TUESDAY 8 April 2003

This has been such a nice March and now April is too, after the cold add wind yesterday at Finlaggan, today was lovely so I spent some more time at Loch Gorm. In Gaelic “gorm” means blue so it was especially pleasant to be able to show this loch at it’s best.

The road turns off on to a single track from the main Port Charlotte road.

The organisers of the competition have chosen four very different lochs, where Finlaggan is in a glacial valley, Loch Gorm is on an exposed moor. The panorama is from a low hill to the East of the loch, you can see the boggy conditions and the exposed aspect. In the distance behind the low rise the Atlantic Ocean is uninterrupted until Nova Scotia.

I followed a track along to the the eastern shore to look at the water and at the island. This island once held a castle and the remains of a causeway reach out to it. There are small silty beaches here and reed beds. The water flowing into the loch is peaty and the water is a deep reddish brown.

Driving on to the normal fishing site on the southern side of the loch I met one of the many surprises. As you can see this single track road is in very poor condition, two of our local road workers were patching up the worst of the winter’s potholes and I stopped for a few minutes chat. A word of warning, there are gullies on the road can dent your sump if you go too fast, I have a hare shaped hole in my spoiler where one ran under my wheels. In other words – watch your speed.

A small track turns off the the right to the normal fishing spot.

The beaches here are more shingle than silt.

There are places to tie up your boats and these beaches stretch some distance both east and west. ‹ Loch Finlaggan