Testing Argyll’s seaplane service from Oban to Glasgow

Yesterday we tested the Loch Lomond seaplane service for ourselves, without declaring our identity and at our own expense. It is Scotland’s second favourite tourist attraction so finding out about it was worth doing.

There’s no visible organisation at the Oban end. You know you’ll be picked up at the North pier and ferried to the plane so it’s in your own interests to interrogate any boat coning into the slip in case it’s the one you’re looking for. After one raucous sprint to the wrong boat, the real one picked us up. It’s a day boat, open at the back and with a wheelhouse. We made up the plane-of-the-day’s full complement of ten passengers.

The experience started with the boat trip across the bay and a spectacular view down the Sound of Kerrera to the south, with the bow of an approaching CalMac ferry filling the horizon. Then we were in amongst the moorings at the Isle of Kerrera, so distracted by the vertical forest of masts that seeing the little horizontal seaplane moored to the pontoon was a complete surprise. While we waited for the pilot to start his demo on safety routines, the boat’s skipper told us thing’s were getting crowded on Kerrera these days. ‘We’re up to thirty people.’

And we were off, taxi-ing down into the throat of the Sound of Kerrera, passing the incoming CalMac ferry, turning and taking off to the north across Oban Bay. Out over the entrance to the bay, the Isle of Lismore was visible to the north beyond the flurry of little skerries with their memories of an unfaithful wife chained to face the rising tide. The plane curved south, down the spine of Kerrera whose contours were intriguing from the air, then turning south west across the hidden bay at the island’s south end and over to cross the mainland.

You see lochs and reservoirs below that you didn’t know were there. You see the Slate Isles, Luing and the Garvellachs off to the starboard side. Then there’s the ‘paris bun’ shape of Scarbha with the Sound of Corrvreckan separating it from Jura, stretching away south in yesterday’s mists.

You cross Loch Avich, another of Argyll’s hidden but accessible gems, then Loch Awe with the entrance to the Pass of Brander to the north on the port side. We flew down Glen Aray, with Loch Fyne coming into view and displaying the multitude of little hill lochs on top of the plateau to its west. These lochs were stocked with fish in Victorian times and fishermen from Glasgow used to come out and fish them heavily. This practice was interrupted by the second world war and since then the (pretty inaccessible) lochs are not fished much. This has let the fish regenerate themselves, making rewarding sport for the few responsible anglers who go up there.

The plane crossed Loch Fyne south of Inveraray, leaving the pretty town on the port side, with the Bell Tower, the castle and the folly on the hill at Dun na Quaich visible above it. The little traditional settlement at Kenmore and the village of Furnace beyond it on the west coast of the loch could be seen to starboard as we crossed to fly over Strachur on the loch’s east side.

Then there was the drama of Cowal, another Argyll secret – the mountain ridges, the sudden view of the length of Loch Eck arrowing south, the surprise of the proximity of Loch Goil running north from the fork with Loch Long. The extent of the Faslane naval base is clearly visible from the air – but no submarines. There’s a long shed with a sea door that masks their presence or absence.

After Loch Long and the view north into the Gareloch, the plane curves west over the Erskine Brdge before coming down to land in the Clyde and the long taxi-ing up river. It is based at the Science Centre in the city, south of the Kingston Bridge, facing the Armadillo, the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC).

This is an interesting journey. Glasgow’s industrial past passes you by on both sides and what has survived into the present is visible too. The Yarrow shipyards is on the port side, currently fitting out two naval ships. The Govan yard is shortly afterwards, to starboard, building D35, another of the Type 45 destroyers (like the Daring whose final sea trials we’ve been watching via the AIS website we’ve given you). Alongside D35 now fully shaped, you see sections of the next ship – a full bow section pointing hopefully at the water at one end of the yard, a tall bridge tower rearing up at the other. Cranes and tracks eventually move the prefabricated sections together for welding and rivetting into the unified structure.

You see the old dry and wet docks, ruins of some of the support buildings, new lochside apartment blocks as Glasgow takes the Clyde towards a Canary Wharf identity. Then you see the tower at the Science Centre as the plane comes in to to moor at the pontoon there. This is the tallest building in Scotland, a world first in being a free-standing, revolving structure pivotting on a single 65mm-diameter, saucer-shaped bearing 20 metres below the water-level of the Clyde. There’s a viewing cabin at the top with something like forty kilometre range to the horizon in good visibility.

Naturally, being there, we checked out the Tower and the Science Centre itself. The guide we had at the Tower was a stroke of luck A young man – Alan aka Aladdin – clearly with an engineering background, passionately bewitched by the technical achievements of the Tower, was unusually lucid in explaining them. He also had, for us, the bonus of loving his place (south of the river) and knowing a great deal about its history and its landmarks. This made the time in the cabin at the top particularly interesting.

We were lucky with the Tower. It’s aerofoil shape requires it to face into the wind, with its tail fin to the rear. Yesterday the wind direction was changing every twenty minutes or so – so the Tower revolved – all 530 odd tons of it driven by a single 6Kw motor. We did about 380 degrees before the wind stabilised. The motion is all but undetectable. You need to take a bearing on a landmark below to be sure that it’s happening. Yet it’s by no means a snail-pace manoevre. This doesn’t always happen so don’t expect it. But if you’re as lucky as we were, it’s a great experience, if a disorientating one. Where’s the river gone?

We also checked out the Science Centre itself. The complex has an Imax cinema, which would be fun if you had time and could – just now – stomach the power of The Dark Knight at this level of intensity. The Centre itself has a potential far from being fully realised. As a supposedly major visitor centre for Glasgow, it has no public transport delivering people direct to its doors. It lacks energy and attack. It is badly curated. Many of the interactive exhibits do not work, have clearly not worked for some time and have not been repaired. Some of the explanatory revolves accompanying some ‘games’ are inadequate. The cafe is dreadful. Food was tired, with indifferent sandwiches tasting damp; and muffins with OK centres but hard, air-dried crusts. The machine-made tea with its strangely foaming milk was an experience close to the most unpleasant in living memory. Staff are universally pleasant and helpful if approached, but generally focus more on each other than on visitors. This is a common-enough phenomenon in the so-called service industries but is an avoidable management failure.

Of course there are problems of stock, morale and staffing levels as the busy visitor season slows to a trickle. But this is a place with decks by the river and plenty of open, high ceilinged interior space. It cries out to appeal to Glaswegians and to the many people working in and coming and going from the boring BBC Scotland HQ next door. It should be the chill-out venue of choice. It needs serious re-invention.

Anyway, at this point our luck was clearly running out. We weren’t taking the immediate return flight but the afternoon return to Oban. Weather closed in to the north and the plane, by then at Tobermory and due to call at Oban to pick up passengers there before coming back to Glasgow, had to stay up there.

The Loch Lomond Seaplanes organisation is geared up to deal with this situation. It’s quite common in a weather-limited operation. There’s a staffed desk at th Science Centre during working hours, keeping in touch with you by mobile. You rebook a single flight when you wish and, with the plane unavailable, if you need transport they provide it. They will get you onto trains and buses. We and a couple of holidaymakers just arrived from Birmingham (planning to take the seaplane up for their stay in Oban) took the offered option of a chaufeured car. The company have a standing arrangement with a Glasgow firm and hired a people carrier and driver to take us direct to Oban. Choosing this options carries a premium of £25 payable on the single flight due when you rebook. The driver was attentive and prompt, the conversation was interesting and this sort of situation is, after all, the name of the game.

Would we recommend it? Without hesitation. It offers you the experience of aerial photography through your own eyes. It shows you the amazing beauty and diversity of Argyll from a perspective you cannot get any other way. Just don’t count on getting to fly on the day you’ve booked – or getting home again by plane. That’s weather. But the Loch Lomond Seaplanes company takes this on the chin and sees you allright – so expect the worst and go with the flow.