Day 27-Tuesday 14th June. Glenarm to Gigha

Last night I went to the Bridge Tavern. It is one of the two pubs in Glenarm.The other is next door. Its a small 2 room place and apart from the crew off another boat it was just me. I talked to the barman for quite a while. He had moved to Glenarm from Carnlough, the next village up the coast, 27 years ago.Back then there were more pubs in the place and quite a few shops. he used to serve the farmers who came off the hills to visit the stores. One lived off a crate of Guinness and an egg each day! Most of the shops had now closed and current trade is made up by visiting yachtsmen, tourists and the locals at the weekend.

He was not looking forward to the Dalriadda festival particularly.They would have their own bars up there and he had never been invited to provide the drink. He also didn't get on with the castle crowd after the previous Earl had asked him to get off his land when he was walking his dog.That's the downside of these remnant feudal communities I guess.Lord and Lady Dunluce weren't regulars of his.

Apart from selling alchohol, he sold sweets from his other bar, and there was a steady stream of kids coming in for golf ball gob stoppers and long strands of coloured things. Got to serve what the customer wants he said. It was a strange combination.

I asked him whether there was a real ale tradition anywhere in Ireland. Everywhere I had gone it had been lager and Guinness.He was an exception in selling Bass.No, there was a real ale festival in Dublin but that's about it. No micro breweries and no regional variation.

When I asked him about the pub next door, he said that was the protestant pub and his was the catholic one. The two didn't mix much.He said that the current generation weren't so political and there is a good chance the tensions will disappear when they grow up.I hadn't appreciated that all kids go to either catholic or protestant schools. Until they crack that one progress will be very slow. For the titme being,both sides pray on Sundays and prey on each other for the rest of the week he said.

As i walked back to the boat the sun was setting at about 10.15. It was light enough to read without turning on the lights.

I left the pontoon at 8.15, with a gentle westerly breeze blowing. I hugged the coast to benefit from a tidal back eddy that would take me up the headland to Garron Point before I met the tides in the North Channel.

I was sorry to be leaving Ireland. I had enjoyed the place and whilst I had never found any craic I had enjoyed its friendliness, scenery and culture.I contemplated what it would be like to live in one of these waterside properties that would be much more  affordable than their equivalent on the south Devon coast.

On the radio John Hegerty, the man behind many advertisement campaigns was being interviewed. He came up with the Dorch sprung Tecnic (sp?) for Audi. At the time the research was saying that it shouldn't be used. It was too German. He said that a company Brand is another word for its reputation. He felt that the  greatest brand was the Catholic Church. It had adopted the cross as the most recognisable logo in the 4th Century and had achieved world coverage.

Throughout my passage through Ireland the radio programmes had been dominated by the themes of recession, national debt cuts and taxes.There are 120,000 new and unoccupied dwellings that are a leftover from the property boom and people were saying pressure should be placed on builders to finish them and sell them. How do you do that? An organisation (sounded like NARMA) had been set up to acquire the debts to free the banks to be able to lend again. It was being alleged that developers were buyingback their repossesed assets at knock down prices.

There was an hour long programme devoted to a scheme to build a 460M Euro race horse and casino development mid way between Cork and Dublin. The casino alone would occupy 1 1/2 acres.It had got planning permission yesterday.Objectors were saying Ireland had learned nothing and was embarking on more mad brained investments that the tax payer would cop the bill for again when it went belly up.

The sail over to the Western isles of Scotland couldn't have gone better. the wind had turned to a force 3/4 south easterly and in such smooth water I was dong between 6.5-7.2 Kn.Mid channel I could see Sanda to the East and Rathlin to the west. Each was about 10miles away.Approaching gigha I could see it has a small windfarm. As a backdrop, there were the Paps of Jura, which is a lovely name for the distinctive mountains that occupy most of the island.

My mooring would be on a visitors buoy in Ardminish Bay on Gigha, which is in the Sound of Jura between Islay and the Mull of Kintyre.Just as I approached the harbour I was joined briefly by a small pod of dolphins. The size of them confirmed that my 2 previous experiences had probably been with porpoises. These were so much bigger. they seemed about half the length of the boat. This evening I will be on the web learning to tell the difference.

Tomorrow, i intend to visit an old friend Tony, who runs a yacht charter business from Ardfern, which is a little further north of here at the top pf Loch Craignish. He promises a bed and a shower. So the latest legs of the journey now look like this:-