I arrived in Kyle in the back of a mini bus, I had just traveled up from HMS Neptune (which was our Mother base). We pulled up outside our digs and was greeted by Mrs Mcphearson, there were two of us staying at this Address. On the pavement outside the digs there was a man asleep, Mrs Mcphearson asked us if we could help her get her son Murdo" into the house. This was about 3pm and Murdo had been in the pub all morning.
This was my welcome to Kyle of lochalsh. Kyle is a very small village on the west coast of Scotland, it's where you used to get the ferry across to the Isle of Skye (I say used to because there is now a bridge) there was one Hotel and one pub in the village plus a pub on the railway station, on Sundays we used to go across to the Isle of Skye to play darts in a Hotel there. Most days consisted of going down to a compound that the Navy had which was made up of 6 port-a-kabins inside a wire fence, we would hang around for most of the morning then go to the pub on the railway until about 4ish, then go back to the digs and sleep until dinner was ready. After which it was back down to the local for the evening darts competition. This was all very cushy, the only thing that spoiled it was the fact that we had to go and do range safety for torpedo firings. This was hard work, we would leave Kyle at 5am and arrive at the range about 6.30am where we would stay watching Radar and warning fishing boats until the early hours of the next day.
The map shows the Isle of Raasay and Kyle of lochalsh. The water in between was where we spent most of our time doing range safety. One night on our return to Kyle, the skipper was using a light (what he thought was the entrance to Kyle) to navigate by, he couldn't understand why he had to keep turning the wheel to starboard, until he realised that the light was a car moving along the road you can see at the bottom of the map. The skipper used to keep a bottle of whisky behind the wheel and I think that might have had something to do with the steering error. Every 30 days we had to go down to HMS Neptune to get paid, so 8 of us would set off in the mini bus to do the 150 mile journey through some of the worst weather you have ever seen. Driving through Glen Coe in the middle of winter is not very funny. Although amazingly we never once got stuck.
I would like to give a special mention to Ex-L(RO) Joe Armitage who has recently been in touch with me. Cheers Joe.
Just after I left Kyle, the Navy bought a large mansion house and moved everybody into it.
It wasn't long before I was drafted back to sea, and back to the real world! I went from the cushiest draft to the hardest working ship in my Naval career.
