Berwick

The weather was till windy, wet and cold (with snow half way down Ben Nevis) ,and no prospects of an improvement we decided to call it a day and head to home, via a few days at Berwick upon Tweed  (which seemed to have a slightly better weather forecast!)

This was lovely .. we had a a blustery walk round St Anne's head...

then the next day cycled over the causeway to Holy Island (paying very careful attention to the tides,  because the causeway is flooded for much of the day...) 

Lindesfarne is lovely

Singing Sands

 We drove over to Arivegaig (nearest village is Acharacle) and cycled through the forest to the Singing Sands and Cul na Croise beaches. This was the base of the "Eden" TV reality show broadcast on Channel 4 during 2017, and was somewhere we'd long been interested to visit ... 

We set up camp on a blustery promentory...

with magical woodland behind us..

..overlooking a row of glorious, deserted sandy beaches

But cycling was hard!

Loch Morar

 Portaging up to Loch Morar, was MUCH harder than we remembered... We realised we last did it 10 years ago.... but things have changed!!.... 

We no longer fancy doing that portage again!

But once on Loch Morar, we paddled up the loch and set up camp at a nice spot on the south shore.  The next day, on schedule, the sun came out the wind dropped and it was lovely.   

Spent a nice day exploring

On the way back we stopped to explore one of the wooded islands...

The weather forecast still wasn't good, and we couldn't car-top the kayak without a roof rack, (and our van was still at Arisaig campsite) we decided to leave the kayak locked up on Loch Morar, take the train to Mallaig, then take the ferry over to Eigg to spend a few days there, hoping that the winds would ultimately drop...

However after a few pleasant (tho wet and windy) days camped on Eigg, the force 4-6 winds were predicted to continue.  As we couldn't take the assembled kayak to calmer waters, we somewhat reluctantly we decided that we should retrieve the van, come back to Loch Morar, pack up the kayak, and call it a day (at least for kayaking)