Home / Walking on the wild side

By davidm

August 11, 2004

In 2004 the Pecten Sailing Club organised two sailing/walking weekends on the West Coast of Scotland. If you like the sound of these trips, keep an eye on the events listing for similar events?

The first two sailing and walking events, held in May and July, 2004, were both great weekends sailing and walking and both were based on a charter out of Armadale, Isle of Skye. The first weekend in May was beautiful. The charter started on Friday 30th April, early enough for us to make our way to an anchorage in Loch Horne where we sat on deck in the moonlight and toasted the coming adventure. On Saturday morning we awoke to a cloudless sky and the sight of the mountains tops showing us an early sunrise. It was a perfect day for dropping off the walkers on the Knoydart peninsula.

Five of us walked from Barrisdale Bay to Inverie where we'd arranged dinner at the UK's most remote pub (can only do it by boat and foot), The Old Forge. It took us 9 hrs to cover the 16km and the 1020m of Ladhar Bheinn. The rest of the crew, two of them, had the boat waiting for us at inverie and we joined up for an excellent dinner.

The next morning we headed off for the Isle of Rum which gave others a chance to walk. We dropped off three walkers at Dibidil in the South East of the Island and sailed round to collect them at Kinloch, Loch Scresort. The walkers crossed the so called Rum Cuillins before meeting the rest of the crew at the famous Kinloch castle. Monday took us back to Armadale to drop off the boat.

The July weekend aimed to repeat the May success with a different cast of charaters. The weather on the Saturday blew out the Knoydart walk but The Old Forge was as good as usual and very welcome after some great but wet and windy sailing. Sunday and Monday though produced some excellent sailing in compensation and instead of Rum we spent Sunday night in Loch Scavaig on the South of Skye preceeded by an excellent 6 hour walk around the nearby lochs and ridges.

The format works really well and it is definitely worthwhile taking the four day weekend. The boat is chartered from Friday pm to Monday pm. There are more of these events planned. If you are interested then look up the Events Listing , choose an event and register an interest now! (click on the event name and register at the botom of the form) or have a look at the photos from May & July 2004.

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