's "Castaway 2000", the island of Taransay off the west coast of Harris in the Outer Hebrides is for sale at the astonishing price of £2 million.

The sale brochure by estate agents CKD Galbraith of Inverness (which you can download via this link) features beautiful photography of the island showing the Outer Hebrides at their stunning best in glorious weather but what are you actually getting for your £2m?

Well, it's basically a sheep-farm of 3,475 acres (1,400 hectares). That's pretty standard for a Scottish sheep farm but the Taransay sheep, all 680 of them, are not included in the price. You have to buy them and the all important right to collect the EU Common Agricultural Policy subsidies separately. That's also standard practice in Scottish farm sales but what's not standard about Taransay is having 2 miles of angry Atlantic Ocean to cross from Harris to get to your farm. There's no ferry (because nobody lives on Taransay) nor is there even a pier on the Harris shore opposite to embark from. 

Once you've managed, in reasonable weather (i.e. impossible October to March), to land on Taransay (no pier on the island either), what's there? Well there's a farmhouse in reasonable condition for a house in such an exposed location which hasn't been lived in permanently since the early 1970s:-

   

There's also the old school which has been converted to self catering holiday accommodation:-

Old schools are a common feature of deserted Hebridean islands. They date back to the late 19th/early 20th centuries when they still had sizeable populations. The population of Taransay was 76 in 1911. The houses of the native population (it's not always accurate to call them "crofters") were of the "black house" type with low drystone walls which, now roofless, have receded back into the landscape (although are still discoverable if you look carefully and clearly visible on Google Earth). But "public buildings" such as schools - churches are another example - were of stone and lime and slated and have survived more prominently in the environment. The island of Mingulay south of Barra is another example of a deserted island (abandoned in 1911) where the school and the church remain prominent while the houses have retreated into the environment.

It's often a similar story with the house of the commercial sheep farmer who intruded himself onto the scene in the second half of the 19th century - many's the Hebridean island with the gaunt remains of an empty farmhouse.  I don't know the history of the coexistence of the farmer with the native population on Taransay - it was probably tense and would be an interesting historical study.

Back in 2011, the farm buildings also remain on Taransay. The sale brochure describes them as "the Bothy" and providing "fairly basic" accommodation for groups of up to 10 people. For estate agents to describe something in such lukewarm terms must mean it's pretty crap and I'd guess it's not been maintained since the Castaways lived there in 1999. Certainly, the Bothy is not advertised as self catering holiday accommodation as the farmhouse and old school are on the island's website.

If they were situated on Harris (where there would be mains electricity and a public road to the front door so you can reach them 365 days a year!), the farmhouse would probably be worth about £150,000, the old schoolhouse about £100,000 and "the Bothy" about £50,000. So, given that the profits from a sheep farm on the mainland, never mind an offshore island are sweeties, what are you paying the other £1.7 million for on Taransay?

Well, a whole lot of this:-

and a big chunk of that:-

The thing is, you don't need to buy the right to enjoy "that". There's no such thing as a private island in Scottish Law a la Mustique or Necker Island in the Caribbean. Any yachtsman or kayaker is at liberty to land on Taransay and, provided he behaves "responsibly" and doesn't do it on the doorstep of the farmhouse or the other buildings while anyone's staying there, have a barbecue, camp for the night or walk all over the island. He wouldn't be allowed to fish the lochs or shoot the deer but I'm not sure that dubious privilege is worth paying seven figures for.

  In reality, the estate agents are hoping there's someone out there gullible enough to cough up nearly two big ones solely for the privilege of being able to say they're the owner of Taransay - it's really just an upmarket version of these rackets where you buy a square foot to call yourself the "laird" of Glen Teuchter.

Enter Ben Fogle, daytime TV presenter and most famous of the Castaways. He's been quoted in the Stornoway Gazette saying he wants to get a consortium together to buy Taransay for a wildlife reserve. Well, it's kind of already a wildlife reserve, Ben - it doesn't need you and your chums' money to make it one!