"It's one o'clock and time for lunch...." but there are no lawn mowers around here. Just a slightly
exhilarated paddler, a seaweed strewn beach and a rather brilliant view of Loch
Scavaig and Rum in the distance. Oh, and it can hardly be 11 o'clock. Unbeknown to me while I feasted on a first lunch of sandwiches, fruit cake and a very decent coffee whilst lying on my kayak, the first tourist boat of the day had disgorged its day trippers just around the corner, and many of them were now stood behind me taking photos of yours truly in the foreground of a rather decent view. Tourists eh?!
Just to my left the magnificently short
Scavaig River, which must be all of 300 metres long, discharged its flow over the boiler plate slabs of rock in to the sea.
Follow the river upstream and you come upon Loch
Coruisk which lies right in the heart of the
Cuillin surrounded by 3,000 foot mountains and ridges. Truly stunning. I've long held an ambition to paddle this loch, but that wasn't going to happen today.
Having scoffed and viewed, it was time to set off again and I slowly worked my way around the numerous skerries, trying not to disturb the seals off the rocks and succeeding in the case of all bar one. The views in to the mountains were quite something.
Eventually I worked my way out of the inner confines of Loch
na Cuilce and Loch
Scavaig, around
Rubh'a a'
Gheodha Buidhe and across to
Soay, picking up the constant west bound tidal flow in
Soay Sound. Landing on
Soay and looking back a new perspective of the view opened up.
Across the Sound, the slopes of Gars-
bheinn sloped straight down to the sea at a near constant angle, from nearly 3,000 feet to zero in 1.5km!
As I was paddling solo, I again exercised caution over valour and declined the opportunity to circumnavigate
Soay. Instead it was straight across 4km of open water back to
Elgol. My reward for that decision? Two porpoises surfacing right in front of my kayak, so close I could see the dorsal fin structures. What a day!
NWSK'ers Mary, Rosie, Dave and myself spotted a decent weather window to get out and enjoy some brilliant scenery. We launched from the beach at Cemaes, a small coastal village with active harbour largely catering for rod and line anglers. Funnily enough there was a fishing competition going on today so there was more boat traffic than usual.
At the beach car park a sign explains that two thirds of the beach is out of bounds to dogs. It doesn't say anything about horses though.....
We set off along the north facing coast. The sun rarely reaches these dark mainly north facing cliffs, reaching Porth Llanlleiana after a couple of K. Here are the ruins of an old china clay works, a hint of things to come as Angelsey has many features of interest to the industrial archaelogist.
Today was one of the highest spring tides of the year. Offshore the flood tidal stream was tanking eastwards, but closer inshore, and perhaps for a kilometre out, there was a substantial eddy and we were paddling east against it.
Every so often the line of cliffs broke to reveal a storm beach and potential landing site, such as here at Porth Cynfor, or Hell's Mouth.
Eventually we reached the substantial bay of Porth Wen. At its entrance, where there was some tidal interfaces causing mild turmoil in the water, a couple of porpoises were briefly glimpsed. We paddled slowly in, enjoying the sunshine, shelter and beautiful scenery.
In front of us the ruined brick works rose from the waters edge, up against the cliffs. A real sun trap and a great place to have lunch. Dave spotted a lizard here and butterflies abounded. Offshore we could see gannets dive bombing. Obviously there were fish about.
After lunch we paddled through the arch and around the wide curve of Porth Wen. The tide was exceptionally high and at the back of the bay the beach was totally covered by the sea right up to the foot of cliffs. As we exited the bay we found the porpoises again at the tidal interface, three adults and a young one feeding, swimming around us and breaching regularly. Beautiful.
We headed west, back the way we had come. Of course the tidal flow had changed direction and we were again paddling against the eddy close in shore.
We paddled past Middle Mouse, the island in the distance, and across the mouth of Cemaes Bay. The water was confused here with many rapidly moving wavelets and a wind quarter beam on that combined to continually try and push my kayak to starboard. The west side of Cemaes Bay has some sheltered coves, an island and a long abandoned life boat station. Much quieter than the main beach at the village. Shame about the nuclear power station perched on the headland above!
