Adventure Blog Scotland | Water » 2008

The weather is back to normal

June 30, 2008 on 10:00 pm | In Sea Kayaking | No Comments

The fantastic run of sun has come to an end, we are back to weather systems scurrying through with the attendant fronts. Although it has the downside of some wet stuff falling from the sky there is the stunning cloudscapes which come through the sunshine and showers. I am also reminded we live in the land of rainbows.

I have a couple of days inside as I am doing a wilderness first aid course and I am looking forwards to learning some new stuff, vacuum splints and oxygen, great for the hangover I hear.

I have a weekend of paddling in prospect with clients flying in on Thursday for a trip out into the wilds. I am just going to look at the forecast and see what is in prospect.

There are a variety of places we look for our weather; I usually start with the met office and the inshore forecast and the European pressure forecast. This I follow with a look at Magic Seaweed which gives me an idea of the swell (it is a forecast for surfers, then I wake up Ugrib which is a global forecasting system, after you have downloaded the piece fo software, you highlight the area you want the forecast for and it gives you the pressure, wind speed and precipitation and so far we have found it reasonably accurate when stirred in with the other forecasts.

I might also look at wind guru/wind map which gives a good idea of the wind in Stornoway.

So good luck forecasting

Tim Pickering
http://www.canoehebrides.com
Living in the world's biggest adventure playground - The Outer Hebrides CanoeHebrides.com - Sea kayaking Expeditions BikeHebrides.com -Quality Mountain Bike Hire

Sea Kayaking on Arran

June 25, 2008 on 12:06 pm | In Sea Kayaking | 1 Comment

I took to the water on Arran in my frst ever experience of sea kayaking. I took an introductory course with Arran Adventure Company along with another nine people. We headed to Brodick beach to unload the kayaks from the van and I was lucky enough to share a kayak.

We were given a brief introduction into how to balance and sit correctly and how to use the paddles. Then it was time to get into the water.

At first I was quite nervous but it really is quite difficult to tip up a two man kayak.

The experience was amazing and really made you feel close to nature. At one point the water was so clam that it was as though we were on a sheet of galss and the reflections off the mountains were stunning. We were also joined by three seals which was lovely.

I would recommend this as an adventure sprt for beginners as I felt really safe and will definitely do it again. We kayaked from Brodick to Corrie along the coast of Arran and it was the perfect length of two hours.

Gillian Thompson
http://www.visitscotland.com/adventure
Works with adventure sports in Scotland and has a keen interest in hill walking and a new passion for surfing.

Wet Sunday Afternoons in Lewis

June 22, 2008 on 3:40 pm | In Sea Kayaking | No Comments

Finally, I find myself in front of the desk top with all the pictures, I know I should be working but driving rain in the North Easterly gale has sent me to the photos to remember how it can be (and was yesterday). So just a few from the last couple of weeks some pleasure, some work (although when the weather is good the line is blurred)

Flowers Barra

Sea kayak

Stornoway Harbour

Flowers Barra

Stornoway Harbour

Tobson

Pabbay

Mangasta

Oban to Stornoway

June 13, 2008 on 8:37 pm | In Sea Kayaking, Uncategorized | No Comments

I have returned from what was a long weekend. From where I left off:

I am afraid it looks like I am off on a rant.

Oban is an odd place if you come from the Outer Hebrides, it is stuffed full of tourists. It seemed the world and his wife ride there on their motorbikes, which for me as a petrol-head makes for a great spectator sport.

I had dinner in the EE-Usk restaurant on the front, the place was great and the service was OK however no one asked me if the meal was good, they just took my card ran it through the machine and wanted me out to get the next set of customers in and I am sorry to say the fish wasn’t cooked, sad because the part which was, tasted fantastic.

The Sunday saw us roll up at Kilbowie for the 4* conversion course. A quick history as I understand it:

The BCU, British Canoe Union, have restructured their awards for personal paddling skills and the way the coaching scheme is done, I am not saying it wasn’t needed but the way it has been done has left a lot of paddlers wondering if they should bother.

There are two sides to the scheme the personal skills side are the star tests which are a measure of how competent you are in your personal paddling and the other is the coaching scheme to develop your abilities to teach paddling.

We spent the morning talking with Gordon Brown of Skayak Adventures who has been writing most of the elements. I saw his notes and they made perfect sense, I then read the BCU guidelines and they is seems had been written by a dyslexic monkey.

I sit in an odd position as I am a professional guide but most of my coaching is done through Stornoway Canoe Club. This means I need the coaching qualifications for the club rather than the business. The guiding qualifications for the business, now I have them, never go out of date but the coaching ones I have to get renewed - annually.

So here is the rub, I don’t have to pay anything to do my professional work but I have to pay to be validated for the ones I use as a volunteer…

We were under the impression we were going to attend the course and then we would be able to carry on assessing 4* in the same way we have for the last ten years, but no. We have to watch a training course being run, we have to watch an assessment being done and we have to do an orientation day to teach navigation and then we have to have someone watch us run an assessment - minimum seven days. Oh and we can’t double up, so each one has to be for each person seperately. I am likely to only to use this for the club so how is the club going to finance four of us through this?

So, if we chose not to do it? No new 4* paddlers in the club, it is a pre-requisite for becoming a coach or guide in these waters so no new qualified coaches or guides unless they are prepared to travel to the mainland and pay for a minimum of four day coaching and a two day assessment just to get to the door.

I believe the BCU have got this seriously wrong and they risk alienating clubs. The clubs are the breeding ground for new paddlers who go on to become the coaches of the future. Sea kayaking is growing sport and shouldn’t we be making it accessable not more expensive and difficult?

It wasn’t all bad on a personal level, the afternoon was spent paddling in the tide race at the Falls of Lora under the Connell Bridge, I was trying to work out the last time I paddled there and it was over 15 year ago in a rotabat, (which older paddlers will remember). I got trashed then and so nothing changes except the trashings leave you aching more the next day.

The Falls of Lora are a tide race created under the bridge where the contents of Loch Etive and its tributary lochs empty through a narrow gap. There is a shelf and when the water rushes over it creates huge (and scarey) hydrolic feature. This includes on the right tides, a big standing wave followed by a massive wave train, some very exciting boils and whirlpools. It makes for a great spectator sport from the dry warmth of the bank. There is web site Falls of Lora where all the details of when it is working at its best can be found and some pictures, I was too busy trying to stay in the boat to get the camera out!

Gordon gave us some excellent pointers on using the water there for coaching.

So was it worth the club spending over £600 for the three of us to go there? The jury is still out, it was great to paddle and good to get up to speed with Gordon was very useful (as always) but in terms of coach development …

Loch Ericht - Knowing when to turn back!

June 12, 2008 on 9:22 am | In Canoeing | 9 Comments

In my mind I had the image of a lake full of reflections, surrounded by snow covered mountains and clear blue skies above. My boat would glide forever with a single stroke, leaving me free to take the most wonderful and inspiring photographs I could ever dream of. “You must be mad”, “you’ve not been to Scotland in winter before then!” Were the comments I got when I excitedly announced my latest trip to colleagues. I’d checked the 10 day weather forecast and it all seemed fine. So excitedly I got in the car with Al, for the 400 mile drive up toScotland. We were heading for Loch Ericht, right in the heart of the Scottish wilderness. There was a little bit of snow on the hills to start off with but as we made our way through the highlands and darkness fell, the snow started to fall heavily.

By the time we reached the Drumochter Pass on the A9, visibility was poor. The car was starting to slide all over the road and things where getting quite scary, when a faint light shone through the blizzard and the letters B&B appeared. It was a bit like one of those corny movie moments when help appears from nowhere but just when you thought you where safe a huge monster comes out and eats you! Thankfully we saw no monsters but we still had 200 meters of deep un-snowploughed road to get through before we finally reached the warmth and safety of the Balsporron Cottages B&B.

We were greeted by Ann and Phil who made us feel right at home in front of their real log fire and even made us a very welcome hot meal. After a lovely night’s sleep we were up early, ate breakfast and headed outside to an incredible snow-covered landscape. Everyone helped to dig the car out and once back on the A9 the road was clear and we were only a few of miles from Loch Ericht itself. Ann kindly printed out an up to date forecast for us which took us slightly by surprise. 35mph winds with gusts up to 70 and snow was forecast for the next two days and I guess if we’d had any sense we would have turned back then, but we’d driven so far, taken time off work, spent all that money on petrol and there wasn’t a breeze in the air, so we decided to carry on. We left our car just behind the Petrol Station in Dalwhinney where the guide book suggested and loaded up my brand new Wenonah Prospector canoe. We then made the 600 meter portage down the lane under the railway bridge, through the barrier and down to the lochs edge.

I couldn’t believe how easy it was to drag a fully laden boat over snow by myself. At only 14.5miles long, I’d given us a couple of days to complete the round trip of Loch Ericht with the highlights being a nights stay at the famous Ben Alder bothy and a visit to Bonnie Prince Charlies caves at the furthest end. The sky was grey and it was bitterly cold but even at the lochs side the wind was barely noticeable. So off we went, all wrapped up in the latest winter gear, paddling past huge lumps of ice floating in the water, hoping to reach Ben Alder by teatime.

We’d only been paddling fifteen minutes when we passed the first headland and the full force of the weather hit us. It was blowing a hoolie out there on the main part of the loch and it took all our strength just to stay head on to the waves. Being sensible we should have turned back there and then but we didn’t. As the weather got even worse and we started to tire we realised that we had no choice but to continue as both sides of the loch where by now, too steep for a safe get out, with such big waves breaking on them. The sun was disappearing fast behind the mountains and the temperature plummeted further. I have to say, my new Wenonah prospector (quick plug) handled amazingly in what has to be the worst conditions I have ever paddled in.

My old boat would have been swamped in no time but this new baby just glided up and down the waves with astonishing stability (plug over). It was after 4 hours of battling through hellish conditions we finally found a beach we could land on. It was starting to get dark and I had an uneasy feeling inside, things where not looking good. Al got out of the boat first and soon realised there was no way we could get a tent up on the rocks where we’d landed. Further up there was some grass which looked perfect until we stepped on it. The thin layer of ice it was growing through cracked and we were stood in 5 inches of water. The sheer hard work of paddling had been keeping me warm in what was now below freezing temperatures. But now I’d stopped I desperately needed some shelter. We found a spot on a slight incline where our feet only sank about an inch and decided there just wasn’t time to look for anywhere else. My face was raw, my feet were numb and my whole body was hurting and aching from being too cold.

All I wanted to do was roll up into a ball, shelter my body from the bitter wind and close my eyes. For a split second I thought ‘gosh we might not get ourselves out of this’. Then something inside kicked in, and with a sudden rush of adrenalin, my frozen paddling mittens came off and we fought like hell against the gales and the failing light to put that tent up. All I could hear in my head was my heart pounding, for that single moment nothing in the world mattered more than getting that tent up and somehow, we did it. I have never felt so focussed on anything in my life. As the final peg went in, almost like a cruel joke, the wind dropped. Then as I looked up around me into the fading light, I realised we were surrounded by deer. There must have been 200 of them, mainly stags, all watching as we finally took refuge inside our tent.

It was a reflective evening in the tent that night, with neither of us knowing quite how we’d let ourselves get into such a dangerous situation. Thank goodness we’d bought the tent as a back up in case the bothy was full. We’d at least done something right. As my body warmed up I realised I’d quite badly pulled the muscle in my left forearm and even Al was feeling pretty sore in his shoulders and neck from 4 hours of hacking.

The following day we woke up to find everything frozen. My gloves, the toothpaste even the rice pudding I’d decided to cook for breakfast was frozen solid in its tin. The cold was affecting our gas cooker too which was barely alight and certainly couldn’t cook anything. Luckily we had a spare trianga, meths stove with us which although classed as a bit old fashioned these days, worked a treat. Outside the windchill temperature had been -14 degrees Celsius.

The wind was strong but not gale like, like the day before so we had another decision to make. If I didn’t make Ben Alder Bothy, with all its history of ghosts and ghouls and didn’t climb the mountain to see Bonnie Prince Charlies cave, what would I write about? We got out my GPS and we’d only managed to paddle 6.9miles the day before. We usually paddle three times that distance in that time and the weather was slightly better so we decided to give it a go.

So with another great decision under our belts we decided to leave the tent where it was, paddle the 8 miles to Ben Alder Bothy, get the photo’s I needed for an article then sail back, have a late lunch at the tent, pack away and sail the 6.9miles back to the beginning. It was so cold though, even with all the high tech kit we had on, I still wasn’t warm. I even ended up putting on the £2.99 last minute back-up balaclava I got from the garage in Capel Curig on, over my scull cap. I have been umming and arring about whether to submit the photo of me wearing this ensemble and I’ve been persuaded too against my better judgement, just remember it was really really cold!

Anyway, off we set towards the Bothy. The snow covered mountain Ben Alder towered above us but offered no shelter from the strengthening wind. My forearm was agony and I found it difficult to paddle on my left side but we still carried on. The waves got bigger, the wind got stronger and I was exhausted after just an hour. Then a snow blizzard started and I just couldn’t do anymore. Al was gutted that we’d come so close and I just couldn’t find the strength to paddle another stroke. He tried to carry on alone but the wind was too strong so reluctantly with only a mile to go he turned the boat around and sailed back to the tent.

As I sat exhausted and motionless in the boat letting the sail take us back, I was totally unaware the effect the cold was starting to have on my body. My toes were numb but that had happened the day before but, about an hour later, when we’d finally reached our tent, I tried to get out of the boat I couldn’t straighten up. My body felt rigid. I tried to ask Al for help but my speech had gone all slurry, this really scared me. When I did get back to the tent and laid down my body started to shake uncontrollably. It only lasted a few minutes and I was then ok but, its frightening to imagine what would have happened if we’d stayed out on the water even a few minutes longer.

By 2.30pm we were both in the tent wrapped up in our sleeping bags sipping hot sweet drinks as a freezing blizzard howled outside. We should have been back at the car by now and I was worried the guest house I’d booked for that evening might call emergency services if we didn’t turn up so I routed through my dry bag and found her details, only to see that I had her address but no telephone number. My mobile reception was intermittent so I texted my friend the address and prayed he would find the number, before a big helicopter came in search of us. Luckily he found it and a quick call later everything was fine. I soon fell asleep and incredibly 17 hours later I woke up. I do like the odd lay in but that was pretty impressive even for me but I guess my body must have needed it.

It was 9am on day 3 and as I looked out of the tent I couldn’t believe my eyes. The sun was shining. The loch was flat and I was surrounded by beautiful snow covered mountains. We’d not seen a top of a mountain since we got there; the landscape was breathtaking. I could finally get my camera out and take some photo’s.With such lovely weather we could have easily paddled to the Bothy, seen the caves and paddled all the way back to the car and still have hours to spare but my body had had enough and we finally made the first sensible decision of the trip and paddled straight back to Dalwhinney.As we gently paddled back through this astounding scenery in beautiful sunshine I got to thinking ‘was it all worth it?’

Things could have turned out so badly but through sheer luck rather than judgement they didn’t. My sense of adventure has gone up another few notches and I’ve certainly leant not to under-estimate the British weather. But my head is filled with incredible achievement knowing I paddled and survived such harsh conditions. And now I’m paddling through some of the most magnificent scenery I’ve ever seen in my life. This is the bit I’d dreamed of and I guess it’s made even more spectacular by what we’d endured to get here.

2 days later at home: Without realising, twice during this trip I was showing some classic signs of the first stages of Hypothermia. My naivety of canoeing in cold weather screams at me as I proof read this article. Even with all the right clothing, and without capsizing, my exhaustion and inexperience of freezing temperatures left me in what could have been a life threatening situation. And what for? A few photographs! It’s just not worth it. Saying that, paddling the entire of Loch Ericht is still high on my list of trips to do, I’ll just be waiting for the weather to warm up a little bit first, I think. X

Lucinda Manouch
http://www.manouchphotography.co.uk
Photo Journalist also working for Plas Y Brenin National Mountain Centre on a global search for family friendly paddling adventures.

Barra to Oban

June 7, 2008 on 10:43 am | In Uncategorized | 1 Comment

It was early evening when the Clansman sailed out of Castlebay and I was concerned it was going to be one of those long ferry crossings which seem to go on for ever, I admit I did get bored a couple of times, it is five hours, but once we passed Coll and entered the Sound of Mull it was stunning. The sun set leaving the sky glowing a hue of pink with turquoise clouds. Mull had a few clouds shrouding its summit and there wasn’t a ripple on the water.

I was trying to remember the last time I sailed through and I think it was over ten years ago. I came through on the Lorne Leader, a 100 foot Brixham Trawler she was over a hundred years old. We tied to against the peir in Tobermory and had a wild evening in the Mishnish. As we came to the end of the Sound I remembered sailing with groups and camping at Inninmore Bay on the 28 foot cutters from Outward Bound. There used to be a wee bothy there and you could camp near and sit on the porch just taking in the scene.

On the ferry I managed to get started on two more trips for the guide book and a couple of pints from the bar.

In Oban, I am staying in the Oban Backpackers which is I think part of the MacPackers group and is good as hostels go, in the middle of town, clean, it does have great showers and a wireless connection.

We are off to Kilbowie Outdoor Centre for an upgrade course tommorrow to allow us to run 4* sea kayaking courses under the new scheme. It is all very confusing so I am hoping Gordon is going to make it clear tommorrow. I hope so or I will be ranting on in the next few days.