Tuesday 26 November 2013

Strange stuff on a wild weekend on Loch Etive


Kayak's bothies and strange stuff while kayaking with the sit on tops on loch Etive.

Picked up David Blair in Shawlands on Sat 23rd November 2013 after having to go back for my fleece and jacket which were over the back of the dining room chair - DOH!  Then went onto meet Marc Banks (Sparky) at the Harvester Hillington.

Drove up across the Erskine bridge, through Tyndrum and onto Taynuilt in almost perfect winter conditions.






Met Thomas Sharp and Murray Young who'd paddled across from the quarry on the other side then we all paddled up the loch




                                
Marc and Murray




Myself ( Brilliant photo courtesy of Thomas Sharp with many thanks )


and on to one of the bays before Cadderlie where they had some lunch and coffee.

Murray, Marc and Tommy

Murray Fearnley Whittingstall

Dave in special ops mode

Said our goodbyes around 2.30 pm. It was a shame the guys couldn't make it all the way to the bothy but time is always of the essence on these short winter days.

Anyway, as time wasn't on our side we headed up to the bothy



and were a bit disappointed to find it occupied by 8 what seemed to be rather noisy ex varsity types. But they had been on the singing ginger early and didn't make it much past dinner time much to our relief.

Anyway, as soon as we got to the bothy, myself and Marc, as planned got to the wood chopping. David however didnae and headed out on the loch to fish and drink most of the Russian potato spirit he'd brought with him. Light fading and most of the voddy gone, he reappeared just in time to find us nicely settled in with a good fire set and dinner on the go.

Dinner done, we spent most of the night chatting. With David hitting his kip once most of the Uisge Beatha that me and Marc had brought was gone. Myself and Marc stayed up a bit chatting with Ian from Worcestershire but to be honest much of the purpose of the chat was lost on us all by that point anyway.





Next day, myself and Marc thoroughly tidied up whiled David bugged off fishing again leaving us to it. Back on the water by 10 a.m. we paddled back down the loch



where I had some luck with a few codling and a reasonably sized pollack on some hokkais tipped with mackeral. David had had some spurdogs the previous evening but they didn't reappear today.




I managed to hook up on a wierd rope thing I'm assuming is for catching mussels which had some very alien like attachments I'm assuming were mermaids purses or dogfish egg sack type thingies ?



So around 2 p.m., we all headed off the water and home to a warm bath and bed through some of the most magnificent scenery Scotland has to offer.

Many thanks to Thomas Sharp who unfortunately doesn't appear in many of the photo's having seemed to have been behind the camera most of the time taking some excellent photographs.

4 comments:

  1. Nice blog mate, for the record I lifted all my rubbish before heading out fishing in the morning ha ha.

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    1. LOL M8, Great weekend and good company thanks for the comment ;-)

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  2. Sounds like a pleasant trip in the winter sun with some great pictures. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Thanks for your comment. Glad you enjoyed the article :-)

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