Gigha June 11

Myself and my paddling pal Liz who has taken these photos took the high road to Argyll in the hope of island hopping in a sunny Caribbean like Scotland...many of the photos I have seen of paddling around Scottish islands seem to be of blue sky, white sandy beaches and azure seas. Now I know that photoshop has a lot to answer for.

loaded up to catch ferry as sea too wild-wide stance is to stop being blown away

Once we got to the island we put tents up in high wind and faceburn rain on a tiny campsite at boathouse cafe..and along came a platebearing Scot with an offering of scallops wrapped in Italian smoked ham...no I was not hallucinating this actually happened. However, our constant 'I think it's brightening up' phrase was a bit delusional.
The scallops were in fact a peace offering (we didn't know that at the time) as a large gang of Dads and lads from Glasgow were having a 'bonding w/e' and food/drink/football fest right beside our tents...but who can complain after scallops?

...and yahoo the wind had dropped by the next day and rain moved on so we set off to glide over glassy seas around the beautiful isle of Gigha.

 The sea around the island is shallow and alive with all sorts of seaweed, scuttling and shimming creatures, seabirds including mergansers, scoters ( I think) and we saw 3 otters that day.  Our pace was meandering as we did not want to miss anything..it isn't how far or fast I go it's what I see makes my day.

Still, 26k later we hauled out back at the beach of the campsite and just in time...it started to rain so it was back into the tents to make tea.

As you can see the Dads and lads inticed us over to their cave with an offer of a warm fire and as they were a loud lot we did as it was either sit in our tiny tents with rain pounding on us or ..if u can't beat 'em join 'em...and they were good craic too...and helped us dry (burn really)  our socks.

The next morning we headed out to explore the island on foot along wildflower lined lanes and visited the community run gardens. Many of the lovely plants were damaged by 100mph winds that hit a couple of weeks ago..even some trees looked autumal due to salt burn.
The garden was full of intoxicating blooms and after sniffing our way around it this weird sign with a list of rules told us not to smell the plants....whaaat?

Liz got an asbo for this criminal act

After stopping of at the community run hotel for yummy scones boats were packed and  we headed off again to visit Cara island and surfed back to mainland .

tucked into fudge bought at a  housegate honesty box on Gigha while waiting for ferry to get out of the way before landing.