Kayaking on Skye: Kilmaluag Bay on the far north coast of Skye

I kayaked with Gordon Brown and Kate Duffus of Skyak Adventures for about eight days over a couple weeks. Over the next few posts I'll show a few pictures of some of the amazing seas, cliffs, caves and mountains of Skye.

The first few days of paddling I took very few pictures. Starting the third day I finally took more time for photos.

On Wednesday, June 20, the forecast was for strong winds from the west and Gordon Brown wanted to find a great area for us to paddle that was out of much of that wind. The idea was to go to the far north east of Skye on the Trotternish Peninsula and paddle at the base of some basalt cliffs. It would be both out of the wind and beautiful with cliffs and sea caves.

We launched at Kilmalaug Bay and paddled south along the cliffs to about Flodigarry. Here are some map images that zoom in on that area.

The drive up to Kilmaluag Bay was beautiful. Austere, but so green this time of year. This area is remote! Yet there are still houses in tiny villages up here. I'd never been so far north on Skye. The last image below looks north from Skye to the Outer Hebrides.

We launched from a nice rocky beach. Gordon Brown took a photo of it that I posted below. There was little wind. The water was calm. The sun was shining! It was nearly high tide so there was lots of water.

And not long after we launched we were paddling at the base of basalt cliffs. And very soon after that Gordon pointed out caves that were safe to paddle into. Which we all of course did! Such a luxury to be able to paddle into a cave with lots of water and very little swell.

We paddled south-east along the coast. The cliffs were striking. And Gordon pointed out more and more caves for us to explore. That was our day -- exploring caves. Pretty awe inspiring.

On the way back we played among the rock formations. Gordon got a nice shot of me:

On the way back it the wind whipped up, it rained hard, and we got some swell so we were able to do some mellow, friendly rock garden runs. And just enough breaking waves to surprise one of our intrepid adventurers and knock him over. He rolled up so quickly I never noticed he was over. Nicely done.