If you want to read about my
SUP, and other, adventures,
come see the blind man at
play at:
www.extremedreams.co.uk
The wind was a little stronger than the previous day but, as we were relatively sheltered, it
wasn’t actually that bad. In fact, the boys let me go on ahead on my own for an hour, until
having to direct me, by whistle, to avoid going down a dead end. This was a great sense of
freedom.
After a short portage at Fort Augustus, we paddled out into Loch Ness. Within a few
minutes we found ourselves half way across the loch and in the middle of a s**t
storm. The water was much rougher than on Lochy and the wind was wilder, with
gusts exceeding 40 knots.
My website tagline is ‘come see the blind man at play!’, however at that very moment, with
winds blowing over six times stronger than on any of my previous SUP trips, it had
changed to ‘come see the blind man wet himself!’
We battled on through these treacherous conditions, only stopping for food breaks every
hour or so. I’m glad to say that only one of us ended up in the water. I’m not going to
embarrass the person by naming them, but it did make Jason and me laugh…
We met up with the two Daves at around 4.30pm and they told us that we still had
another two+ hours to go. This was not what we had hoped to hear and, speaking for
myself, morale took a bit of a dive. The wind had tailed off and at this rate we would
either have to change our finish point, or paddle into Dores in the pitch black. We
decided that it was going to be Dores or bust.
After a while, Jason spotted that there was still some wind in the middle of the loch,
so we made our way out to that and used it.
About an hour later, Jason spotted a house, then a couple more buildings, then a village
off in the distance. Using his mobile phone, he was able to determine that this was
Dores. It was only a mile away, so we got our nuts down and blasted our way to Dores.
After eight and a half hours on the water, we spent the night in the pub downing beer
and whisky until the early hours. Strangely, on Saturday morning things were a bit
hazy. The last wee section from Dores to the finish in Inverness took us just under
two and a half hours, at a very leisurely pace.
As we came to the end I heard Carl putting on his cag and tightening it up. A dip was
coming up and he was getting ready. I did my best to get away from him, but it wasn’t
to be. He came alongside, grabbed me and we went for a swim. With a combination of
hangover and jubilation on completion of the trip, it wasn’t such a bad thing!
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