The plan was clear - circumnavigation of Holy Island (Lindisfarne) with Ollie Jay from active4seasons in Northumberland and a group of his experienced kayakers. What was an initial good thought to muscle into the group turned into reality as I drove over the tidal causeway and stood on the harbour of Holy Island on the Saturday morning looking at a calm water with my packed lunch in a dry bag.

An attractive swedish blonde and a London homeopath with my dream kayak, the feathercraft K1, arrived followed shortly by a couple of doctors, a vet on the phone dealing with an injured animal and Ollie with my kayak and wet suit. We assembled all the gear and got the kayaks ready and parked the vehicles in the overpriced car park and made ourselves familiar with the gospel of ByLaws - no tripods on cameras and no launching and landing of watersport equipment other than the harbour (I guessed that included sea kayaks). I did bring my action figure Jesus to travel with me to stop me capsizing with his walks on water action.

From Skye North by NorthWest to Gairloch via single track roads and lots of road works with fed up STOP/GO men and very fast cars trying to get home - yes you can get overtaking on single track roads at dusk....

The road opened out to normal A roads but I was unprepared for the race track that was the road to Gairloch - fantastic surface and long long stretch. For legal reasons I am not even going to type what I was doing or what other cars were there - fantastic scenery and a fantastic road. The destination was going to be Ullapool but darkness was descending and I wasn't sure if the Loopallu festival was still on taking all accommodation for miles around so settled for the Old Inn at Gairloch. And what a fantastic resting spot that is - great seafood (I got the last mussels and great scallops with beetroot mash) then retired to the bar to help the best man of the wedding the next day with his speech.

Kent is delightful, surprising because of its proximity to London and that it contains the least offensive vowel option (some people do find Immanuel Kant offensive). Using our B&B in Ash as a base we toured the coast via Sandwich and up to the Isle of Thanet (no longer an island due to silting) and the Ramsgate, Margate and Broadstairs seaside resorts.

Ramsgate looked past its best and Broadstairs was where Dickens wrote Bleak House, unimaginitevly in Bleak House, but was certainly a jewel of a seaside resort. Margate, however, has the unmissable Shell Grotto, a magical underground shell walled tunnel with a friendly chatty owner. Along the coast is Reculver where the dambusters tested their bouncing bomb and where Reculver Church acts as a navigational point on the coastline.

As Noel Coward wrote "Very Flat, Norfolk". And it is. I did expect a lot more waterways though and it wasn't quite the bucolic venetian landscape I was led to believe. The Broads are man made dug out peat surface mines which flooded and a few canals interconnect - although there is the spendid Denver Sluice which protects Cambridgeshire from flooding where various waterways, including the splendidly named Great Ouse, all interconnect and are redirected during high waters with a locking system to let boats through. Not quite the engineering triumph of the Neptune Staircase or Falkirk Wheel, but a pretty impressive and complex aquatic structure. They could do with a model to show how it all works.

I had read the book Sea Kayaking by Gordon Brown and, apart from wondering why the Prime Minister had the time to both ruin our economy and write a book on sea kayaking, was inspired enough by it to book onto the Skyak course. I had previously tried to drown myself in Kelso Swimming Pool and now felt ready for the open sea. Kim typically encouraged me as she assumed it was dangerous.

I breakfasted at the Eilean Iarmain, a cooked highland breakfast to keep the cold out and picked up my email by standing at the midgie covered bench overlooking the loch. When suddenly a girl appeared with kayak dropped it in the water and stepped in and paddled over to the island in the distance, got out with a strimmer and started to strim away! This was kayaking in real life.

Kim was to drop Stuart off at his geological field trip at Helmsdale and head to Plockton and I was to swim up. With 'Wild Swimming' book beside me I tore up to the Real Food Cafe at Tyndrum for fish and chips then into Glen Etive for a wild swim in a brown water pool under a creamy waterfall. Bubbles rose from the opaque water like some sea monster waiting for me, air pushed by waterfall through porous rock I rationally told myself, as I dropped into the brown freezing water for a naked swim and to rescue my sandal which fell in earlier. Check out where this pool is and make sure there are no distilleries down stream.

The consequence of waking up after a Saturday night in Campbeltown is that

1. you have a hangover
2. you have been told that breakfast is strictly served between 8am and 9:30am
3. It is 9:20am

Quick dress and down for brekkies. The disadvantage of coming late to a meal at the White Hart is that the clean cutlery and plates have all been taken. Fawlty Towers was run better. One of the breakfasters asked for a pint of Tennants to go with his breakfast. Yes it is that classy a place. The Scottish breakfast was darned good though - tattie scone, beans, sausage and egg with black pudding - I passed on the bacon as I was wearing my Israeli Air Force T shirt. Tea and some orange juice (had to ask for a glass - I will see if we have one - what is it with glass and campbeltown do they not buy enough of them or are they all destroyed in the nightly violence?).

Went down to swimming thinking it was Sunday and asked Jim why
Gutbusting was on today and he told me to shift my arse in as it was
Saturday - so got in missing the 5 minute warmup - but at the same
time in the water as some laggards!

So with groin and underarms freshly chlorinated I set off with the intention of getting my specs repaired again this time at another Vision Express - this time in Glasgow. I looked it up it was in Buchanan Galleries which I reckoned was near one of our clients.

Steamed up the road in the TT (I do like driving it and it goes extremely well on the super unleaded petrol I accidentally put in at 123 per litre - the handbook says you can use normal unleaded in emergencies...) and suddenly noticed a fast approaching police car with sirens blaring and

Morning Snorkers on Mull and packed and ready for the off. That was when we realised that we were low on fuel and with the new plane had no idea of exactly how far we could go - so the only thing was to ask Gordon putting the responsibility on him .... he said we would reach Oban which sounded good at the time - but less encouraging when we did the radio is pushed off again and we needed radio to land at Oban's new multi million pound 'we are a real airport now' on the day they were having a CAA visit to approve them.

We also had low cloud so we were being pushed down in the Sound of Mull I could see the accident report now - well Gordon said we had enough fuel. One instinct was to head back to Mull and get fuel but we pushed as many buttons as we could and got the radio back and joined the lengthy circuit and landed on the huge and new runways and taxied to the fuel stop. A huge tanker turns up and fills us up and gleefully presents the bill. Gulp isn't avgas expensive - no wonder low cost airlines are giving up.

Breakfast on Gigha consisted of convincing Kim not to stand downwind when the jar of petrol syphoned out of a microlight was poured to 'encourage' combustion of the breakfast fire. The resulting explosion fortunately missed Kim who stood watching the explosion heading towards her like a rabbit in the headlines. Boiled eggs and soay sheep sausages went down well.

A walk to the hotel toilet and a wander around the lovely gardens (beside the lovely B&B which we missed due to camping) and a walk back to pack up. The campsite was now mobbed with three axis aircraft who flew in with the rescuer of Grahams carburretor. All assembled we took off heading to Jura on a bright sunny day.