The shell-sand skerries of Arisaig are a well-known sea kayaking destination so, blown out by the wrong sort of wind to complete our mission on Mull, we scooted over towards Morar on the warmest May day since Michael Fish was knee-high to an isobar. Arriving late the night before at the sheltered glampsite at Camusdarach (5-star ablutions), I wasn’t quite sure where we were, but somewhere out there the easterlies were howling like banshees. Next morning at Arisaig all was calm as a small posse of schoolchildren trotted by in high-viz safety wear, a tribute perhaps to George Osbourne.
We were at the wrong end of the tide to enjoy Arisaig’s famed aquamarine lagoons, so headed round the corner to some beaches Gael knew from previous visits. We lunched at one, set up camp at another then headed back to the archipelago in unloaded boats for low tide. For me it had become just too darn windy to enjoy a relaxing sea cruise. Even hopping onto one of the skerries, I could barely stand while grabbing a few shots of Gael (left). Back at the camp, conditions were calmer for a quiet evening, but early next morning, as soon as I looked out the tent the northeasterly kicked off for the 90-minute headwind hack back to Arisaig. We arrived at the jetty just as the church bell tolled 9am. Nice touch – can’t say I’ve ever encountered church bells in Scotland.
All that remained was a lift to Mallaig, a ferry to Armadale, a two-hour wait sun-baking outside the Ardvasar pub for the stealth bus to Broadford, then another hour for the big bus to gusty Kyle. An hour later the train left for the scenic line to Garve where the Mrs turned up right on time. I’m staggered by Cal-Mac prices for walk-ons, even hauling a paddle and some packs. You couldn’t go two stops on a London bus for what it costs to cross over to Skye. Integrated local bus services? Less impressive but I got there in the end.
Intrepid Scottish sea kayakeur Gael of the Scottish Sea Kayak Trail was taking it to Mull this year. I invited myself along for part of the tour. His plan: Oban > Kerrera > Mull then along the Ross of Mull to Iona, back east then north for Ardmeanach, Inch K and Ulva. Then maybe Staffa, maybe the Treshnish, then handbrake turn and round the top to surf the tide back to Oban like the cats in Big Wednesday. He of course knew well that achieving half of that would be good going, but the forecast at least was for a sunny week with easterly winds. In the end, he ferried the car over the Firth of Lorn to Craignure on Mull (we had a full-blown gale up here on that day) then gonflated his K40 and set off clockwise round Mull from Grass Point.
I Know Where We’re Going Hopefully he’d manage the 27km to Carsaig Bay, as that’s where we planned to meet up that evening, far beyond the reach of any mobile signal. As we drew into the rendezvous the steep, bumpy single track road passed the quaintly isolated Carsaig phone box. It looked so picturesque, right by a waterfall surrounded by dense forest – I wish I’d taken a photo. Seems I wasn’t the first to notice it’s photogenic qualities: it featured in the 1945 Powell/Pressburger Hebridean romance I Know Where I’m Going. It was down on the old jetty that Wendy Hiller (left) looked out towards a fictional ‘Kilkoan’ (Colonsay) where she thought her matrimonial destiny lay before the spirit of the isles got the better of her. A more recent film is also set in the Bay: The Silent Storm refers we’re told to repressed resentments in an island preacher’s mission and marriage, but by all accounts is a turkey.
Carsaig is just a few scattered houses clinging to the wooded slopes, and some bothies by the jetty not built, we’re told, by French Napoleonic PoWs. Twenty odd clicks to the southeast lay the Slate islands where Gael and I pulled off a successful tour two years ago. This time round I’d be happy to tick off Iona, Inch Kenneth and Ulva before scarpering, while Gael set out for the Treshnish. For my liking they were a bit too close to Tiree, home of the Hebrides’ most persistent winds.
West with the Wind Came the day, all was overcast with a stiff easterly and rains in the air. Full cags and batten down the hat. It’s not often you get an easterly up here and they can be a mixed blessing. They are of course offshore winds but as Gael explained, because they don’t kick up much of a fetch, they blow over invitingly flat seas. Warm, sunny, dry weather from the continent is also a feature, but in passing over fast-warming landmasses they get gusty and variable, swinging between NE to SE several times over a day while stuck in this barometric rut for days. Your prevailing, rain-sodden southwesterly is generally much more consistent. A gusting offshore wind from an unexpected direction isn’t what you want when trying to get back to shore at the end of a tough day.
Out on the bay I was initially freaked out by the backwind, swell and exposure; it seems the 1000-foot mass of Beinn Chreagach was amplifying the rush. My loaded Seawave was far more composed, and together we bobbed and yawed towards the cave at Malcolm’s Point (actually an arch, left) with definite Staffaesque influences.
It’s almost certainly the same basaltic formation that makes up Staffa’s famous Fingals Cave. Alongside is a more obvious arch that from the sea looks like the front edifice of a bombed-out building (great shoreside pic of both here). Moving into the adjacent bay, high above a herd of deer swept across the steep slope – descended perhaps from the mythical doudou of French folklore, according to Gael a mountain beast with two shorter legs on one side. The deer ran towards a flock of wild goats tiptoeing for the shore. They’re pictured here in the nearby Nun’s Cave, a Medieval ‘Naughty Step’ accessible along a coastal path from Carsaig.
The huge waterfall at the back of Traigh Cadh an Easa (‘Waterfall at Ravine Beach’, or some such) reminded me I’d needed to fill up. On the stony beach the usual flotsam suspects lay strewn at the high water line: rope, plastic, wood and the occasional fisherman’s Croc.
Round the point the winds dropped, but murk prevailed; further falls tumbling from the cliffs, as well as basaltic intrusions, gave the scenery a distinctly Icelandic feel. We were now passing towards a flatter ragged shoreline of skerries and periodic beaches where I grabbed a snack on a cushy fishing net sofa. It would have been a good day to have a sail up – I should have packed my compact cheapo disc sail which I’ve not bothered trying on the Seawave. I have experimented with the whole business and, certainly without a rudder, managing the lines on the disc would have resulted in the usual unsatisfying spurts.
West towards Uisken and through the skerries leading to the few dwellings at Ardalanish, the only car-accessible take-out before Fionnphort. Occasional showers rinsed the salt from our cags and after one stop my Seawave seemed to be pulling right, even though it’d handled fine in stronger backwinds earlier. I made do offsetting the paddle until the sandy isthmus by Eilean Mor where I hopped out and pulled off the kelp caught in the skeg. That’s more like it.
How far had we come? Who knew, but this being my first full-day’s paddle this year, by now I was counting the miles to the turning point at Erraid on my newish Montana GPS with OS mapping. As I’d found using it in the States on a moto a few months back, you can’t beat the big picture of a paper map. But here, when it came to threading passages between the skerries, seeing your precise position on a proper OS map made it easier to find a way through and avoid dead ends.
As we crossed Port nan Ron bay the winds kicked up hard to the NNE. We were aiming to turn north up the narrow, tidal channel in the Sound of Erraid (also the title of one of Enya’s unreleased albums from her mordant ‘Scottish Widows’ phase), but the tide was only just turning back in and the wind would have been on us.
So we parked up for the night inside a lovely clamshell cove hemmed in by pink granite crags below a broad grassy amphitheatre. As the predicted evening rain fell, we cooked up some delicious seawater pasta then roamed to a high point overlooking the Sound where Gael picked up a detailed forecast from his mate: warming up, drying up but still blowing up from the east. Strong winds woke me in the night and I lay there wincing as the tent shook and flapped violently. This was its first stormy outing and it took me a while to just accept it, plug up the ears and fall back to sleep.
The Sound of Erraid The morning blew in from the northeast and after breakfast behind a knoll, Gael set out towing my yak while I fired off some shots from the headlands above and caught him up in the Sound. It was an hour or two after high tide so we only just managed to scrape over the Shallows of Erraid and out into a wind-blasted bay.
As we crept northwest, Erraid island seemed to be developed out of proportion to its size. Turns out it was a quarry for the nearby Torran Rocks lighthouse in the Stevenson era, and Stevenson fils set Kidnapped here. Now the former quarrymen’s cottages house a satellite community of the Findhorn Foundation, offering their alternative to the ecumenical retreats over the water on Iona.
Gael’s big Ortlieb water bag had gone rogue, exuding a pungent iodine tang, so we put in near Fidden campsite to fill everything else with lovely sweet water. (I noted a 1.5L plastic bottle slotted neatly into my footrest tube). Out in the Sound it was way too windy to aim for the southern end of Iona as planned, but we figured with our added ballast we could work our way north between the skerries for a shorter, less exposed crossing of the mile-wide Iona Sound. From there set off for an anticlockwise loop instead.
Crossing to Iona Somewhere just after Lalte Mor we made our dash for Iona, aiming for a beach just south of the ferry jetty, with two big buoys in between as markers. The wind had now veered to the southeast and mid-channel it was all getting a bit lumpy but manageable but the Seawave tracked true. The quicker I paddled the sooner it’d be over. Gael yelled to err north towards the ferry line where we were being blown anyway. He realised the spring tide was in full retreat down the sound and we needed to compensate. With the green and yellow buoys and the beach, I was sure my track was good, but on the far side Gael explained my trajectory resembled a washing line due to the strong southerly ebb. Sure, I was pointed at the beach and the buoys remained to my left, but the sea was moving southwards beneath me. His tip on such crossings was to line two points (a buoy and the beach for example) to better monitor and compensate for any deflection. A day or two later I tried this while hacking into Arisaig Bay, lining up a distant tree and a gully, and was surprised how the unseen current or wind deflected me within seconds, while still making good headway.
It was a good lesson from le seamasteur. Had we let the tide take us, our Iona Sound crossing might merely have ended up more westerly than northwesterly, but we’d still have reached the shore OK. But had we been aiming for Iona’s southern tip (as originally planned from Fidden), the stream may have pushed us out into the open sea, or at the very least extended the transit to reach the island. Add in the wind swinging back to the northeast and that’s how sea kayakers get in trouble.
Little did we know that my Mrs, who’d spent the night on Iona in solemn retreat after dropping me off at Carsaig, was recording our progress from the ferry chugging back to Fionnphort. And even as the odd wave broke alongside me, I too was able to grab a few shots: clearly a sign that conditions were less epic than they felt.
The Treasures of Iona We beached the boats and went for a wander through Baile Mor towards the abbey. While backtracking, up ahead it looked like the village idiot was bounding along towards us, waving enthusiastically. We reserved our judgments until it turned out to be the g-friend who’d hopped back onto the ferry to present me a chocolate doubloon (it was my birthday). What a nice surprise ;-) Soon we were swept away in a whirlwind of anniversarian revelry and all headed to the village cafe for a slap-up haddock, salad and chips (with a backup ice cream. And cake).
Back in the boats, it was a short sidewind struggle up to Iona’s northern beaches before a calmer paddle on the island’s lee. With the weather warming up, post-lunch lethargy plus the fatigue from the nervy crossing and the interrupted night, we lost our momentum a bit.
At the back of our minds, neither was keen on the idea of shortly rounding Iona’s southern tip into the wind and then edging back up the windward side. We crossed the big bay and nosed ambivalently past Sprouting Cave as far as Port Beul-Mhoe, a steep stony cove with an onerous portage before any tentable grass. I plucked a superb granite birthday egg from the shingle, then we backtracked to the big Camas ‘Bay at the Back of the Ocean’ and made an early camp to enjoy a warm, sunny evening. Next morning we’d see how we and the winds blew.
Outrun by the wind The plan had been to complete the Iona circuit, cross back to the Ross and head east into the mouth of Loch Scridain for the mountainous Ardmeanach peninsula where Gael has got windbound last year. A glance out of the tent at 6.30 revealed blue skies, but an offshore breeze was already ruffling the sea – and this was the lee side of Iona. It didn’t bode well for the south end, let alone the 13-km leg into Loch Scridain and the exposed crossing to Ardmeanach, with gusts tearing down off the 3000-foot slopes of Ben Mor. I was all set to roll up my boat, stagger across the island and meet Gael at the ferry, but he agreed the weather had outpaced our plans on Mull. We’d head back the way we’d come, cross to Fionnphort by paddle or ferry, then he’d retrieve his car from Craignure to deploy Plan B.
We set off at the top of the tide. With the newfound sunshine and warmth it was a relief to forgo the sweaty, salt-caked cagwear. Back through the skerries and into the wind round the top of Iona. Ten clicks to the north, Staffa and Dutchman’s Cap hovered on the horizon, but any trippers heading there today may well come back with faces the colour of warm guacamole.
The narrowest crossing back to Mull is near Eilean nam Ban, and when the time came it turned out to be a lot easier than yesterday, even contending with another southerly stream (left). Gael decided later we must have caught a fortuitous lull in the wind-bashing, and once in the sheltered Bull Hole channel, we let the strongly ebbing tide swish us down towards Fionnphort.
Unloading on the jetty, hoards of tourist-pilgrims from the world over were making their way to Iona. Having spent a day there, the Mrs had confessed she’d been a bit disappointed. The recently rebuilt abbey lacked a Medieval aura, and the achievements of Saint Columba and the significance of Iona’s post-Druidic heyday were rather embellished, compared to more objective sources.
For centuries the Lords of the Isles and Scottish kings (including Macbeth) had been buried here; the nearer the abbey the better, it was thought. I noticed the decorated headstone (above right) of former Labour party leader John Smith who’d managed to squeeze in, though it turns out he’d no connection with Iona other than being raised in Argyll. Maybe there’s more to it, but as even some Iona-born fail get a plot here, it seemed a post-mortal vanity inconsistent with what I recall of Smith’s public image.
Anyway – I stretched out with my Kindle on the old jetty and let the warming kayaks gently purge through their PRVs, while Gael strode boldly east up the A849. After a while I went up the road to make sure he wasn’t skiving behind some shed having a quick nap. The strong winds I met underlined the fact that we were doing the right thing. Kayaking anywhere east from here would have been hard, paddle-creaking yakka. Three hours later Gael returned to find me surrounded by empty crisp packets, ice cream wrappers and a succulent Curly Wurly embedded in my gob. We strapped the yaks to the roof and went to find somewhere else to play.
What paddler can resist the thrill of poking their bow into a cave or threading a natural rock arch? Paddling under a bridge or into a boathouse just doesn’t have the same transgressive buzz. Here are a few of my favourites, tracked down over many summers bobbing among the Isles. Most of the arches will need the top half of a tall tide, but add spring highs and a swell and some caves may require a hard hat too, or may just be too risky.
Double Arch • Bottle Island This was a great discovery – in under one arched slot with room enough below a collapsed roof cavern to turn for a paddle-stowed squeeze out of the other exit (above right) if the tide is high or the swell is right. Read more…
Arch • Tanera Beg The best known and best looking of kayaking arches in the Summer Isles (left). Not that easy to spot on the usual approach from the northeast I the Tanera channel, so start nosing around off the southeast side of Tanera Beg when the tide is high. Read more…
Arch • Eilean Mullagrach Another superb example of Torridian archmanship which elsewhere, in similar forms, may have given birth to the first architectural arch. Easy to find and get to as long as there’s a paddle in your hand and water under your boat. There’s a cave behind the arch (both left) which, who knows, may one day link up with the other Mullagrachcave described below. Read more…
Deep Cave • Eilean Mullagrach Just up the coast from the above arch is a hidden cave tucked in the back of a little cove – Am Fang on some maps. Look on a map or sat image and it very much looks part of the same fault as the arch above which burrows right along the eastern shore of Mullagrach. We went back the other day for a closer look with a bit more tide but which did not please the birds nesting by the entrance (left) at all. We probably got within a boat’s length of the end, using the camera flash to navigate. Read more…
Arches and Caves • Priest Island We didn’t go right round the ‘Island of the Clerics’ but passed an arch approaching the Priest’s northern tip, and I read in Fraser-Darling’s Island Years that there are deep linking chasms – crawlable not kayakable – around the northern point and another on the western end too. On the east end of the ‘Acairseid’ or bay is a narrow cave as well as a tricky right-angled tidal slot alongside a stack (right; I may be conflating the two). There’s also a less a constricted passage through the skerries just round the corner. Read more…
Cave • Tanera Beg On the OS map this cave is near a point labelled Sron Ghlas on at the island’s south-southeast point. ‘Cathedral Cave’ is what the boat tours call it, as they can edge right in while the captain offers a rendition of ‘Danny Boy’. With the daylight coming through the crack at the back (right), give it 100,342 years and they’ll have to reprint their brochures with ‘Cathedral Arch’. Read more…
Double Arch • Sgeir Ribhinn In a rush to get to see the main islands before the weather breaks, most would paddle by Sgeir Ribhinn, the easternmost of the three skerries south of the Taneras. But if you do pass close by, the one-kayak-wide geo on the upper east side will bring you into the cathedral gloom of big and small (left) arches overhead. Read more…
There are more caveson the Coigach peninsula cliffs facing Enard Bay, northwest of Achnahaird plus some fun tidal passages in the Isles too. Here you can catch that serene Caribbean sensation of gliding on aquamarine glass over the sandy sea bed, if not always with tropical temps, balmy winds or reggae soundtrack. My favourite is the pass between Carn Iar and Carn Deas (left), just above Bottle Island, with a lovely sandy passage on the right of Deas. Carn nan Sgeir below Horse Island is another, though you’ve got to time both at high tides.
First paddle of the season, although it’s still far from spring-like. The last few days snow has been blanketing the Torridons (left), the Assynts and even BM Coigach (above). But after three days of howling, the winds abated and Jon and I went for a spin round Tanera Mor. I remember first time I did that in the new K40 it felt like an expedition. This time with two of us it was just a jaunt to get the old shoulders cranking again.
Jon bought my previous IK, a Grabner Amigo, but had yet to use it, so this was a chance to compare it with my current Seawave. I sold the Amigo after a run out to Bottle Island when it dawned on me it literally wasn’t cut out to be a swift sea kayak. Still, I managed a pretty good tour of the Slate Islands that year with the Amigo.
Off Badentarbet beach heading for Rubha Dubh-Dubh, Jon was notably slower in the Grabner. For a moment I felt a bit bad – Jeez, did I really sell him such a dud? I’m sure it wasn’t that bad. It was only later when we swapped boats and were more of less evenly matched, that it transpired years of paddling slick, hydro-dynamically efficient hardshells had had a catastrophic effect on Jon’s pulling power. Either that, or a winter’s pushbike training had similarly atrophied his arms, giving him the physique of a T Rex.
Still, it was good to break the arms in gently, and before we knew it we were turning back northwest for the Tabera channel. With the tide bottomed out, we had lunch on a fish farm platform to the sound of salmon skimming and thrashing up non-existent rapids to their blue remembered breeding grounds. With that sort of daily exercise, at least they won’t end up like T Rexes. From here I rowed the Amigo back. Sure, the flat nose was more snow plough than arrow-like bow, but you’ve got to admire the Grabner’s solid, no-nonsense build. PRVs? Kiss mein schkegg!
Proper seat and attachment points? Opzional, Freund. And compared to the slight flex I noticed in the Seawave – even at .25 bar all round – the 0.3 bar and 750-cm shorter Amigo was as stiff as a stretcher.
As before, the seat-bar mounts caught my fingers as I paddled, but Jon found similar protuberances on the Gumboat. The bomb-proof Amigo would make a great river touring boat: tough as nails, upswept ends to ride over whitewater and as stable as any IK – though the upswept stern might be a backwind catcher when running skeg-free, as I did on the shallow Spey one time (left).
All in all though, living as I occasionally do by better sea than big, boaty rivers, the Seawave works for me, even at just half an mph faster. The price new was about the same, but there were a lot more extras with the Gumotex, including a deck (I never use). I gave the OE seats away with the Amigo and made a lightweight and q/d seating arrangement which I’ve adopted on the Seawave: a packraft seat base, SoT backrest plus packraft thigh straps and my patented elasto-cantilevered drainpipe footrest (left). Read all about them here.
High pressure alert!No, my range of recreational leisurecraft weren’t about to blow, it’s the weather – and that’s not about to blow. Far from it. A high was about to lasso the north of Scotland with its concentric isobars. It may be mid-October but it’s been the sunniest and calmest spell up here for two months. Never mind Indian summer, this was turning into an Arapaho autumn. It all added up to good chance to make a break for that most troublesome and distant of the Summer Isles: Priest Island – or Eilean a’ Chleirich; ‘Island of Clerics’.
Whichever way you look at, it Priest looks way out there for someone used to staying within a mile of the shore. Mainlandwise, it’s over six miles out of Old Dornie, nearly four miles off Mellon Udrigle on the other side, and a bit more from the end of the Scoraig peninsula. Far enough out to need the full length of a good day and someone for backup. Luckily Jon thought so too and rode up late Thursday night with his Peckett & McNabb Scorchio LV.
Friday, soon after dawn we were putting in at the top of the tide at Old Dornie. ETA Priest north shore: 2.5 hours. The forecast was a 6mph SE till late morning after which time it was set to drop right off to the southwest. Once clear of the back of Tanera Beg’s lee, I expected things to kick up a bit. But what a difference it is having someone else along for the ride to quell the usual neuroses. Jon agreed that he too would be nervous of taking a run out to Priest alone, and he was sea kayaking by the book: UHF, spare paddle, bluetooth bilge pump and the Semaphore Handbook in six languages, including Gaelic. Of course, this was all in a day’s work for someone like Gael A who was up here a couple of years ago in an Incept K40 at the end of his Scottish Sea Kayak Trail when he wrote.
I headed towards the closest, Priest Island some 5km away. Halfway through the passage, the wind died off and the sea glassed over. The uncanny cries of the guillemots emphasised the eerie atmosphere; I felt like I was entering an unearthly space. From the SE tip of the Priest Island I carried on around the west side. It was another paddling paradise with endless features to explore in the good company of seabirds and seals.
Back to now, and I was typically under-dressed, making a concession to the season with some Ron Hill leggings and my warmer pfd. It may have been mid-October but I knew I’d cook in my drysuit and, as I guessed correctly, my high-waisted Kokotat overtrousers would complicate the inevitable pee breaks long before I got to set foot on Priest. Good thing a calm was setting in then. As we left Old Dornie Jon asked me to pull down his jammy skeg, and in the ten seconds it took me to locate it, my arm went numb with cold. Falling in out there would really not bear thinking about. The cold shock would lock your lungs like a slamming safe door. As it was, once past the back of Tanera Beg the sideslap never got that unnerving, and as we sploshed along I knew not to be concerned if the distant dark crags of Priest appeared not to grow any nearer.
Only 90 minutes in the marker of Glas Leac Beag (small green rock – above) came up on the right. I visited the bigger counterpart, Glas Leac Mor the other week, but Glas Leac Beag’s consolation in an emergency was purely hypothetical as the only way to get on it would be to leap from a boat like a frog. Still, we were going quicker than I expected despite the chop and corrections against the sidewind. The skeg-rudder idea of fellow Gumotard, Jim, would have been handy here. Every once in a while I had to give a double haul on the right. Jon’s hardshell worked by balancing the variable drop of the skeg against the force of a sidewind which would otherwise push his stern round: more sidewind, more skeg, or something like that. In that sense skegs are more like optional rudders on hardshell cheesecutters which have no need of directional aids, unlike windprone IK bloats.
Looking at Priest with the low sun in my face, it was impossible to discern any perspective to the foreshore – it was all one long dark line of crags. The map lay right in my lap but who looks at maps once they’re on the move? I failed to recognise that the bouldered landing beach we were aiming for was further to the east, while we were heading down to the western end. Once I realised that, we changed course and passed the tip of Priest and an arch (not the needle-eye arch on the west end) which only Jon noticed. And as predicted, the wind dropped off to nothing.
We were searching for the cobble stoned beach created by the island’s NE/SW glacial gouging. We put in up a cleft (left) and staggered ashore, but it was all wrong – we had made the deadly mistake of pre-emption: scourge of the hasty navigator! If we wanted to spend any time on land, the dropping 12-foot tide would make getting back out of the cleft tricky.
Back into the boats on the slippery seaweed boulders – surely the most awkward and risky part of sea yaking, short of tackling a typhoon. Soon we got to the correct stony beach I’d clocked on Google. A stumbly 5-minute portage from here would have led to the glassy half-km-long Lochan Fada which cuts right to the heart of the island, one of nine freshwater sources on the Priest. But, great picture though it may have made, I was a bit pooped and more interested in ham butties. We sat on a hill overlooking the still lochan when Jon noticed the back of a signboard at the other landing beach. It was a plea by the island’s RSPB owners for visitors to be careful not to crush the burrows and eggs of the 2000-strong colony of storm petrels that inhabit Priest Island.
As it happens that was made easier by a few paths leading from the two landing beaches. One led past the RSPB shed from where I carried on to the south side to check out the ‘prehistoric’ stone circles. The ones I saw (picture far below) looked more like rude shepherd shelters than mysterious Neolithic monuments (there’s more on Wiki), but to be fair, I didn’t see the others just to the north. That was because it took a bit of reorienting to locate the island’s sole ruin, a substantial but roofless four-room bothy supposedly on the site of a sixth-century Christian chapel, suggesting an origin to the island’s name. I was curious to see this place as it’s said in 1975 a pair of unlikely criminals hid out here for a few months, on the run from a collapsing series of scams.
Google ‘Jim Miller and John Bellord, Southern Organs Scandal’ and you’ll soon find Geoff Green’s recent book: Paying for the Past. In it, the author admits to falling under Miller’s mesmeric spell in the early sixties and eventually becoming one of the entrepreneurs’ close business associates. Along with many others, he was invited to make a quick buck by investing in loans to supposedly supply churches with expensive electric organs, and was later drawn into a racy, high-profile lifestyle as the manager of Southern Organs’ GP sponsorship endeavour. Alvin Stardust (right) and other celebs were part of the gang, but then around 1975 the whole cosy investment scam which supported the racing sponsorship began to crumble.
Although he knew nothing of the area, it was Green who came up with the idea for the pair to hide out on Priest Island. They jetted off on a long-overdue holiday to Calais, sent postcards back home saying they’d killed themselves, ferried back to Dover the same day where Green met them and drove up to Ullapool. He then RIB’ed over from Dundonnell to Priest, leaving them with provisions and an inadequate two-metre dinghy with an outboard.
I read the book curious to discover if this claim – that these urbane middle-aged gents (Miller lightly crippled with polio) could really have lived for ‘262 days’ on Priest Island, frying up storm petrel omelettes and brewing peat tea. Over eight months sounded far-fetched for two conmen fleeing a Rolls Royce-champagne-and-helicopter lifestyle before clumsily faking their suicides from Calais, like Reggie Perrin on telly, John Stonehouse the MP, Lucan and more recently, our hardshelled friend, Canoe Man. A desperate, ex-para axe-murdering survivalist might have been able to hack Priest for that long. But with these two, insisting as they did on a chemical toilet, it all seemed improbable. Crofting on Coigach mainland is hard enough. What chance on a 120-hectare island, even with half-a-dozen lochans? On their release they went on to explain in a BBC documentary:
… the island had reaffirmed our belief in the simple things and helped us to clear away a mass of valueless and extraneous paraphernalia with which we, like so many, has cluttered our lives.
Paying for the Past is a bit light on clerical details and dates as, after dropping them off on Priest one stormy September day (a slightly over-written episode with some implausible embellishments, IMO), the author (left) was never to see his friends again. It’s only towards the end of the book that Green suggests they may not have been on the island anywhere near as long as he claims, and once recovered to the mainland, probably used their well-polished charm and remaining cash to secure local support in Ullapool, as explained in the book.
This video is part of a documentary that portrays the events from the point of view of a psychic detective who was hired by the Express, though it wasn’t shot on Priest Island. And for all our man’s alleged clairvoyance, it was simply the police tip-off from Geoff Green (under pressure from legions of debtors and with leniency guaranteed) that got the two arrested in Ullapool. Ironically though, it was Miller’s similar esoteric beliefs in radionics, among other ‘faith healing’ therapies, that founded and then funded what became the duo’s glamourous empire.
When I found the ruin in which they say they hid, it was clearly not your average Coigach crofter’s bothy, but a more substantial dwelling supposedly built on the site of an old chapel, either by a sixth-century monk on retreat, or a banished sheep rustler with a talent for masonry. As a sign (right) we saw on the Dundonnell Estate near Scoraig last week proves, ovine rustling is still an issue here in the wild nor’ west.
The way Green tells it, it was his auspicious discovery and reading of Frank Fraser Darling’s book Island Years, Island Farm (1943, left) which gave him the bright idea for the pair to hide out on Priest Island until it all blew over. Apparently, Miller and Bellord had holidayed in Ullapool and were fond of the area – that was all it took. Any bushcraft savvy they could pick up along the way. Darling’s Island Years mostly deals with experimenting with sustainable crofting agriculture on Tanera Mor (left) in the early 1940s (Island Farm), but he and his resilient family first tried to give a go for a few months on Priest Island a few years earlier. Having now read that book I wouldn’t say the account of Arctic-grade tents being torn to shreds would evoke a great place for a hideaway holiday, but as we know with northwest Scotland, when the weather is calm it’s brilliant, and when it’s not you just knuckle down.
The Fraser Darling family went on to camp on the Treshnish Islands and even endured a spell on North Rona where the author had been funded to study grey seals and their effect on commercial fishing.
Miller and Bellord come across as an intriguing pair, and you can see why their background, interests and activities captured the attention of the media, and why Geoff Green’s 2014 book has gone down well with readers.
In this video published by Green a couple of weeks ago, he returns to Priest Island, but in it he mistakes the hut circles I saw (left) for the bothy which appears on the 25k OS map shown on this page, and even more clearly on Google aerial imagery. It remains as intact as it was in the first, 1979 BBC Everyman documentary featured at the end of the video above, with a bit of unsightly plastic rubbish in the adjacent burn – a job for the next RSPB volunteer visit, or anyone with a bin bag and space.
Anyway. Enough true crime confessionals. We returned to the boats and headed southeast across the big bay towards some interesting looking cliffs and clefts. One chasm led deep into the crag with promising daylight peaking out the far end. We edged in deeper, pushing off the sides, and between the swells got far enough through to see there was no way out at this point, halfway down the tide. We tried from the other end, slipping behind the outer stack visible on aerial images, but that too needed at least another foot of water to paddle through. Finally at Aird Glas, Priest’s eastern extremity, we managed to paddle behind a stack and commence our glide across the now mirrored water to Bottle Island.
It all seemed so effortless. We could have aimed at any Summer Isle we chose – over to Carn nan Sgeir even – and paddled straight there with ease. What was all the fuss about? On Bottle I was hoping to lead Jon through the southern passage I found last year, but as on Priest, the water was too low to pass through the narrower exit tunnel (right).
All that remained now was to follow the island chain over to nearby Carn Iar/Deas and from there pass over the sandy green channel of Caolas nan Sgeirean Glasa (I throw all these Gaelic names about like I didn’t just type them carefully off an OS map :–). We pulled in for tea break on the jetty of Eilean Dubh, ahead of the final, six-mile surge back to Old Dornie. I found this handy refuge last year and we agreed that a: the jetty was a bit short for the tidal span and b: even if it’s nice to have a secluded island cabin (right) well sheltered from the prevailing winds, it had a comparatively ordinary view back towards Achiltibuie and a chilly, sunless aspect this time of year.
The tide was on the turn now as we passed Tanera’s tidal lagoon and crossed Badetarbet Bay on home ground. I’d been asked to pick up some heavy bags of winkles somewhere on the north side of the bay on Rubhan na Buaile and drop them off at Old Dornie. But clambering along the grubby shore while Jon towed my boat, neither of us could find any trace of them. There was clearly a need for some CCTV surveillance around here, too.
We got back to Old Dornie just as everything was getting bathed in the same rosy-orange glow it had been when we set out, nine hours earlier. And after 30 clicks of sea paddling and very little similar exercise, I wasn’t as shagged as I’d expected to be, something that I’d partly put down to a lack of tension of not doing it alone.
The Bottle Island run last year was 22km but pushing the bow of the Amigo had been enough of a slog to make me buy the Seawave. I think there’s barely one kph in it, but that’s nearly 20%, and with the Seawave’s many other benefits, not least its sharper bow, I can conclude that, like the name suggests, it’s a better all-round sea boat, and also that Priest Island would be a great place to revisit.
It’s summer time in the Summer Isles and the rest of the UK too, it seems. It’s a little later than usual but we’re not complaining. Feels like the warmest day of the year. Loading the boat up, I realised I sold my footrest pipe with the Solar last week. Darn, I didn’t want to catch the wind so I quickly hacksawed a slice of plastic drainpipe on which the Seawave rests between missions. New XL footrest cut and rigged in ten minutes.
Don’t know if it was this bigger foot-tube but today the Seawave seemed set up just right. Seat, backrest, footrest, thigh braces and operator all working in perfect harmony as we sliced across Badentarbat Bay. I set off planning to gallop around Horse Island but halfway across the bay took a fancy to Tanera Mor instead. It’s a good thing I don’t leave details with the coastguard; they’d never find me if they went looking.
The breeze would be in by 2pm so I kept it simple and headed for a cove I recalled on the east corner of Tanera, just beyond Rubha Dubh Dubh. On the way in, a stream was draining a shoreside lochan into the cove, which looked odd. Then I remembered it was another one of those tidal lagoons which only fill on a spring tide, like Loch of Reiff.
I pulled up to the stream bed in my long red limousine, crossed An Lochanach and went for a wander in the ankle-twisting tussocks. Up on top, I caught a lovely view over the tranquil Anchorage from behind Garadheancal. With all the ruins and usable houses, there are a lot of buildings on Tanera – still for sale at well under £2m now.
Back at An Lochanach the sea had dropped two feet in half an hour and as I was paddling out, my skeg doubtless hooked up a load of seaweed trying to pull through the mush.
I decided to contour around Tanera’s Anchorage, past the flapping salmon pens and pull up again by the post office at Ardnagoine which was having a quite day. All appeared to be in order so I set off back home in the flat calm which usually precedes a wind starting up from another direction. According to British Stomach Time it was definitely lunchtime.
I slipped under the encrusted beams of the condemned pier and was just at the right level to pick off a few mussels for tea. On the way in the wind picked up and the ochre sands were already exposed as I glided over a mangled starfish on the seabed.
It’s taken a few visits, adding up to over a year up here, but I do declare I am running out of new things to paddle in the Coigach and Summer Isles area. A seven-mile run out to Priest Island – the very, very, very last of the Summer Isles – would be less edgy if not alone, while all the coasts from Lochinver round to Ullapool and up to the back of Loch Broom have been surveyed at least once. About a year ago that I did my (for me) epic run out to Bottle Island, just a stone’s throw from Priest.
September does seem to be a reliably good month up here. Well, better than August – an old Highland truism. Another unexpected day of blue skies and light winds with the northwest pinned between a ‘Double Zero Low’, the sort of meteorological phenomenon that gives weatherpersons the munchies.
We decide to motor off the peninsula, along the Wee Mad Road (WMR) and past Lochinver to Clashnessie – a Norse word meaning ‘Battle of the Sea Monsters’. Here we paddled out towards the high arch before Point of Stoer and the beach at Culkein for lunch..
From Culkein beach there was a clear view right across western Sutherland to the quartzite mountains of Arkle, Foinaven, and the sea cliffs ending at Cape Wrath. I thought about crossing the bay directly via the Eilean Chrona for Oldany Island channel. But it was a Spring tide going out so the flow may have been in our face by the time we reached the channel. Why wear yourself out on openish water? It would have added another 8 miles, ending with a rocky run back to the Clash of Nessies, just to explore a small area, and who knows what the weather might be doing by then.
So we headed back to Nessie beach, letting the swell you so often notice in these north-oriented bays, lift the boat as it rolled inshore to crash against the rocks. Directly ahead was Quinaig mountain (left). I’ve said it before: it’s one of the best day’s hill walks here in the Assynt. I’d long wanted to poke around the scattered skerries and islets between Oldany Island and Drumbeg. We drove up the Drumbeg road, where one time a mate and I had staggered against a gale, looking for the car after slackrafting the Lewisian barrens. Soon enough a small turn off led north to a ruined jetty at tiny Culkein Drumbeg.
Coming north, as soon as you get on the WMR you begin to see a different ecology. Hard to pin down what exactly: less bleak and peat sodden than Coigach. Perhaps it’s due to the Lewisian gneiss bedrock, because the Torridian sandstone was scraped off like an icky marzipan crust by the Ice Age and dumped into the Minch, to wash up on the beaches of the Western Isles just in time for Castaway. More birds dash about, the flora’s subtly different with a few more pockets of old-growth trees which have been picked clean or long blown away on Coigach. Perhaps the Stoer headland protects Oldany a bit, but it feels more like Plockton than the blustery northwest.
We set off for the hidden isthmus beach somewhere out here, scattering more seals as we went. Not bothering with the GPS to record moving averages, I’ve recently finally found a handy way to mount an easy-to-read compass on the Seawave, tucking it under the deck bar mount tabs. It was already proving handy to follow the NW bearing suggested by the map, out via the islets to the secret beach.
As we approached the sands we startled some hardy and doubtless Nordic skinny-dippers with their parked up Sevy Sirocco. Once beached, we politely took off in the other direction until they had regained their modesty. Soon a couple of hardshellers rocked up too – kayak rush hour on Oldany Island beach. Perhaps it’s not such a secret after all.
A small bothy sits perched on the spit of grass which separates the two beaches. Hardshell man told me it was a private dwelling once rented to a local doctor by the Edinburgh owners, and even had a phone line installed in case someone’s baby was born early. It was another detailed ownership report the like of which you won’t find online. Our busy beach made an altogether lovely prospect of sand, grass and the azure sea beyond, abob with skerries and distant peaks. Plus kayaks in red, blue, green and mango.
Back afloat, we took the long way back to the jetty, nipping round to the south to check out where the channel went. That could be a fun run at the right stage of a big ebbing tide. In the car, we carried on clockwise around the coastal road. Even more than the WMR, this Drumbeg road is hardly level for a moment and would be a good work out on a pushbike. Back on the main road, in Unapool we stopped off for a brew at the Rock Stop Cafe. A retired couple there were trying to track down the rude Withnailian cottage they’d honeymooned at no less than half a century ago. They’d not been up to the northwest in 50 years and Rientraid, overlooking the Kylesku bridge, had rung a bell. We told them about The Kerracher Man book which was set nearby, but about a decade later.
In the cafe there was Rocky Road in the cake cabinet and a geology map on the wall. Pink is your 3 billion-year-old under-icing of Lewisian gneiss; the orange is a creamy overlay of Torridian sandstone. Interestingly, the map showed Horse Island as the only Summer made of gneiss. Who’d have known? High time then to get your schist together and watch a geology lesson.
We’ve had some good here sunsets lately and even a green boreal glow a couple of weeks back. The other night the stormy orange clouds reminded me of the cover of Argonauts of the Western Isles – a great title for a lovely memoir by Robin Lloyd-Jones about sea kayaking on the west coast. I’ve only just realised it’s a take on Brondo Malinowski’s seminal 1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific which, unless I’m very much wiki-mistaken ‘redefined the ethnographic genre’.
Actually now I see the cover, it’s nothing like my photo, it’s much worse, though might have worked without that tilted horizon. But don’t let that put you off if you’ve not read it. It’s a wonderful tale that covers years of paddling up here, from post-war bathtubs and broomsticks to the start of the sea kayaking boom.
I’ve had a chance to do a few day trips in the Seawave, including trying it out as a tandem boat. The main view west from our place is over to Glas-leac Mor, one of the peripheral Summer Isles, with a corresponding Glas-leac Beag nearly three miles further out and less than a mile from Priest Island.
The day came round to loop the loop on Glas-leac Mor and maybe even carry on around the peninsula to Achnahaird. That idea was rained upon when the promised sunny skies turned out to be heavily overcast. Soon out of Old Dornie harbour The Call of the Bladder insisted I interrupt some basking seals on the unnamed skerry (left) close to Glas’s southern tip. Halfway down the east side I noticed a big stony beach, the only way of getting onto the island. There’s a lochan on Glas too, so it could be a good hideout.
On the Minch side of these islands I always feel exposed on the swell that feels bigger than anything I can do with a paddle. It got a bit clapotty-choppy near the top of the island as I made a beeline north for Mullagrach. I was looking for a new cave I recently heard about and sure enough, north of the well-known arch an unnoticed inlet led under the island (right). (This was at the low end of the tide.)
The GPS shows a rather unlikely subterranean track; I think it’s more of a southerly fault that’s part of the main arch and its adjacent cave. It was pitch black before I got to the end of the geo, but with a flash photo and from the sound of the slap-slopping swell, it felt like another 10-20 feet. But it was getting less than paddle wide and I didn’t fancy getting jammed on some old storm-mangled shopping trolley or stolen moped, in a bid to find out.
According to the GPS, I had been cruising at around 3.5mph but I wasn’t feeling that fast as I’ve not done much paddling exercise. So round the headland to Achnahaird felt a bit much. Instead, I settled on a short hop further north to ‘Reiff Cove’, as I call it, a nice sandy bay a mile or so above Reiff Bay where the houses are. As I got near, the swell was slapping back off the cliffs. This is a great place to watch crashing waves when there’s a good westerly on (right).
On the beach, I found a superb giant salami of polystyrene – former use unknown but for me a very handy boat perch and lunchtime bottom warmer. Up on the cliffs I checked out the locked bothy which looked like it’d had a new roof, all the while wishing I’d dragged my boat a bit further up the beach. I do this every time.
Up there I also clocked what I later realised was the back end of Loch of Reiff which fills and drains on the highest tides, making a fun ‘mini-rapid’ along the build-up canal under the bridge where a small quay used to be. If the timing had been right I could have done the short portage into the top of the loch (left) and got flushed out the south end into Reiff Bay. One for next time when the timing’s right, maybe even in a packraft. From Reiff Bay it was a couple of miles of coast hopping back down to Old Dornie, with just enough bars on the phone to call in the taxi.
I’ve hooked up some lightweight packraft thigh braces from the Packraft Store. Simple 50mm straps with a ‘delta strap’ to additionally attach to the side to add instant tension when you brace or roll a packraft. I used a couple of hull top D-rings to clip them on. but they don’t sit as well as the heavy SoT straps I used on the previous Grabner Amigo. Mostly it’s because I had to glue four D-rings on the floor of the otherwise bare Amigo, whereas on the Seawave the mounts are higher so the straps don’t hook over the knees so well. I suppose I ought to get round to gluing floor D-rings but it’s a big job to do well. For the moment the ‘delta straps’ can be clip together like a sternum strap on a backpack (above), and hold the straps in place. ‘Warning – Entanglement hazard!’ I hear you cry, and quite right too. If it gets that gnarly I’ll unclip, pronto. And probably inflate my pfd, too.
Another fine day, another fine paddle. As usual I plan big but then snap out of it and think: why end up hauling ass all day when we can just have a sticky beak in some new corner of the locality. Ardmair harbour, home of the famous Ardmair weather station, often looks like such a place, a striking bay just over the hill from Ullapool. One often sees tourists stopping here to admire it’s perfection. With a beach made of distinctive flat stones, I bet I am not the first person to say this would be a great location for a stone skimming championship.
Two-up, we set off to round Isle Martin clockwise. The winds were forecast to be in single figures, but coming round the west end of the island I could see the line of the north-easterly F4 blowing hard out of the Strath Canaird valley onto us.
But with barely a mile of fetch to gather up, the chop was only a foot high, so we tucked in and hammered along until we were close enough under the 1000-foot cone of Beannan Beaga to get a bit less chop along the northern shore. We bounced along that as tight in as we could, setting the seals off until we reached the stony sweep of Camas Mor beach.
Up in the warm grass for a midge free snack, I went for a wander and soon realised we were right below the jumbled rubble remains of Dun Canna Iron Age fort from about 0BC. You can see it would have made an excellent defensive position with good resources all around and over in the smaller Camas Beag (every Mor – ‘big’ – has its adjacent Beag – ‘small’ – hereabouts) bay to the north, what looked like a tidal fish trap (left). Sorry to say the fort’s rubble was not quite compelling enough to be honoured with a photo.
A couple walked by, looking for driftwood with which to make ornamental clocks. And I was later told that gems and who knows – maybe even the Lost Hoard of Brisingamen – lay among the stones of Camas Mor.
From the headland looking west towards the Summers, the ruffled sea and scrubbed, autumnal sky were as blue as John Lee Hooker with a hangover and a tax bill.
Time to ship the heck out. My plan was to edge south enjoying the lee, then poke the boat right up the Strath Canaird estuary until the winds, current and outgoing tide suffocated our spirit of exploration. Reading our GPS track that now seems a lot less further than it felt, but was enough to uncover a new habitat of seaweed dangling over mussel beds and dazzling highland villas once belonging to cider magnates, according to the knowledgeable driftwood couple. It’s odd how everyone around here knows which well-to-do-family owned but then sold what bit of land or island to whom.
Of course I’d long ago clocked Strath Canaird as a potential river paddle excursion, probably in a packraft from Strathcanaird hamlet on the A835. Now I’ve seen its lower end that 4-mile paddle looks a bit more intriguing. Once we’d had enough battling the elements, we let them flip the Seawave round and scooted back to Ardmair Bay for a final nose around the moored up boats by the campsite and then out round the point and back to Ardmair Beach.
Two up or solo, the Seawave’s speed seems to be about 3.5–4mph, with the odd freak burst up to 5mph. That doesn’t seem to be much different to the Grabner I replaced it with, but it’s still an easier boat to use: PRVs all-round means it needs a quick ten jabs with the K-Pump Mini after a few days off in the outdoors, but never needs a manometer check. Masses of D-rings compared to the Grabner’s zero. The optional deck, the OE skeg and two feet of extra space. And though the Amigo is long discontinued, the Seawave costs less. The nearest Grabner now would be the ruddered Grabner H2 but its over half a metre shorter; the H3 is half a metre longer but we’re still talking between €1800-2100 for well-made but rather bare boats. My Seawave with extra bits came in at €1000 from Czecho so to paraphrase the bloke from Jaws: ‘We’re ain’t gonna need a better boat’. Well, not fora while.
Inflatable Kayaks & Packrafts 