Rhapsody in Blue

Kayaking off MacLeod's Maidens, Skye

Sea kayaking over the years has proved to be an exquisite blend of serenity, excitement, fear (sometimes, but not always overcome) and wonder bordering on worship for an intimate experience of the blue planet. Even so, there are moments where the blend is just so...well...overwhelming, that you know that the experience is even more amazing.

Some of the most memorable days so far have been on Skye. The first, when we barely knew what we were letting ourselves in for, between Dunvegan and the wonderful pub at Stein. Our second kayaking-of-a-lifetime trip also ended up in front of a well-tended pint at the Stein Inn as we beamed, bright red and crusty with salt, at the folk dressed in normal clothes. We were elated aliens from another blue world, one that was full of delightful surprises.


Taking off from Harlosh and out into Bracadale Bay, we eventually came to the cave-studded and towering clifflines leading out towards the stacks. The bay here opens to meet the Atlantic swell, and normally conditions here would be fairly dynamic. On this day of uber-calm, the swell just whispered gentle nothings to the coast, lifting the water's edge like a carpet. It was magical.

An immense cave full to popping with nesting birds. This one went back hundreds of metres, opening out into a cave cathedral.

A gentle splash of water disturbed the absolute stillness and a closer look revealed a stream plunging hundreds of feet off the basalt edges and into the sea.

A stream dropping into the sea.

Slowly the sea-symphony grew from small beginnings into a crescendo of situation and spirit of place. The immensity of the cliffs, the caves sputtering full of cormorants and kittiwakes with rarer puffins scudding along, just above the lilting sea’s surface. A sense of exposure that borders on high mountaineering and a truly awesome place to be.


With each turn of a corner in the dark, ruffled basaltic coast, the sense of exposure ramped up a little more until the theatre of spires opened out in front of us. A sensational amphitheatre of rising cliffs with the sea stacks breaking through the edge of the ocean.


The day was only half way through and our capacity for wonder was already full to bursting. With an ocean of time to play with, we crossed over the full span of the bay to the isle of Wiay. A stocky, basalt pile riveted with caves, we’d visited this isle before in bouncier seas. In the calm of the afternoon, this island was a rhapsody in blue. Cave upon magical cave and another wonderful place.


It had been a wonderful day.

Kayaking to Callanish

Looking for some shelter from the winds on a recent trip to the isle of Harris, we decided to take a look at Great Berneray. A circumnavigation would have been nice, but wasn't going to happen that day. Instead, we headed into the lochs east of there, to Callanish.

From the water's edge, the standing stones could just be seen and curling around the shoreline, they were once more out of view. I was thinking they'd be disappointing, sometimes the way with iconic places like this. But no, they are truly magical and even more impressive than I could have imagined. It was wonderful to see them.

A Handful Of Earth

The view from the summit of Ulva

Look out over the far west of Mull and you'll see a magical landscape of shimmering seas amongst gem-like islands of green baize. The pastel-pink and turquiose blues of Iona, towering ridges of basalt layers and the melancholic beauty of a hundred ruined villages. It is a landscape beyond description, beyond words and beyond time.


Every year, we visit this place. We are drawn back again and again on the pretext of one day circumnavigating the isle of Ulva, but the truth is, we don't try too hard to achieve it. The goal is really just to be there.

The Watermill, Ormaig

The south side of Ulva is a dream-like smatter of bright green and purple. The bracken is high, hiding a network of barrel-shaped tubes forced through by the stubby island goats. For humans, though, it's hard work. In amongst the bracken, the crofters' houses slowly sink back into the earth, leaving an ache of sadness as they go. Here on the south side is the village of Ormaig and the old corn mill. And below the high tide mark, near every house, pieces of broken china still wash back and forth with every tide. Striped, blue-pattern, earthenware, poignant reminders of how we are only separated by a thin selvedge of time.

This immense Atlantic Grey seal seemed to enjoy tailgating the kayaks. When we got to the shore, we watched as he spent a pleasant hour rolling around in the shallow water, playing.

We pulled the kayaks onto land at Starvation Point in a dank, dreichy drizzle. This austere row of houses clinging to each other against the ravages of their age, this was the place where the sick and the elderly were left to live out their days. Too frail to be thrown off the island, this place was the darkest on the isle.


Every year, there is something new, something special to see, and this year, it was a heart-breaking memorial to, I think, a paraglider.



The dizzying beauty of the seas

The ruined houses of Starvation Point

When the crofters were ordered to leave Ulva for the New World, there was not much that they could take with them. But many took with them something of Ulva: a handful of earth.

Kayaking out here on these isles is both a wonderful escape from real life and a true reminder of what real life actually is.

The Isle of Two Halves

Circumnavigating the Isle of Bute



The Isle of Bute nudges up against the deeply-rutted lochs of the Cowal Peninsula, and it is an isle of two halves. And in keeping with this double identity the Scottish Canoe Association trip in September saw us complete the circumnavigation in two very different days.


From the lozenge of land at the southern end, Kilchattan Bay, we launched into the trip. It had been a bit of a shock to find that (a) it was going to be a long, 60 km paddle around the Isle over two days, and (b) that Stu had decided to tactically withdraw from the trip to save his back for a climbing holiday we had planned. Stu had a pleasant wander round the Isle, meeting us at various landings, instead.

As we rounded the southern tip, our leader, Roddy MacDowall of Kayak Bute passed off the surprising, rucking waves as "just a wee but o' tide..." This half of Bute is rugged and rusty-brown, abutting the wonderful isle of Inchmarnock, where we stopped for lunch. From there, we were in sniffing distance of the fantastic cafe at Ettrick Bay, its over-sized lemon meringues a mirage to our salt-cracked eyes.

The glory days of the Clyde Steamers remembered in a weather vane

We camped next to Colintraive Hotel on the mainland just beyond the northern end of Bute and with a fantastic meal and great beer, it couldn't have been better.



Bute's other half is altogether a different story. The eastern side is dominated by Rothesay and Port Bannatyne, great Victorian holiday ports now slightly decaying and enduring the after-effects of Glaswegian resettlement policies of the seventies. A wonderful retirement destination mingled with surprising pockets of social deprivation and almost-urban levels of isolation, only moments from Scotland's great western frontier.

A weekend of contrasts, for sure, but having made it round, an experience to treasure.

Round The 'Horn

"The sea is boring, like grief is
But beautiful, like grief is not"

Norman MacCaig

Sometimes, there is nothing better than a boring sea. Boring and beautiful. It is on days like these that the apparent exposure and infinite-ness of the sea is as comforting as withdrawing to a fire-side hearth. On the rare occasions when the sea is calm, predictable, it forgets who it's meant to be and becomes a balm to tired eyes.

Today, we are nosing in and out between rocky islets off the Isle of Whithorn and up to Garlieston off the Dumfries coast. Both fishing hamlets, quiet aside from the folk walking dogs and children along the rocky beaches. These are hamlets that time has forgotten in its race for sameness. The bar is still full of locals, characters, grumpy staff. Old men with faces chiselled by salt and wind still go fishing off the pier. And they still play bowls.



We haul up in White Port, a tiny cove that has no access by land. The fringe of tiredness has receded like the tide drawing lazily away from the kayaks on its planetary journey.



Later, on a run into the thick forests of Dumfrieshire, spotlights flashed in and out of the burn on its way to the sea. It seemed as if the forests were breathing out. It was warm, and there was a sense that they were steaming.



Rising out of the forests and on to the glens, I saw it. The trees were indeed exhaling.



The Solway coast up here on the Scottish side is always a delightful surprise to the kayaker. Tucked away behind unassuming, green, rolling hills, the rocks on the coast are upturned, and the sea is busy making islands, teeth and gaping caves. It's on days like these that it's great to be there, on the journey.

On An Odyssey of Tides

The Farne Islands

To boldy go...

There is an old adage in seafaring circles that says the sea will always give the test before it thinks to give the lesson... and so it was on a recent trip to the Farne Islands. Sat just off the shore of the north east coast, these iconic islands have long been in the distant gaze. Impossibly close, yet impossibly far.

One of a thousand seals

At this time of year, they are the preserve of a million sea birds, nesting where there are no natural predators. It has to be said, this was a spring tide: the largest of the year, and few self-respecting kayakers of mediocre skill levels would venture to the Farnes knowing that the moon was in full swing. Here, the tides leap with some severity over the slabs of dolerite beneath the water to sudden waves, haystacked together. We should have known better, of course, but somehow, in the race to make the most of the good weather, the full moon slipped us by.

The racing tides around Megstone

With a Force 4 forecast we opted for a day of coastal pottering on the trip between Boulmer and Beadnell. The guide to kayaking off the coast here said there were no tides to speak of, so that was good. The faint waft of kippers rose on zephyrs of wind at the lunch stop of Craster and we resisted the urge to have an ice cream.
Sue approaching the Inner Farnes

Pressing on northwards, the wind picked up and something tide-like was running under the boats in the opposite direction to the wind. Wind against tide always creates a confused sea, but it was about to get worse. Much worse.

I was beginning to wish I'd had that ice cream.


On the horizon, there were hills of sea. Haystacks in the water. I casually asked Stu what he made of them, white heaps jumping erratically up into the froth. It conspired that the tide was racing onto a spur of dolerite extending from Dunstanburgh Castle out to sea. The haystacks were huge, and quite unpredictable. Before I could say 'I don't like the look of that', Stu had got sucked through it, fending off the white foam heaps the size of tractors with an alarming set of white water manoevres.



After a long afternoon involving a variety of transport methods, we were all back together, safe and capable of laughing about it.

The Farnes themselves presented us with some of the most unpredictable, beguiling seas imaginable. From the Kettle, flat, turquoise and bath-like amid the families of Arctic Terns, to the house-sized, crackling waves that leapt in a straight line from flat calm to immense in a single beat as we traversed the North Sea. A quixotic, alarming think-on-your-feet sort of place.

But this of course is only half the story. Having retrospectively learnt that lesson the sea threw casually sideways, there is one thing I know. I'll be back for another go. But next time, perhaps not on a spring tide...

Lismore by Kayak

A while back now, we spent a weekend with the Scottish Canoe Association circling the limestone isle of Lismore.

Nigel and his new boat

Sue on a graceful turn

The weekend was billed as a lazy trip around the isle, and with summer suddenly arriving all at once, it was hot, sultry and still.

Achanduin Castle

Lismore is tucked neatly at the mouth of Loch Linnhe where the back end of Mull starts to reverse into the mainland. For some on the trip, this was their back garden. And for us, it was another chance to experience the mingling of pasts with present, with landscape and forgetting that is to journey on the sea.

Camped near the southern tip of the island, the light was breathtaking

Gentle tidal smudging of the water at the southern tip of Lismore

Alison and the Kilcheran Isles



Shia, a ship's cat

Several of the people on the trip had moved from the city to live by these waters, to shape their lives around the daily tides. Undoubtedly, there are untold sacrifices in leaving behind the steady income of a city life, but it's a lesson to us all when people have the courage to follow their dreams. Mooring at one such home, one of the cats, Shia, joined us for the last leg of the journey. While we ferried boats from the water to the road, he checked the boats out, sniffed things and generally got to know everyone. I've undoubtedly spelt his name wrong, but roughly translated from the Gaelic, it means something like 'gentleman of the fairy grotto'.

The Selkie of the Summer Isles

Fading light over the Summer Isles

In Old Norse and Celtic mythology, the selkie was a half-woman, half-seal who was able to shed her seal skin to ensnare sailors, then return to the sea when she felt like a bit of a change. It's a myth that finds itself repeated in many countries from Iceland to Australia. In his book In Another Light, Andrew Greig points out that they might all have stemmed from the haunting, melancholic cry that seals sometimes make on lonely skerries far out to sea.

Out on a trip to the Summer Isles, we are threading a line between widely-spaced skerries towards the wondrous Priest Island. The Minch is but a thin, glassy channel between us and the faded blue Outer Isles in the distance. Twisted skeins of glassy, undulating ocean roll in deepening blue towards Priest Island and the skerries in between. In the open expanse, there is a kind of sensory deprivation. No smells, no wind, just a gliding motion. Maybe a tint of salt, perhaps. But arriving at the shore of a skerry, the overwhelming saline-and-fish smell invades the senses after the blue desert of the ocean.

Storm shower over Bottle Island

Turning the boats towards the next sighting point, it is silent and the senses are stilled again. Little wind, and the quiet rush of paddles in the water. Just two kayaks in the vastness of blue-space. Several hundred yards away from the skerry behind, we are arrested by a wailing sound. We look back, but there is nothing. This mournful cry is, presumably, a seal. The selkie of the ancient myths.

The sea is a remarkable place.


Jutting out of the water like broken teeth, the skerry of Stac Mhic Aonghais is fringed with cormorants. They seem to like to add a touch of drama to already gnarled sea cliffs. The northern side of this islet slants out of the water at an angle, allowing the sea to slew dramatically up its ramp-like face and back down into the blue in a whirlpool of banked-up water. The moment of magic came when we paddled into this furling stream: meeting a raw edge of sea at the edge of the world. It wasn't, of course, but for a moment, it felt like it.

The sea like glassy, rolling skeins

Uncannily at the same distance from the next skerry and miles from the last, the mournful wailing began again. A look backwards revealed nothing. Maybe the seals were just playing with us.

Amidst a clutch of cormorant nests on a cliff, the sea etches patterns in the rock like abstract art

Textbook storm clouds above Tanera Beg

Here and there, the sea is pockmarked with resting seabirds. Some of them came over to swoop us, including a massive Bonxie, the pirate of the skies.

Inside an abandoned boat

It's a privilege to experience the sea's daily tides in places as beautiful as this, and to glimpse the timeless magic of the selkie seals.