I didn’t start all that early, but i had considered a day off because as I get nearer the Minch, the suitable weather seems to get further away which is just not what I need. Regardless of what I need or how I feel though, the day ahead of me was not that easy.
How does F3-4, gusting more, in your face, from late morning till early evening sound? Yeah I thought as much, pretty poor is a polite way to say it. And all out of the North-West, the land of the arctic dwarf, my favorite.
Route wise there was no drama, I put on at Kyleakin and paddled west under the Skye bridge and on towards Broadford. That alone took me in excess of 2 hours I think. Plod plod, paddle paddle, ‘hoooo wooooo’ said the wind. And repeat.
I stopped opposite Broadford Bay behind a wee jumble of rocks that offered some shelter from the wind. Knocked up a sandwich, ate biscuits, drank some hot stuff and sat in the sunshine feeling my finger tips go numb. And this was in the relative shelter. So I got back into my boat and plodded North, at least with pogies on my fingertips came back.
I headed up behind Scalpay, plod plod, paddle paddle, ‘hooo woooo’.
And then the wind dropped, which was nice, till it picked up again.
Don’t get me wrong the scenery was stunning. The place awesome. But I’m going to disappoint ‘Visit Scotlands’ tourism aspirations here, the weather can be really soul destroying at times. It was blustery, so for every aesthetically pleasing spell, there was one of complete drivel.
Plod plod, paddle paddle, ‘hoooo woooo’. Oh and a nice hail-squall, even better. (I’ll post the video of that when I get time to upload).
Maybe its just that I am a big jessie that can’t hack paddling into the wind when I know the future forecasts don’t exactly look great for my project either. Man up.
I turned toward Sconsor and set up camp at the edge of the golf course, seemed alright, it was flat.
