Finally out on the water

Saturday 18th June 2011

The remainder of last night was fairly uneventful, barring Claire's discovery of a dead cygnet by the loch (made even worse by the fact that she was hoping to rescue an abandoned one), and our journey back from the pub which involved scaling a barbed wire fence and running the gauntlet to get past the remainder of the swan family. Claire did call me a chicken for hiding behind her, but I'm not a chicken, they were swans!

We got back to the tent and were a bit worried about the amount of water around (and possibly under?) it but just went to bed anyway.

This morning we awoke to find that the moat surrounding the tent had shrunk considerably. The rain had all but stopped and we managed to take the tent down while it was only slightly damp. It still wasn't raining so we decided to chance the long awaited paddle on Loch Lomond. And much to our amazement it didn't really start raining until we got back to the car!

We spotted quite a few tents on the islands on the loch and were a bit sad that we hadn't camped there instead. Especially after my encounter with some Scottish chavs in the shower block earlier in the day. It would have been a long trip to the pub from the islands though.
Claire commented on how much nicer Scotland is than the Lake District. I don't think it's nicer really, just bigger (in many ways) and obviously much wetter. But I couldn't wait for her to see the Highlands as Loch Lomond is nothing in comparison.

The journey that was supposed to take us 1 hour 59 minutes actually took nearly 3 and a half hours, and there weren't even any traffic jams. I can only assume that route on google maps was test driven by Lewis Hamilton or one of his friends.

We are staying tonight with my cousin Alison and her family on the shores of Loch Ailort. We have brought the midges with us although I think there may have been a few here already. We've pitched our tent on the edge of a small precipice so it's to be hoped I don't get up to any of my old tricks and go sleep walking.

We've been down to the shore otter spotting, and although the otters were hiding from us we did spot 6 wild deer running off, a family of Shelducks and loads of other unidentified sea birds.

Tomorrow we're starting our wild canoe camping trip on Loch Shiel so are hoping the rain will try and keep itself to a minimum. I've made Claire do a full food audit with me and I'm satisfied we've got enough to last us about 2 weeks never mind a few days.

iPad will be coming with us for the purposes of blog writing but I expect there will have to be a bulk posting when we get back to civilisation.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Up North