Rain Halts Play

When we woke up yesterday the rain was beating off the windows- the sort of day when you turn off the alarm and snuggle back under the duvet for as long as you can manage. Unluckily, it was the only day where we had timed appointments to keep - check out at 1200, Gorge Walking at 1430 and the ferry home at 1920. Between checking out and Gorge walking we had decided we would do our gift shopping and we would also look at the time-shares available within the complex.
Even with the short run out to the car with our gear we got pretty wet. I should have known something more dramatic was up as there was a lot of people arriving for the pool. While checking out another guest was asking about rooms for that night - it seems the ferry currently wasn't running due to gales and no decision would be made until 1300. I checked then about rooms and was told there was no problem as no new people were arriving until the ferry started moving again. Comforted by this we headed to look at the chalets.
 The rain stopped long enough for us to walk over to the chalets, chatting with the sales rep. We told her that we were going to do the gorge walk later and she looked a bit apprehensive. Before I could ask her anything my mobile went off. The gorge walkers had to cancel due to the state the rivers were in.

The agent said she wasn't surprised as there was a lot of water dropped since last night and most was running off. She pointed out "new" rivers down into the glen.
The chalets are quite nice, but expensive. Its a much better option to simply rent them by the day when you would like to use them, but they would appeal to many people. Ciaran fell in love with the 3 bedroom style - 3 double bedroom downstairs with an open plan living room dining room and kitchen upstairs, with a balcony out. Naturally, where they were meant a lovely view.
With no gorge walk we headed down to the ferry to see what was happening.
Ciaran did his bit of shopping, money still seems to burn him, and as we could see foot passengers joining the ship decided to head down to the terminal for an update. The staff were optimistic that sailings would be back to normal so we decided to head out to Glen Sannox to see what the water levels were really like, and then head back to the earlier ferry at 1640.
Once we started out the heavens opened and completely emptied themselves. With the poor visibility and the gale force winds I was really beginning to become concerned. Everywhere had an all over grey colour and the standing water on the roads made travel difficult. Fortunately with the narrow roads you tend not to travel very quickly anyway.
We arrived at Glen Sannox and apart from another family who appeared to all be wearing wet suits there was no one in sight. The rain was coming down so heavy that it wasn't worth the effort of getting out of the car to take the picture of the river. The other family also seemed to decide that conditions were never going to improve so they got into their car and headed away. Since we had no fixed agenda, we decided to wait a while.
After about 10 minutes the rain eased off and we got out for a look around. We could hardy believe our eyes - our happy little stream was a frothing monster, with the water level easily three to four feet higher than where it was only two days ago when we walked here on Friday.
When we were here on Friday we had noticed where the water level had dropped, from the rain on Thursday so we did expect a higher level, but never for the characteristic change which we saw. We now fully understood why the Gorge Walk had to be cancelled. After a while we headed back into Brodick and the ferry home.
Sadly, it was not to be as easy as that. Arriving at the ferry terminal, there was already a good number of cars waiting for the boat. Since we were technically early we had to go into the "unbooked" lane - essentially a standby category. The ferry arrived in and quite quickly seemed to have emptied itself of the Arran bound passengers. It seemed to take quite a long time to get the mainland bound vehicles onto the boat, with parts of lanes going on at a time. However, despite us being second in the standby lane, no cars from there were allowed on, but it looked now like the backlog had been caught up, and that if the ferry did go later then we would be on it.
Less than 20 minutes late, only 3 hours later, we were on board and feeling quite nervous. We could see the way the water in the harbour was moving, the tautness of the wind sock, and the absence of any flying birds to predict an rough trip back to Ardrossan.

We sat out at the back, just in case. By some strange combination of luck and weather, it was actually one of the easiest crossing Ciaran or I have ever made. The wind seemed to come at the back of the ferry at just the pace we were moving away from it, leaving not a breeze on the deck. The strange sense of isolation gave the opportunity to watch the island retreat s we headed back across the Forth.
Finally got home at about 2120, in time for Something, something something dark side, which Ciaran had been looking forward to all week.