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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Going to work on an Eigg but treading carefully.

Neither Donald nor I slept well and we both rose early. Donald had slept in the boat with the cover on. He awoke to find he was getting wet from the condensation dripping from the cover. He then opened the cover, only to be eaten alive by midges. My problems were different, I had pitched my comfortable tent on some delightful machair but the pain in my knee was so bad that I hardly slept a wink. However, emerging into the still air of the morning with a view like this, over to the Small Isles of Muck, Eigg and Rum, was worth a sleepless night. After a hearty breakfast of bacon eggs and Cox-2 inhibitors we...

...set off an hour before high water and turned our backs to the open sea and Eigg, as we wanted to work our way, treading carefully, through the rock strewn North Channel of Loch Moidart.

From the sea it is quite difficult to spot the entrance...

...and once in, you find the tortuous channel is littered with rocks. Many were barely covered by the big spring tide.

I was quite happy to scrape over the occasional rock in my kayak but Donald needed to be a lot more careful in his boat.

Then we were in and the North Channel stretched away to the misty mountains of Moidart.