Northern Scotland: Neave Island, Eilean nan Ròn and the Rabbit Islands
In mid July, I drove 12 hours up to the very top of northern Scotland to spend a week kayaking out there with Will Copestake and Andy Gill from Kayak Summer Isles, along with a group of three other women. Suffice to say, we had an absolutely fantastic time. Setting up camp in Bettyhill, near Thurso, we picked day paddles to suit the weather and conditions each day. This was my first time visiting northern Scotland and I absolutely loved it. We did this paddle on the third day of the trip, launching from Skerray and exploring the islands before landing in Talmine.
This area is particularly popular for kayakers as the different islands have so much to see and explore, and the tidal flows are slightly less significant than some of the surrounding areas.
We initially headed over to Neave Island from Skerray, skirting around the outer edge and exploring the many features, including some surprisingly tropical looking beaches, along this island’s very rugged coastline before heading back over to the mainland and taking some shelter from strengthening southwesterly winds.
Once we were in a suitable position to cross over to Eilean nan Ròn, we paddled directly over to Mol na Coinnle, where there’s an old ruined harbour and a small pebbly cove. We had a lunch stop here before paddling up and around the northern side of the island. From the water, this island, with its very steep, rocky sides, feels very much like an imposing fortress. I can’t imagine life was very easy for the small population that lived here until 1938.
Once we’d come around the western side of Eilean nan Ròn, we paddled over to the Rabbit Islands, an arduous 2km crossing in a very strong headwind. The lack of fetch in this gap means the water itself wasn’t too big, but the wind in our faces really made this part of the day feel very long indeed.
I’m sure we were all relieved to reach Sgeir an Òir, the northernmost island of the Rabbit chain, offering some much-needed shelter from the gusts. We paddled around and took a short break to stretch our legs on a beautiful sandy spit that’s there at lower states of the tide. Plenty of seals were bobbing around here, no doubt after a long afternoon of basking in the sun on the sand.
Paddling back across to Talmine where we’d left some vehicles that morning, we were once again in the wind but it wasn’t a huge distance to cover. All in all a wonderful day on the water with so much variety of scenery and interesting features to explore!
I had a lot of fun putting this video together. I wanted to give it a sort of “what if BBC2 did kayaking travel shows?” type feel, with animated maps, a lighthearted soundtrack of cheerful music, and a narration that covers both the paddling aspect, as well as a bit of history from the area.
It took quite a while to put together though, as an error in one of my GoPros meant all the footage from it was timestamped incorrectly; this meant that I needed to painstakingly eyeball the footage of each shot and try to place where it came from, instead of just dumping it along with all the other footage onto my timeline based on the time of day that each clip was filmed.
Added to the frustration was that, for some reason, my drone controller had logged me out and as there was no web connection out on the islands, I was unable to log back in. Because of this, it wouldn’t allow me to fly further than 100m or so. After a few attempts at flying it shortly after arriving on Neave Island, I just gave up battling with it. This is a shame as drone footage is uniquely able to provide wide context shots that give a sense of perspective and scale. As it happens, a lack of drone footage was a consistent theme throughout my week spent along this coastline, which is a real shame as it’s something I like to use a lot in all my videos. At any rate, I hope you enjoy the video regardless.
Other paddles from this trip:
