Roll and Rock

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.

Gordon welcomed us all as we assembled then we were passed onto Jazz for the day to get a feel of the kayaks and getting wet. We assembled all of our wetsuits, floation, and the masonic looking spraydeck into large blue IKEA bags which we were assured were International Kayak Expeditionary Association bags.

Off to the Sound of Sleat and the Armadale ferry terminal and launched to the left of it. I had chosenthe high performance pencil thin kayak – this was a bad idea for one not so pencil thin and it was described as ‘very tippy’ by Jazz and he plopped me into a Cetis which was designed for fat americans. I liked the Cetis. We spent the morning paddling around getting used to edging and then set off like ducklings following each other into the Sound of Sleat and following the coast to a seaweed bay for lunch. Since I hadn’t entirely read the ‘what to bring’ part of the email Jazz kindly shared his peanut butter and honey sandwiches with me (delicious) and others donated excess fruit.

Lunch powered us all up for a trip into the middle of the Sound of Sleat – it was totally still apart form some up and down motion and we hung off a buoy watching porpoises and Minke whales in the distance, a skua and a black headed gull dog-fighting above us for 10 minutes and then seals popped up close to us. The joy of kayaking is that you are one of the water creatures, silent and part of the waterlife. Well until the Mallaig to Armadale ferry comes chugging past anyway.

We paddled back to the terminal through a rocky channel where I managed to crash into George’s back as the tide pushed me through… then under the ferry terminal pier seeing the sea urchins and into capsize mode to make sure we were wet. Jazz demonstrated an impressive roll and we packed up for the day sitting all wet in the van back. Wet stuff washed down in non salty water and hung out to dry, a debrief and then off for a warm bath and off to the pub to drink the draft real ale dry! One of the other courses had Tim who emerged from his ayak and tore a ligament – he had to go to A&E in Broadford seen quickly and given pain killers and anti-inflammateries (which he confused and took double pain killers with beer instead).
The rest of the Irish contingency joined us for tales of derring doo in kayaks and enjoying a mobile video of Gordon doing his acrobatics in a kayak. The experienced others were set for a trip to Rum or a circumnavigation of Rassay.

The next day I knew we were going further so fuelled myself on what kept the Canoe Boys, couple of chaps who kayaked from the Clyde to Skye in the early 1900’s, tradional brose. Brose is a delightful dish – a plate of oats with a pinch of salt and with boiling water poured over on the boil, put plate over the dish and let the steam cook the mix and add in a knob of butter. Mix and devour – especially with the hotel cream and honey and a banana on the side. Perfect paddling fare.

Today was going to be with Gordon and a couple of Newcastle green architects joined us to make up the half dozen paddlers. We chose our kayaks (Gordon said ‘try any kayak, but Mike will break your arm and possibly worse if you try to steal his Cetis’) and launched at Kyleakin, near the Skye bridge. We paddled around for a few minutes until I managed to capsize the ‘incredibly stable’ Cetis. Gordon did the rescue, emptying the cockpit and bracing my kayak as I slid a leg in and then humphed myself out of the water facing to the aft of the kayak and slipped into the cockpit and turned around feeling refreshed after my dunking. I have a large bruise on my thigh from that experience!

We paddled under the Skye bridge which came with some tidal flow and choppy water – and no one, not even me, capsized. It was strange seeing Rassay chug past the bridge as our relative tidal movement caused a strange sensation of thinking the island is moving and not us. We spotted otter hides built by Brian Wilson, the Blazing Paddles author – why are all kayak folk named after politicians? err says Michael Forsyth.

We dragged the boats up to a seaweed cove for lunch (I had some this time) and rested ready for a paddle up Loch Alsh taking advantage of hte eddy currents near the edge of the loch. Past Kyle of Lochalsh piers being pressure washed and then crossing the loch watching for boats to the wreck of a WW2 mine filled ship and down past the Leopard Man’s lochside home (I had previously seen the much tattooed man in the BP garage the other night) and back around the islands to Kyleakin (a 13 kilometre paddle in all) to capsize as we came in to the beach. Mike’s day was described by a fellow paddler as symmetric – I would describe it as symmetrically wet. Still I didn’t feel cold even being in a well named ‘wet’ suit all day.

My complementary miniature of gaelic whisky was drunk in a hot bath and we met the others in the pub in front of a roaring fire. I was out earlier at the midgie bench picking up emails when I saw a couple arrive by boat. It turned out to be Ken Stott of Rebus fame with a lady who enjoyed poking the fire and adding logs onto it. I did suggest that this was a very fine service she offered coming in by boat to poke my fire. There was also a most gorgeous Gaelic College student who we were chatting to, she was studying Gaelic history (even though the language is now below the numbers required for it to survive we now have a Gaelic tv channel dedicated to it – Gaelic language television whose subtitles are also unhelpfully in Gaelic only). Lobster had magically appeared on the menu as the food critic from Scotland on Sunday had appeared so I enjoyed the other half of a fine dish.

So the evening ended with Ken Stott buying drinks and talking about Rum, with his fire poker, the chef and the michelin bagging hotel manager as the bottles of real ale disappeared.

This set me up for the paddle from Ord the next day. With bottles of Lucozade we set off in a force 2 wind with waves lapping and paddled to see fossils beside a waterfall and a highland clearance village. We lunched on a coral beach, paddling through the surf and against the tide to get there, and met a couple who were writing a book on kayaking routes from Ardnamurchan Point to Cape Wrath. The views were stunning and the sun was out – what a splendid time.

This, however, was really the calm before the storm as the next paddle took us back to Ord bay where we all practised rescues and capsizing and acrobatics. This is where Gordon did his acrobatic demo – out of the boat with his legs on either side he turns around 360 degress and then leans over to touch bow and stern and then stands up!

We were not so acrobatic although one chap managed to stand up before falling in – we were all in the water for a good hour before teeth started to chatter and warm coffee was forthcoming. The into the hot tub – the gotcha with the hot tub is that the salty water has to be hosed off you and the only hose is freezing cold mains water. Still the hot tub revived us all and we parted in different directions with signed copies of Gordon’s book – me heading North by Northwest.