Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Sea kayaking at sundown in Loch Buie.


Despite Jennifer and Jim having done most of the heavy work, the portage had taken much longer than I had expected because of the pain in my knee. The shadows on the sand were long by the time we started to move the kayaks to the water's edge of Loch Buie.


The low sun gave a lovely warm light to the low hills behind the beach. The dark green bushes are gorse. In the spring they will be covered in the yellow flowers that give the loch its name, Loch Buie; the yellow loch.


At last we were ready to go and the trolley's were disassembled and stowed in our rear hatches.


It was a wonderful feeling to be afloat again but we were now faced with a 23km crossing of the mouth of the Firth of Lorn back to Seil. There would be no places to land and most of the crossing would be in the pitch darkness of a moonless Scottish winter's night. What an adventure!


We took a final look back at Loch Buie. We could now see Lochbuie House beside Moy castle at the head of the loch.


On the horizon ahead, low lying Colonsay contrasted with the bold outline of Malcolm's Point on the Ross of Mull.


As we emerged from the confines of Loch Buie we rounded the low wave cut platform of Rubha na Faoilinn and the horizon opened up. On our left, the bold outline of the Paps of Jura heaved high above the lower hills of Islay on the right.

5 comments:

  1. I'm having trouble with your blog page. The 'Search' function is 'Loading...' forever.
    So, I'll ask the question direct: What camera equipment are you using to take such stunning photographs?

    Steve

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Steve, sorry about the "search", there have been generic problems with search in Blogger over the last couple of years.

    I mostly use a Canon 5D Mk2 with the EF 24-105 L IS lens.

    :o)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Douglas, now that we know what you use for a camera, I would like to ask you what you do for a living?
    Too personal?
    It's just that I am puzzled that you regularly post trip reports (with stunning images, I might add) on just about a daily basis.
    You must be on the water all the time?
    You could be making money from your images (they certainly are worth a lot) but I can't imagine a huge market for sea kayak images.
    So, what is your gig?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mmmmmm L-series glass... droool...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gnarly, I work as a hospital doctor so I do not have a huge amount of free time. I tend just to go for day trips but try and make sure they are really good! The 12 posts in this Mull series relate to 1 day trip, though most people would probably spend 3 days on such a trip! On a recent "day" trip to Islay we left at 4am and got back at 1 am the next day. I do not think there is a huge market for sea kayaking images, I do write for Ocean Paddler but the fees don't even cover the fuel never mind the ferry fares!

    Tom, it is a very nice lens indeed!

    :o)

    ReplyDelete