A Right Royal Paddle

As William prepared to take his bride up the aisle Claire, Mark, Bill and I decided to avoid the hoo ha and take advantage of the fantastic conditions to round Rubha Hunish.  The big sub sat out of Staffin Bay meant that we were feeling qite small as we started out.

Setting off from underneath Duntulm Castle we were faced with a tough put in, loose slippy rocks and a low tide.  An eagle circled overhead keeping an eye on us as we started out.

A solid breeze was pushing offshore, this meant we would be rounding the headland with wind against the end of the tide and then a cross/head wind all the way down the east coast; Nice! Strangely as we got to the headland the wind disappeared never to return, it appeared to be localised as it was still there when we ran the shuttle at the end of the day.

As we rounded the headland the paddle started show it's nature with huge cliffs, stacks, gullys, caves and rocks, a sea paddling playground just begging to be threaded and explored.  We duly obliged and could have spent all day here but knew that we needed to meet Ruth in Port Gohblaig.

Claire in the rock garden

Unfortunately my camera gave up the ghost and ended up with water behind the lense after trying to get photos of anemones under the water in one of the many caves so I didn't get many photos of what was my third awesome paddle in a row.

We picked Ruth up with excited stories of a fantastic paddle little knowing the best was yet to come.  The section down to Staffin has the best rock features on any paddle I've ever done through caves, arches, stacks, caves, and islands everything we'd seen around the headland but better.  It's like Pebrokeshire on steroids.

All I can say is you have to do this paddle if you are on Skye, it is the most fun area for rockhopping, scooting down narrow channels between huge rocks then heading through caves.  The particular highlight was the through cave with three exits out as you went through, which route to take?  Decisions decisions, the answer is simple explore them all.

We pulled out onto the sand in Staffin bay but by now the dinosaur footprints are well covered. so we packed up and headed to the old inn in Carbost for a slap up meal to celebrate a fantastic holiday.