Day 55 – Clasheddy to Durness – 14th July – 15.6 nm
It’s going to be another day of buggering about. The
forecast is for 20mph winds from the west, with a 4-6 ft swell running up from
the west / south west. I'm not going to get around Cape Wrath today, but then
White Head could be seen as a mini-version with limited landings, it will probably
give me today’s I-don’t-want-any-more-of-this fix.
On the upside, with geography and weather working together,
it means that the day is limited to a short leg to Durness and no further, that’s
a bit of a relief really.
It’s an early-ish 0700 on the water, leaving sleepy Skerray
Bay behind – a pleasant spot. The wind is forecast to pick up strongly early on
and so it’s going to be another day of farting around to see what we can get
away with. Initially the aim is to sneak across Tongue Bay and then work up along
the rocky coastline, taking a time-out at Strathan to see how things develop.
My left shoulder has been grumbling for a few days now;
yesterday’s scream-if-you-want-to-go-faster outing didn't help, so I've swapped to
my Legend Hydra paddles for the first leg today. I wouldn't normally swap to
something new in poor weather, but I've done a lot of miles with the Hydras and
the gentler catch is needed. I need to look after the old top-arm shoulder or
there could be problems ahead.
On these trips, the aches and pains tend to relate to the
intensity of the previous day(s) rather than the outright number of miles paddled
I find. Stress causes more pain than
miles alone - a sharp 10 nm day of grimly hanging on to those blades will hurt more
for the following days, than a 30 nm steady cruise does. A form of unpleasantness quality over
quantity I guess. Unfortunately yesterday had an element of both.
It is breezy as I head across, squalls and heavy showers
litter the first hour or so, the clock ticks slowly. At least the fetch is short
and while it’s draughty the conditions are fairly flat. It’s a good opportunity
to have a bit of a compass and map nav exercise. I part Rabbit Islands and work
across to sneak through a gap below the headland. The turn into the bay reveals
a pretty, sandy beach hiding beneath atmospheric scenery at Strathan.
It’s peeing down, and the clock shows less than 90 mins
since I set out, if feels like a full day already. It’s chilly too and I take a sneaky opportunity to change
into some fresh kit while we try to decide what to do. I'm a little nervous about
the headland true, we can’t see around the other side, it is blowing hard and
there are no get-outs, not one, for 9 nm or so. That’s probably a couple of
hours or more in this wind.
I'm working now on the principle that Cape Wrath should take
the sting out of the swell and Faraid Head will limit the fetch a little
against the wind. If the swell is from the SW this may all work, it it’s more
from the W then diffraction enters the game to a greater extent and if it’s
from the NW then my ideas could turn out to really be a great big load of
bollocks. At times like this I just want someone who can tell me what
I should do. I want my Mummy!
The old we’ll-just-sneak-around-the-end-and-turn-around-if-it-doesn't-work
cliché card is played and I leave the steadily increasing patch of flat sand.
Downdraughts batter down from the top of the cliffs, close in life is noisy but
fairly accommodating. I am aiming to reach the top close to slack water, I
really don’t want any wind over tide hassle today. Obviously this means a slog
on the other side, but I'm hoping that geography might help me out with a bit
of an eddy behind Faraid Head, actually about 4nm or so of an eddy. It’s a bit
of an optimistic call, but hey, you never know your luck...
It is lumpy at the end, the turn-back warning light flickers
but it’s not fully illuminated yet. I push on into the wind and as I move steadily
away from the cliffs the rebound fades and things start to settle, blue skies sneak over the top. Soon it is just a long, but fairly flat slog
into the stiff wind. I can see the cliff top campsite at Durness, it takes a
while to get any closer, but eventually the Taran makes a sandy contact with
the rocky Russian-roulette beach. I'm glad it’s over, it wasn't all that bad in
the end, the wind was just a slog really. It’s the decisions that are tiring
and stressful. There’ll be more tomorrow.
Durness has a strange feel to it, it’s really just a few
houses, a pub, campsite and a couple of stores, yet somehow it feels more like
a small town. There is a constant bustle about the place. The campsite is busy
but we find a nice spot, unfortunately I forget to turn off the Moron Magnet and
soon we are crowded in. Our new neighbours are pleasant people it seems but I
just want a bit of peace and quiet - the dog, motorbike and music shoe-horned
into the narrow gap soon mean a grumpy repositioning of the Team Fatboy bus.
The wind takes the clouds away and as the sun comes out Team
Manager heads out for a get-away-from-it-all bike ride. I find myself chatting
to a gentleman about his tidy little 1970 VW van, he imported it from
California to get a rust-free model - impressed, that seems like serious van owning stuff
to me. He’s a nice guy and as the conversation wanders on it turns out he’s
from my home town. Now he’s just pottering about the place in his smart little
van. He says he likes the sound of my trip, ‘what an adventure!’ - I most definitely like the sound of his
though, you can keep a chunk of the adventure.
He glances across at the unglamorous positioning of our van
and suggests we could park next to him on the cliff-top, his neighbours are due
to leave soon and we could achieve a much sought after sea view.
I look out over the bay, I know he has a point. Logically I
can see that it is a pretty impressive view, it ticks all the boxes. But my emotions
are strangely flat, it does absolutely nothing for me, nothing at all. All I
see are eddy lines and flow, fetch, re-bound and swell, cliffs and landing
options. It’s all I have been looking at for the last 50 days or so now. I look
across to the van too and realise that the back of the shower-block wall will
do for me. It makes a pleasant change.
TM returns from an impressive sounding bike ride, with tails
of dérailleur gears and sand dunes, a nice combination for the team bike mechanic
I reflect. We decide to eat out for a treat, but it isn't. Still the bundled wi-fi
helps with the weather forecast.
It looks another should-we / shouldn't-we day lies on the
doorstep.
