A friends journey.

All great adventures start with a single footstep.

I’ve received news this evening that my good friend, Paul Briscoe , is ready to start the final phase of his mammoth project; to walk totally unsupported from coast to coast (C2C), his final leg of each of the British Isles nations.

Paul and I at 3500 in the Alps together.

Unsupported means that he starts the walk carrying all his food and supplies for the journey with no resupply or help along the way. He sources all his water naturally en route – It’s both a mental and physical journey into extreme backpacking.

He’s previously completed 3 nations…

2009 – English C2C – 190 miles – Robin Hood’s Bay (East) to St Bees (West) – 12 days
2010 – Welsh C2C – 275 miles – Cardiff (South) to Conwy (North). – 20 Days
2012 – Irish C2C – 387 miles – Dublin (East) to Bray Head (South West) – 25 Days

Tomorrow, Monday 20th May at 1pm, Paul will start walking from Scotland’s most Easterly point at Peterhead. Carrying >30Kg he initially heads South towards Aberdeen and will then turn West towards the Cairngorms. Taking in the high points along the way, he doubles back on his self and heads South towards Ben Lawers (an additional 90 Km detour to bag Scotland’s 10th highest summit). Now heading North and connecting with the West Highland way, he eventually bags Ben Nevis and it’s satellite peaks before heading towards Knoydart.  The final leg of his journey ends at Ardnamurchan in the West.

A months supply of vacuum packed dried food.

His final route across Scotland is in the region of 500Km, taking in the extreme East and West points and the country’s 10 highest mountains – all unsupported.  He envisages to be ‘out’ for a month.

   

Although it’s his own personal challenge (and there’s sure to be the making of a future book), he is also raising funds for Water Aid.

You can follow Paul on his expedition dashboard, and via the links below. He’ll blog en route when possible and there will also be a track from his ‘spot’ tracker.

www.transnationcoast2coast.com
www.twitter.com/TransnationC2C
www.pinterest.com/paulgbs

All the best and good luck Paul,  stay safe mate…

Undisclosed location…

While out paddling with a group on Monday…

I was very fortunate to see an Osprey…

These birds migrate to Africa every Winter and return to the UK in March/April.  John Wright is passionate about them and blogs regularly about both his sightings on Rutland Water and his travels following their migration. His photos and sketches are simply stunning. The RSPB lists 250-300 breeding pairs of Ospreys across the UK.  My photo; hopefully not too bad taken from approx. 200m with a pocket sized Olympus μ Tough 8010 on full zoom.

Oronsay & Carna

I’ve never been a great reader; although the occasional novel grabs my interest sometimes I have to persevere and struggle with a book to reach its end. My copy of “Life of Pi” unfortunately added to my carbon footprint taking me several foreign trips to complete with it being carried along multiple times to Asia in the bottom of a suitcase.  Maps on the other hand…

Maps just light my imagination.  I can spend hours and hours scanning over 10m contour lines, constructing the topography of the land in my mind. Adventures are planned and routes fine-tuned to ‘bag’ as many objectives in the time that is available.

When I used to live down South, I’d often look at the junction of Loch Sunart and Loch Teacuis cutting into the Northern flank of the peninsula of Morvern. Loch Teacuis and the islands at it’s mouth, Oronsay & Carna, then almost 500 miles distant at the “back of beyond”, held a place high on my wish list.

Morvern is actually quite accessible, though the short hop over Loch Linnhe via the Corran ferry is enough to keep most tourists away.  Loch Sunart and it’s ancient Oak woodlands are of national importance. Although most of the original woodland was lost in pre-history, much of what we see now has been created from the reversal of de-forestation taking place from the 17th century onwards.

With a ridge of high pressure crossing Scotland, a strong Spring Tide to carry us down Loch Sunart and slack water in early in the afternoon to get through the 2.5knt tidal streams around Carna, conditions to paddle to Oronsay & Carna were near perfect.

Stuart and I launched at Salen, a small village at the head of an inlet half way along Loch Sunart. Incidentally, the Salen Hotel is a great place to stop for a beer and is currently being renovated with a lovely new green oak conservatory.

Soon we were cruising on the Ebb tide down Loch Sunart, these naturally seeded scots pines adding to the air of tranquillity.

This trip has a really remote feel to it, though in reality a road runs the entire length of the North shore of Loch Sunart to Kilchoan (where the ferry runs to Tobermory on Mull) and beyond to Ardnamurchan point and lighthouse.

Entering a small bay near Dun Challain…

Arrival mid-tide (maximum flow) at Laga Bay.  Here we could here a cuckoo calling, the first this year and a real sign of Spring.

Sunart was flat and the crossing to Carna easy.

We stopped at the NW tip of Oronsay for lunch with commanding views back into Loch Sunart and out across to Mull and Coll.

Oronsay is a tidal island. Glancing at the 1:50k map I’d estimated that maybe we’d have a 200m portage at low tide.

…I was wrong! the spring tide doubled that and we floundered through the mud and a long carry which took 45 minutes…

Eventually we re-gained water and paddled into the West entrance of Loch Teacuis. Near Eilean nan Eildean we detoured to look at the geology.  I believe this is a basalt dyke. Normally grey to black in colour it has weathered to bright red due to oxidation of its iron-rich minerals into rust.

Due to loosing time with our romp through the mud we nearly got stranded in Loch Teacuis. The flood tide was advancing through both entrances and as we paddled through Caol Chàrna on West coast of Carna some real effort was required.

I’ve seen Sea Eagles further down Loch Sunart in the past, but today wildlife was noticeable by it’s absence; only a couple of common seals and some Eider.

Date : 27 April 2013– Spring Tide.
Oban : HW 07:21 LW 13:45 HW 19:41 (BST)
Max Speed : 10.9Km/h
Trip Odom : 31.2 Km

Pan-STARRS Comet

Comet C/2011 L4 Pan-STARRS continues to be visible in the Northern sky and last weekend passed visually close to the Andromeda galaxy, M31.   I captured a sequence of twenty, 5 second exposures which were stacked  into the photo below (Click on it for a larger version).  The short exposure lessens the effect of the stars being drawn out into trails by the earths rotation, and stacking multiple shots creates a brighter image.

On the left is the “fuzzy blob” of the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.2 million light years away. Centre right is Comet Pan-STARRS which came within 100 million miles of the Earth in early March.  Arrowed on the right of picture is a red “carbon star” with the grand title of HD1546. It’s in the order of 1825 light years from  the solar system and changes brightness in a period of just over 1 year.  3 objects lying at very different distances!

Carbon stars are very red because most of the Hydrogen in them has already being fused into Helium which is in turn is being converted into Carbon.  The carbon sits in a “shell” in the upper layers of the star and, just like dust in the earths atmosphere creates a red sunset, filters out the blue region of the spectrum giving these stars an intensely red colour.

Lismore

Roughly 3 years ago Annie and I launched fully laden kayaks from the shore just North of Appin with the intention of a 2 day circumnavigation of Lismore.  I guess (hopefully !) I’ve learnt a lot over the last 3 years.  There was a strong Northerly wind blowing over the flooding tide and within 100m of launching we knew conditions were more than we could handle. We ran away with our tails between our legs.

Little did we realise that we’d soon be living “just down the road”. During our time in Appin the only streetlight visible from our back garden at night was over 3Km away on the island of Lismore.

I’ve been patiently waiting for another attempt at circumnavigating the island.  My friend, Colin, sent out an e-mail and on Easter Sunday six of us gathered on a cold morning in Port Appin.

Winter has lingered long in Scotland (in fact most of the UK) this year. In recent years I’ve paddled through the Winter, but a combination of extensive DIY renovating our house, constant high Easterly winds and low temperatures have kept me off the water since November.  …Conditions outside haven’t been overly inspiring and I’ve been slowly going “stir crazy”.

Leaving Port Appin and passing Port Ramsay on Lismore you soon get a view across Loch Linnhe to the blot on the landscape, but one of the area’s biggest employers, Glensanda Super Quarry.

Glensanda is soon left behind and we approached the ruins of 13th century Castle Coeffin

Here’s Colin in his new 16 foot Rockpool Taran; which he seems to like very much

The route down the West Coast of Lismore passes Salen…

…and we pulled in for second breakfast /first lunch in Bernera Bay near Achadun Castle.

I’m not sure what Colin and Gus were doing here, seems like a staff fight !

Almost 19Km from Port Appin we reached Lismore Light

Paddling along the West coast of the island we’d been protected from the F4 Easterly. Turning the corner for the return leg we were now exposed to a beam sea that was relentless for 3.5Km until we grabbed a quick respite in the sheltered waters of Miller’s Port.

The beam sea attrition continued (no chance what-so-ever of a photo)  and we pulled in at Achnacroish for second lunch. 28.5Km of paddling from Port Appin, I was feeling pretty cold and tired at this point.

The last leg of the journey followed, another 7Km back to Port Appin…

Date : 31 March 2013– 2 days after Spring Tide.
Oban : HW 07:54 LW 14:25 (GMT)
Max Speed : 9.4Km/h
Trip Odom : 35.7 Km
Moving Time : 6h 54min
Moving Average 5.2Km/h

Comet C/2011 L4 Pan-STARRS

Comets are unpredictable, at least in my experience.  The scientific press are billing 2013 as being a great year for seeing comets.  Later this year a comet rather unflatteringly called C/2012 S1 (ISON) is predicted to be even brighter than the full moon. It may well be one of the greatest comets in human history.

The pre-cursor to this is another comet C/2011 L4 Pan-STARRS that can now be seen throughout this month from the Northern hemisphere. Annie and I spent 2 hours on Monday evening standing around in sub-zero temperatures and a biting wind trying to find it.  Being close to the setting sun and consequently near the horizon it’s really difficult to find in the glare of twilight.

Tonight we had better luck, catching it just as it was setting over the hills of Kingairloch…

I use a great piece of astronomy shareware – Cartes du Ciel – which can be updated with the orbital elements of new comets… really recommended even if you have only a passing interest in astronomy.

and here is a cropped close up of Pan-STARRS…     500mm Lens, Nikon D700, 2 sec, f6.3

and before going home I quickly grabbed a couple of shots of the young crescent moon…

   

The East Wind

This morning I opened the back door to let the dogs out and there was a herd of red deer on the other side of the stock fence. It seems that the East wind always brings the Sun out on the West coast.

Walking the dogs was bitterly cold, but the views more than make up for it. The quality is pretty poor, this was a snap taken with my phone from Ballachulish this morning…

East face of Sgorr Bhan (947m), Beinn a’Bheithir

It’s very frustrating,  days like this I just want to be up there romping across the tops. Unfortunately work calls…