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Ardnamurchan on the West coast of Scotland OS Map Thumbnail. If you click on the Ardnamurchan Thumbnail you will see a full screen Detailed Map of the area, the small yellow circles mark the sites I have been lucky enough to try out. |
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Camus Nan Gael - Ardnamurchan Peninsula. 1997 Mid week the weather turned somewhat cloudier and wetter inland, but still much to our frustration not very windy! We decided that since we have had days of mega slope lift on visits to the Great Ormes Head in Llandudno North Wales, then maybe we should drive to the coast in search of lift. |
This is Geoff whipping his Jibba Jabba up and down the slopes at Camus-Nan-Gael. |
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The Ardnamurchan Peninsula is the most westerly point of Mainland Scotland. To the SouthWest of it lies the Isle of Mull, and you can just see Tiree too. As you come round the corner there is a car park on your left, with a barrier blocking a track down to a sandy beach cove below. The whole cove opens up onto some fertile fields and on up into the hillside above the car park and beach, the ridge at the top defining the perimeter of this vast bowl. The seagulls coming inland were all effortlessly soaring up, and disappearing over the top ridge, which was a nice sign. Even better were the four buzzards which were circling high over the ridge. When we had launched and gained height they came and squawked at us for a few minutes and then went off to enjoy the lift way way higher up! The parking area (and presumably the beach too) is called Camus Nan Gael. There is one picnic bench and an information board telling the history of the area....but you don't want to wasting time reading that now....No you want to be up there flying with the gulls and buzzards ! Its a very SHORT (but quite steep) scramble up the slope on the other side of the road but then you are basically there! Got to Get flying straight away! It is possible to fly from here if you want.....(Well it has to be done on a first visit doesn't it, and we had some spectators who had seen us getting ready and were eager to see us fly !). However there is a wire fence behind you and although you can land quite safely in the flat area behind this, there is no gate on this side of the field. This site was abandoned to avoid damaging the Farmers fence by having to climb over it after every landing. So we started walking, making sure we didn't panic the sheep over the edge! They start quivering if you as much as 100 yards away! (Cue the Welsh Jokes) Follow the fence up the hill and underneath the power lines. About 50-80M higher than the power lines there is a large 'obvious' landing area. After launching, it is effortless to cruise up the ridge to the right, away from the power lines below and to the left of you, and barring radio failure, if the wind is blowing, you ain't going down! This is a cracking site, and well worth a visit if the wind is doing anything with a bit of SW in it. With nothing to obstruct it, it comes straight in off the Atlantic and, as smooth as you like, it funnels right up to the top of the bowl and beyond. It was great! A few metres back from the edge of the ridge there was a curl over effect (similar to Ardrossan but less severe) or bubble where the air was completely still - All I needed was a deck chair pitched just there, an ice cold drink, and I would have been in Heaven ! Needless to say, the view of the Isle of Mull and Tobermory was stunning too. If you have never flown at a coastal site before, I can thoroughly recommend it. The lift is tremendous, smooth and constant most of the day. This is, so I am told, due to a coastal on shore breeze that sets up usually between 10:30am and 3:00pm most days. This breeze tends to help the prevailing wind, the sum total of which means unlimited lift. Encouraged by shouts and advice from my Brother, I had so much height that he taught me how to first of all fly inverted (' Don't come too close to the edge of the slope...ohhhhh you have' he says as I roll inverted and come charging towards us!) and then bunt (Scary stuff for a novice, but as you come out of the manoeuvre, and realise that you are at the same height as when you started...well the confidence just grows). In fact I am still shouting Yeeeehaaar in my head even whilst I think about it now! |
'Follow the fence along, and go under the electricity pylons at the end.' |
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I flew one of my larger models way up the RHS (looking out from the slope) which is where the buzzards came from, until it was a tiny speck in the sky...Well until I bottled out and had to come back 1999 - The Return In 1998, Geoff and I found another cracking site which I will describe in another section, and we ran out of time to come visit Camus again, but in 1999 our base was near Mallaig, and a return visit was definitely on the cards. Rounding the corner was like greeting an old friend. Two years had passed since we had been there last, and nothing much had changed, except I now had my Eliminator SR and two more years flying experience under my belt. The climb seemed a little steeper, or maybe it was because I was a little older ! We finally got to our old site, but ever the explorers we decided to go higher still, besides the wind seemed slightly off the slope (remember it is slightly bowl shaped). We climbed up higher, and found another flat area, not as good as the lower one, but landing would not be a problem. There was also the remains of an old settlement there, which looked good for sheltering out of the wind. It was a race to see who was going to launch first, and as usual with this site we were not disappointed by the lift. I couldn't even wait for the usual 10 minutes before starting in on the aerobatics, and double bunts were the order of the day. Geoff was also having a good time of it, and 'invented' a new thing for us to do...Bunting across he called it...basically from level flight on the left or right of the slope, you have to push the nose down, until you are inverted and coming across the slope. Back off the elevator a little to maintain the inverted flight and keep coming until you are halfway across the slope, at this point we rolled out to level flight again. If you had been there, all you would have heard is Geoff and I alternatively calling out 'Bunting Across' and giggling like maniacs for five or ten minutes at a time. I decided that I didn't like the look of the landing area and scrambled up the short steep climb to the next plateau above the remains of the farm buildings. If you look at the photo above we must have been about half way along the ridge top by now. I was duly rewarded for the climb there was a massive flat landing area, no rocks, no turbulence behind, and acres of landing space. I landed and immediately went back down to pick up the rest of my stuff. Geoff did likewise. I also put my latest purchase to good use. One of those small fishing shelters that go up in about 2 minutes, IDEAL! Later on we walked as far as we could (whilst flying) along the ridge. Again if you look at the photo, we were about level with the small copse of woods that you can see on the left of the picture. Actually these trees no longer exist, the lumberjacks were in fact clearing the last of them away as we flew way above their heads. At this far end we were able to drop down onto a slightly lower plateau which juts out away from the main slope. It was a great laugh engaging in another of our aerobatic escapades, what we call flying a pipe 555. In this case we weren't so much flying through a pipe as simply coming across from behind, and then out over the jutting out bit. We had not long been back at the shelter when in the distance a band of fuzzy grey had appeared. As it got closer we realised it was rain front, and we would soon have to pack up and go. Still we had had a superb day. We couldn't resist coming back the next day either, except this time the weather was distinctly more threatening. We only made it as far as the ruins, and I immediately had to set up the shelter, yep it started raining. We do have a small amount of video footage of us in the tent shivering in the cold and giggling at how daft we are and convincing ourselves that it was just a shower and it would clear up in a few minutes. It didn't of course, but when it slackened off for a short while I decided I wasn't going to come all this way not to get at least five minutes in. I launched, flew up and down a few times, did a couple of token rolls and loops, and when it started raining harder, I decided that this was no longer any fun, especially as the wind was whipping rain drops into my face at high speed. Game over, we went home and dried out! The Flat Field Whilst exploring other parts of the Ardnamurchan looking for alternative wind direction sites, we came across a really huge flat area that was surrounded on all sides by hills. Quite by chance we had cause to go there the very next day to do some flat field thermalling. The wind had dropped, the sun was out and remembering previous lessons, we elected to take my bungee, Esprit, and E-100. A light wind was blowing straight onto the face of the largest hill of the surrounding slopes. We set the bungee up, and I launched the Esprit, donating the E-100 to Geoff for the day. As it turned out, the wind was strong enough to give some slope lift, which I discovered when I caught the first thermal and started following it back until it went over the top of the hill. I of course did not follow the thermal beyond the hill, but messed around in the slope lift instead. I gave Geoff a crash course in launching on a bungee and he did very well flying my Eliminator. We had a plan that we should try and get enough height so that we could X-Country all the way to the other side of the bowl, and see if there was any slope lift on the other side of the hills over there. On the first attempt, Geoff was going to guide me and I was going to fly the Esprit. However after only a small distance I lost sight of the Esprit when I looked down and could not re-acquire the model quickly. Of course I did get sight of it again, but it had lost a tremendous amount of height, too much to even contemplate making the attempt, besides it spooked me enough to decide not to try again. Geoff was mad keen on trying, so he picked his moment, launched the E-100, got some height and then he was off. Most of the time he kept the model close enough to the slope to maintain height, and then when he was not too far from the smaller hills on the other side of the bowl, he floated the E-100 across the vast expanse of the bowl towards him. Poor Geoff, by the time he had guided the Eliminator across the bowl, it had lost too much height, and he had to land on our side of the bowl. By this time I had plucked up enough courage to try again, The walking was not easy as it was quite marshy, and at one point I startled a couple of grouse which squawked like mad, and kept running in front of me. I could not stop, because by now I had started the glider across the bowl and was desperately trying to make it to the top of the hill Geoff was standing on before I too lost too much height. I made it, but only with enough height to make one pass across the top of the ridge and then land behind and below myself at the foot of the hill. Geoff tried sloping the E-100, but there wasn't enough wind, or the hill was not big enough, shame really, but we had had a good day, and without climbing a massive hill only to be disappointed at the lack of slope lift. |
Here are a few movie clips of the day. Launch Gliding 376kb MPG file, no sound, 4 secs duration - optimized for the web.  Launch Gliding 263kb MPG file, no sound, 3 secs duration - optimized for the web.  Landing Gliding 642kb MPG file, 7 secs duration - optimized for the web. |
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