Doug and Lara Cooper have just launched a new Scottish Sea Kayaking website. Already a huge amount of work has gone into it. It will inform visitors to new areas of many alternative places to go, other than the over visited, well known honey pots.
A good number of people criticise guides like this. I admit I did not think the Bothy book was a good idea at all, especially when some of the recommended parking places led to estates closing a gem of a bothy such as An Cladach. However, bothies are a very finite resource, unlike the sea which is pretty infinite compared with the number of sea kayakers.
Why I like this website is that it is very comprehensive and will undoubtedly spread the load of sea kayaking visitors across a much wider area. What is finite on a sea kayaking trip is car parking. I hope as the site develops, Doug and Lara will highlight as many different parking/launch sites for each trip as is practical.
Well done Doug and Lara.
Edit: I have been in touch with Doug and they have intentionally decided not to put car parking, launch sites and camp sites in the website. Doug has also said that future editions of the Pesda guides will not mention camp sites, which are another finite resource. I am pleased about that. In my www.seakayakphoto.com blog, I always avoided saying where any of the campsites or bothies we visited were. I also made sure that I did not post a GPS track that ended on a campsite!
