Mull
- pengodber
- May 2, 2024
- 11 min read
Days of stupendous cliffscapes. This stretch is like the landscape of a Spaghetti Western.
Photos mainly by Neil Buckland with a special guest appearance by Karen O'Connell
The sky was innocence blue. Not a puff of wind. It was actually hot. We were blessed with the perfect conditions to circumnavigate this whole beautiful island, close enough to stroke the rocks and breathe in the smell of warm heather. Two days before Neil messaged: “Looks like a good window for next week." I thought "He can't be right." July had been petulant, remorseless wind and rain. So had August. You can get used to being miserable. But Neil’s planning is famous. And I think he has a direct line to the weather gods. So two days later we were at Craignure, boats packed and ready to go.
The thing about Mull is that you kayak whole days below magnificent layered cliffs of grass, scree and extruded columns of basalt where only the wild things go. Multi-coloured tribes of mad eyed goats eye us up from the rocks. They know we can’t touch them. Deer skitter down vertiginous paths from one patch of sweet grass to another. They are more wary of us but that’s because at the top of these cliffs is a huge deer-stalking forest, one of the biggest in Scotland, and the shoot is on. Eagles are the kings, they sit motionless, aloof, they glare out at us as we pass beneath their world. There are fish jumping around us and one eagle descends with a mighty swoop below the water and comes up with a fish beside Neil’s bows. There’s a thrill of water droplets scattering about us. A sea eagle’s wing span can be 245cm. We sit 65cm above the water line. We sit tight and feel very small.
This fantastic photo is by Karen O'Connell of Kazzy's Cards. She captured the moment from a wild life cruise of Mull. Thanks for letting me use your photo Karen. https://www.facebook.com/kazzysgreetingscards
A year before Neil and I had paddled along this section of coast from Loch Buie. We'd fantasy-planned this trip and had picked out a steeply sloping storm beach as the perfect camp site. It could only be accessed by kayak or goat. It felt pretty good to land there for our first camp, pitch our tents high up the beach, find a bit of driftwood for a fire to keep the midges away and watch the sun go down. The deer skittered cautiously, watching us from the high cliffs. The goats made a fastidious detour around our camp. Eagles sauntered about their business. Hold your breath! We're here! We may be the only humans to visit the beach but we leave no trace of our fire in the morning and that feels good.
Photo by Neil Buckland
At the end of day two our world changes. We are surrounded by rounded boulder islands of pink granite with that very particular sparkly silver sand below the water. As we make our second camp on Eilean Erraid a mighty thunderstorm chases down the sound. Lightning forks Iona with drama and malice. And is gone, black clouds speeding on for Staffa and the Treshnish Islands.
Photo by Neil Buckland
We’re stopping early enough in the day that we can have some play time. Neil goes to the top of the island with his big camera. I do what I’ve done since childhood, lain down on the rocks to watch what goes on.
Photo by Neil Buckland
My first memories are of floating above a sea world, mask and snorkel on, suspended in an inner tube. I’m in the Pacific Ocean back in the day when it was clear twenty feet down. Shoals of neon bright tropical fish are partying through the coral. Angel fish move with placid dignity. A lifelong obsession with the underwater started there. But I no longer feel the longing to immerse myself. I wish I did.
National Geographic
The surface of the water here is taut and shiny. The water feels charged, electrified by the lightning. So clear that the life below is magnified and spotlit. It’s busy. Little pastel-coloured crabs nip sideways out from the undulating frills of seaweed, shrimps do frisky backwards jump tricks and whorled hermit crabs go sturdily on their business, their neatly carved shells held high, moving confidently like tanks on missions. Have you ever noticed that ochre, russet and cobalt winkles are perfectly disguised in the bladderwrack seaweed where they hang out? Their shells mimic the air bladders in shape and colour. These guys have stuff to do but somehow they don’t seem to get stuff done. They trundle to and fro with their little antlers waving. You could forage your tea from most of this stuff but I’m happy just to watch. Stay quiet. Just look. And share a nightcap.
This is the kind of camp spot you scout for at the end of a day's paddle. Enough grass for two tents perched a drybag's throw from the beach. A nice bit of shelter from the wind and a stash of dry wood for the fire. Perfect. Photo by Neil
Pink granite after Basalt columns. Photo by Neil
Lewisian Gneiss and pink granite are a special star appearance for Iona. Mull’s first farmers were on Iona, settling there in Neolithic times. We’d love to go round the island and explore but we’re moving on. Tourists are disgorging from coaches strung out along the road at Fionnphort like beached whales. Paper cups bob below the jetty. Crisp bags adorn the slip. Queues are already forming for the island ferry. Everyone says it’s amazing, and I expect it is, but it looks as if it’s about to be invaded.
It would be almost too easy to circumnavigate a load of islands in the Sound of Iona
Further east on Loch na Keal are the caves where the first people lived on Mull after the end of the ice age. They were called “strand-lopers”. They were nomadic, using caves which once would have been at sea level but now are high above us along raised beaches. They lived from the sea and the shore, hunting and fishing. If there were as many goats then as there are now they would have done well. Fresh water springs, always handy, are cascading over the rocks.
Once out of the sound we’re paddling alongside the petrified lava flow from that great volcano that made Mull and then we’re crossing back to high layered cliffs of basalt columns and grassy slopes. It’s a truly fascinating place. Waterfalls, strangely structured caves and, at Berg, an extraordinary fossilised tree. 12 metres high and 1.5 metres wide it is clearly recognizable as a petrified tree. You can walk there and I’m sure it’s a good walk, but we can drift past trying to take it in.
Fossilised tree at Burgh, photo National Geographic
For us to be on this extraordinary coast in such calm weather was a gift. But it’s changing. We’re beginning to have to take wind forecast into account. A pearly sheen is forming over our blue sky. Inch William is where we’re aiming. Now this is a tiny island with a big history. The Celtic Saint Kenneth came here in the 6th century and founded a monastery, the Vikings came, the Kings of Scotland were buried here when they couldn't make it to Iona and in the twentieth century Inch Kenneth had its very own Nazi: Unity Mitford was sent to live here in WW2 and the Swastika hung in the big house. The flag is no longer there but there's lots to see.
Sand loper woman with beer can.
We don't see any of it. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell thought Inch Kenneth was great for culture. But Neil and I, like a pair of sand lopers, favour the north western side of the island: rocks, boggy bits, some cows and no history at all. We followed quiet weeded canals through a series of lagoons at the end of the island to a beach where we made one of our favourite camps. It is quite a blank, empty sort of place, peaceful. Not much driftwood either and a fire was essential as the wind dropped and the midges came out to play. Here’s a thing: dried cowpats and crackly dried seaweed do indeed make very good fuel. They kept up a quiet smoulder long enough for an essential tot of Bunnahbain. And a beer.
Neil making breakfast. Rare photo of Neil. Rare photo by me!
At first light the cows and their pal Brian the Bull came down to the beach and munched companionably on seaweed and dried plastic. A review of the weather forecast which was not quite as perfect as it had been. We will take a sheltered route between Ulva and Mull. The clouds are drawing across the view like velvet curtains.
It’s quite nice needing to put my drysuit on. Up till now it's been too warm for it. We get launched before the rain comes. I have visions of an amazing breakfast that could perhaps stretch into lunch at the Boathouse. That’s what I did once with a bunch of friends after a fantastic long wet walk across the island. We found a whale skeleton and chanterelles. But the moral is never try to eat the same breakfast twice. The Boathouse is closed. The walk on Ulva is wet but not fantastic and the paddle on to Gometra feels a bit of a slog.
Gometra belongs to a pleasant eccentric who was one of the founder members of Extinction Rebellion. I meet him when I’m exploring the island and fall instantly in love but it’s not the lasting kind. As Neil and I agree if he’s an ecowarrior he could at least have planted some trees and kept the deer in hand. The island is as biodiverse as a motorway service area. Now that’s a bit sour.
I think we need a break. A day off. I’d like to be a proper tourist and buy a postcard or two. I’d like to eat food someone else has cooked while sitting at a table
And that’s what we get! Calgary, eating! Buying stuff! Day off!
Although it only has a population of 5 Gometra has it's own stamps! The stamps were drawn by Iain MacFarlance Munro and Rhoda Munro is the postmistress. I think the other 3 members of the population are the owner and his two daughters. I like the stamps too much to use them.
Everything that Calgary has to offer. Photo by Pen
We have two days paddling left and there’s no way we won’t do them but they will be a little more challenging. First we have to round the northern head: Callach, Quinish and Ardmore Points. I have marked the wind on my map as SSW and force 7. We have an unusual level of concentration as we do the tidal planning. We know it can get big there and we want to be sure to go through that section on slack. So we make a slow start and when we get to the heavy muscular waves coming onto the reefs on Callach Point neither of us think of rock hopping.
But we’re ok. In fact we’re good. We both feel comfortable and confident in ourselves and each other. And we’ve done it. Definitely tired though. Landing at Tobermory I have only one idea: chips from the van!
Surely one of the best known sea fronts in Britain? Photo by Neil
My mouth is completely crammed with chips when Nick Ray, a legendary journeying kayaker, comes down to meet us. Nick has just finished an epic journey. He has shared this journey and his battles with severe depression on social media, in interviews and a couple of books. Nick started from his home in Tobermory and kept paddling and camping from his kayak for a whole year. It was a terrific feat in which he circled Scotland including every sea loch. He has the courage to take this on and the humility to know when to turn back. We’re in awe of him.
Along with thousands of others we watched Nick's progress with awe. Photo by Nick Ray
Nick confirms what we had thought. The wind is going to be full on and against us. This evening we need to push on down the sound for as long as we can to take advantage of the wind being with us. Tomorrow it will be full on against us.
Launching on the last day.
“Wind funnelling between mountains is stronger and meaner and harder and we WILL get there.” That’s all I think from day break to Craignure. Paddle goes in, take it out, reach forward, paddle goes in. Haul yourself along. There's the ferry from Lochaline on the mainland. There are a couple of sailing boats making for cover.
I’d wanted to stay on in Mull and explore inland. I'd wanted to go back to Calgary. But a big storm is coming and my van is rocking under me. Neil has already left. Suddenly I know the pull for home is stronger than my island curiosity. We've done what we came for.
On the last ferry off the island a bunch of American tourists unwillingly make space for me. I must smell pretty bad. My clothes are baggy and stinky and rimed with tide lines of salt. But I just want to sit on an upholstered seat. They’ll have to shove up. And they do. Even their bags get corralled at a safe distance from filthy me.
It’s charitable of my clean, sweet smelling neighbour to address me, human to human. “We went to Iona” she tells me breathily. “That’s great, what did you like about it?” She looks confused. What had she liked? “Well” she said, eventually, “It was so quaint. Yes, it was quaint. So was that other place we went. Was it Edinburgh?” She gives me her whole itinerary. Everything’s quaint. But that’s ok. I’m transfixed by the view outside: the rain is now a deluge, washing the greasy ferry windows in wind-thrown torrents.
The race between Duarts Castle and Lady’s Rock is ferocious. And beneath the race, peacefully submerged below us, lies The Swan, an English warship sent by Cromwell in 1653 to quell Highland Royalists, in particular the Maclean clan of Duart Castle. The Swan, the bodies of her crew and the accoutrements of their daily life have been preserved by the sand, even down to their delicate clay pipes, made in Newcastle and now displayed in the National Museum of Scotland. Not so the scattered remains of her sister boats Martha and Margaret, smashed on the rocks and thrown hither and thither. Our ferry chugs phlegmatically onwards.
The next ferries will be cancelled but no drama for us. Just chips and beer at Oban.
This is the last island trip of 2023. The next island that I write about has yet to be paddled. Ideas and plans come thick and fast but this has been one of the longest wettest windiest coldest Springs ever. But soon. It’ll happen soon.
All the best memories. Photo by Neil Buckland
On this trip I slept on 4 islands: Mull, Erraid, Inch Kenneth and Gometra. And circumnavigated 12 islands: Mull, Rubha nan Oirean, Eilean a Choire, Samalan Island, Erraaid, Na Maoil Mhora, Eilean Mor, Sgeireig a Bhogadain, Dun Ban, A Chleit, Frank Lockwood’s Island, Gamnach Mor. I donate to Aban £10 for each island slept on and £1 for each island circumnavigated. So that’ll be £52 to go towards Aban who get less advantaged youngsters adventuring in the outdoors.
I have now circumnavigated 18 islands, slept on 8 of 77 Islands and have 69 left to sleep on by 2028! That’s do-able isn’t it? Well maybe. Sometimes it feels very do-able and sometimes it feels like the daft enterprise of a deluded oldster. We'll find out!
If you would like to suggest an island or join me kayaking to one then please do use the comments or contact me thru the contact tab on this site. Thank you!
If you would like to join me you can always donate using the donate button at the top of the page. And please do share on social media to spread the word. Thank you so much!
Campsites and Other Important Things
Calgary
There's a good community run site by the beach at Calgary. Up the hill from the fabulous white sand beach is an arts centre, cafe and shop. The woodlands are full of sculptures as well as clever, fun places to stay.
Loch Buie
The campsite at the head of Loch Buie is super relaxed. You choose your spot. Local guides bring clients here to whale watch in the bay and The Old Post Office cafe is friendly and excellent.
Tobermory
Well you couldn't go to Mull without visiting Tobermory and the chips from the van are amazing. Especially when you're hungry. They even hold a Routiers award.
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