The islands and channels of inner Loch Moidart

Rounding the east end of Sona Beag we allowed the ebb tide to carry us towards distant Tioram Castle. The source of the smoke we had seen earlier was on Riska Island and I wondered if our friends over on Song of the Paddle were camping there with a pot bellied stove!

 Loch Moidart has many delightful wooded islands of all sizes, from the very small...

 ...to the slightly bigger.

Donald stuck to the deeper water along the southern shore...

...but I slipped through the most ridiculously narrow channels  round Eilean an Fheidh.

 Drifting along in this fantastic spot was...

 ...like waking from a dream, sometimes it was difficult to separate reality from fantasy.

As we approached Riska Island, we heard a chain saw working hard. I still thought it was a party of open canoeists. It's quite amazing what they carry in those boats! However, it proved to be forest workers clearing that plague of the West Highlands... the rhododendron.

Noisy children banished in Loch Moidart.

Once we had entered the North Channel of Loch Moidart, we came across a substantial Victorian house nestling in a little north facing valley on Eilean Shona, the island which sits in the mouth of Loch Moidart.

It is Baramore school house and at one time about a dozen children were taught there. It is built on the opposite side of Eilean Shona from the other houses, reputedly because the wife of the island's owner did not want her peace to be disturbed by children! In August the purple heather and green bracken created lovely reflections on the still water but the hillside was silent. The children are long gone.

At the north end of Eilean Shona, a narrow neck of land joins it to the smaller Shona Beag. In the distance a wisp of smoke rose lazily in the still air. In the shelter of Loch Moidart, maritime forests of oak come right down to the sea shore.

As we made our way past Shona Beag, the view was dominated by the mist shrouded slopes of Beinn Resipol 845m, in the lands of Sunart.

We were now in a tidal channel, which dries to reveal a ford at low tide, Donald wound his fishing lines in but he still had 3m of water under his keel as it was high water.

Just as the ebb tide turned against us, we approached the east end of Shuna Beag and prepared to turn west, to continue our exploration of beautiful Loch Moidart.

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.

High and dry at day's end in Moidart

We landed on a shell sand beach in the lee of some skerries on the Moidart coastline. We had travelled so far south that Rum now lay behind Eigg on the horizon.

Donald's boat and engines are heavy but high tide was about 8pm and as we intended to launch about 8am the next morning, no hauling up the beach was required. I think I will stick with a sea kayak though!

As the sun set behind the Sgurr of Eigg...

...and as the receding tide left Donald's boat high and dry, we lit a fire on the beach.  A bag of barbecue charcoal always makes a good heart for a fire and I had also bought a sack of logs from a petrol station on the road north to Arisaig.

Donald and I reminisced and put the World to rights as our baked potatoes (in tin foil) roasted on the fire...

A bumpy crossing of the Sound of Arisaig.

From Port nan Murrach, we pointed our bows to the east. We didn't bother exploring Port a' Bhathaich as it is a trap for most of the flotsam and jetsam in the area.  Instead, we cut across its mouth and slipped inside Eilean a' Ghaill. It has the remains of a vitrified Iron Age fort on its summit. There is a great view from the top but it is a very steep scramble and although it is only 23m high (and in 2004 I almost skipped up), I knew that as far as I was concerned it could now just as easily have been the Inaccessible Pinnacle on Sgurr Dearg in the Cuillin.

We now had  a choice, head up into Loch nam Uamh at the head of the Sound of Arisaig staying in the shelter of the lee of the Arisaig peninsula...

Photo by Donald Wilcox

 ...or head straight across the mouth of the Sound of Arisaig for the distant lands of Moidart. Well it was a no brainer, it was a broad reach on open water all the way to Moidart! At first the sea was nice and flat due to the shelter of Rubh Arisaig...

...but it got a little bit bumpy on the crossing especially  as we approached the wind over spring tide conditions off Rubha Ghead a' Leighe.  Photography stopped until we were well down the Smirisary coast and the water flattened again as in the photo above. Smirisary was a crofting community that survived until the end of the Second World War when it was abandoned. Nowadays, many of the old crofts have been restored as holiday homes.

It was too rough to land on the rocky shore at Smirisary and anyway we still had a way to go before we could finally pull up the boats on another shell sand beach.

The plight of the sand bees on the machair at Port nam Murrach.

From the south channel at the entrance to Loch nan Ceall I thought it would be a good idea to head south along the headland of Rubh Arisaig  towards the Sound of Arisaig. Donald checked his map for suitable landing spots and reefs on the way.

I was able to nip inside the various reefs in my sea kayak but Donald had to take a wider line.

We had arranged to rendezvous at Port nan Murrach on the Arisaig peninsula.

It wasn't long before Donald joined me in this delightful cove...

 ...with white sand and crystal clear waters.

Squalls of wind and rain were blasting down from the north but fortunately this one missed us and plastered Eigg instead.

Donald scrambled up the rocks of the surrounding ridges to see what the wind was doing...

 ...away to the north.

Meanwhile I reaquainted myself with the colony of the  rare northern colletes mining bees. These are a solitary species but they make their single burrows in aggregates in the sandy machair. They are a threatened species and there are only a handful of locations on the Scottish mainland where they can still be found.

I was distressed to discover some recent visitors had built a fire right on top of the colony. I hope it was not a group of sea kayakers, most kayakers know to build fires below the high water mark.

While Donald continued to explore the ridges and other beaches in the area, I was content to sit on the rocks with a cup of coffee, admire the view and...

...the marvellous white shell sand. I am so grateful for sea kayaking. I could not have walked to such a wonderful spot.

It was clear Donald's boat handling skills and confidence had grown, so when he returned, I suggested we move on and cross the mouth of the Sound of Arisaig to another white shell sand beach in the distance. I did warn him it might get a bit bumpy, once we were out of the lee of Rubh Arisaig...

sea kayak photo delphin

Even when the sun is not shining, the Arisaig skerries at the mouth of Loch nan Ceall is a remarkable place. The dark rocks and seaweed are...

...interspersed with dazzling shell sand beaches. At low tide the skerries are high above the narrow channels and lagoons but even so...

...the peaks of the Rum Cuillin and...

...the Sgurr of Eigg dominate the scene.

The skerries are also home to large colonies of both common and grey seals. Interestingly Donald's motor boat got right up to them and I could sail very close but as soon as I started to paddle, they would slide into the water...

...and follow me, as seen in this photo from Donald's blog.