Today we were coached by Kate Duffus of Skyak Adventures. The forecast was again for a hot day with little wind and calm seas, which gave us the opportunity to go to a beautiful area that is pretty challenging to paddle on windy days: Loch Bracadale. This is on the west of Skye before you get to Dunvegan.
This loch has some amazing sea cliffs and caves. Since I don't get to Skye very often I wanted great scenery and today's paddle delivered.
The following images zoom in on it. The final image shows our route.
Loch Bracadale has some striking sea cliffs and caves and amazing views, but it is usually difficult to paddle because many typical winds on Skye produce rough wind wave conditions on this loch. So we took advantage of the amazing hot and low wind weather we're having this week on Skye to get out there.
We launched from the village of Harlosh into the loch.
I was determined not to get sunburnt on this trip and I pretty much succeeded.
We headed west across Loch Bracadale to the cliffs on the west side of the Loch.
Our goal was to see as many as the sea cliffs as possible and explore the caves that we could get into. Today the low tide there was right about 1pm so the water was too low to get into many caves. But we got into a few good ones, which you'll see in pictures below.
We took our time paddling south along the west coast of Loch Bracadale, exploring the caves and playing amongst the rocks. The day was hot and the water was like glass.
We had lunch at the south end of the cliffs at the mouth of the loch. It was an, um, interesting place to land. It did have great views of some sea stacks called Macleod's Maidens. After lunch we paddles around these interesting sea stacks before heading back north.
After lunch we paddles around these interesting sea stacks before heading back north.
The water was now high enough to get into more caves, so our return trip was like exploring a new area.
The wind had come up a bit so there were now wind waves for our crossing back to the beach where we launched, but that was just another opportunity for forward stroke coaching.
Back on shore Kate got a picture of me to show that it was warm enough to kayak on Skye without wearing a drysuit. To actually be warm and comfortable in shorts! The only reason I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt was to protect the skin on my arms from the intense Scottish sun.
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