Isle of Mull Circumnavigation
8 days and 7 nights June / July 2021
216km = 135 miles
Daily average 27km
Longest day Craignure to Traighuaine = 33km
COVID-19 has left us boatless since the Pandemic began and both of us were craving an ocean adventure of some sort. Several kind friends had offered their boats for our entertainment but there’s nothing quite like cooking up your own plans and seeing them through in your own craft. I had a grand, though un-costed, idea which involved buying something with a lot of horse power and using it to explore those shallower bits of the Hebrides that we hadn’t been able to reach with our deep-keeled sailboat. Sally, who holds the purse strings, had other ideas and thought it best to use the craft we already had. Aboard our 20’ double kayak we could explore the shallowest of shores and we could camp each night without fear of dragging. The Treasury won the argument and our summer cruise was to be by kayak though I did manage to negotiate an upgrade to carbon fibre paddles.
Late on a Saturday at the end of June all weather forecasts agreed that the Scottish Islands were about to begin a prolonged period of calm and dry weather which meant we had to plan and prepare quickly. I’d always wanted to kayak around the Isle of Mull but had assumed that we would never be in the right place at the right time to do it. A vague aspiration rather than a plan. In June 2021 we had plenty of time, a fine kayak and a fantastic forecast so, why not?
With the plan half baked Sally started to apply the detail most of which, I confess, hadn’t occurred to me. Would we be able to provision in the village shop on a Sunday morning? Had we got enough gas for the stove? How do we retreat from the roadless, rugged coasts of Mull if we ran out of puff or if the weather turned wild? Nevertheless, by 13:00 Sunday we were all packed up, provisioned and paddling north from our boat house.
The first issue we encountered was a very low spring tide. We had timed our arrival in Seil Sound to coincide with the start of the northerly flood and had assumed that there would be more than the 3 inches of water we required to transit. With the pub closed by COVID we spent an hour hard aground in the seaweed waiting for the water to rise and let us into the Firth of Lorne.
We paddled up to a sheltered beach on the south end of Kerrera and pitched our tent in among the plastic detritus that is so commonly now found on exposed beaches. Before we settled down to sleep I pinged off an email to a friend who spends some of his summers in the cottages he owns and rents out at Carsaig on Mull’s wild and exposed south coast. By great good fortune David had arrived in Carsaig from London an hour earlier and the offer of supper the next day meant that ours would be a clockwise circumnavigation of Mull.
Sally is besotted by her tent she calls ‘the Tadpole’ as it has accompanied her on many adventures. She bought it decades ago when single and I am sure it is a luxurious one-woman tent designed for ultralight backpacking. In the 25 years I have had to share ‘the Tadpole’ I haven’t been so enamoured by its coffin-like dimensions. As a consequence of abject discomfort and claustrophobia, most mornings we woke very early and were packed and on our way by 06:00. Usually we were pursued by plumes of midges.
The open-water crossing from Kererra to Mull looked very long as we pointed the bow at the misty cliffs receding into the distant murk. Our route closed on the remote, uninhabited mountainous southern coast of Mull where the surf crashes into the rocky shore. It was an intimidating passage but conditions were benign and we made good progress.
At Frank Lockwood’s Island we reached the limit of our bladder range and needed to seek an urgent shore stop. As if by magic we managed to tuck in behind a reef and find a steeply shelving pebble beach that was free from surf. The first of many 3 hourly bladder spots that punctuated our journey around the Isle of Mull.
The wind picked up as we crossed the entrance to Loch Buie and soon the chop was breaking over our decks as we dug deep to finally reach Carsaig on a warm and sunny afternoon. David McLean met us on the slip as we hauled out and pointed us towards a gorgeous campsite on the pier next to his boathouse. There followed drinks in his garden, a hot bath and a much-needed roast lamb supper overlooking the exquisite Carsaig Bay.
By launching at 6am we hoped to avoid the stronger forecast afternoon winds. David joined us for the first couple of hours and we enjoyed the paddle beneath the cliffs to the Carsaig Arches. The coastline turned from towering basalt cliffs to rounded, pink granite headlands and occasional white sand beaches. A stiffening offshore afternoon breeze made us work hard to get into the beautifully remote beach at Traigh Gheal where we had a long carry to camp above the high tide line.
Another early start in flat calm conditions saw us thread the granite islets in a turquoise sea as we worked our way westwards along the Ross of Mull. We paddled through the famous Tinker’s Hole and passed a couple of yachts anchored in the morning sunshine. The tide was with us in the Sound of Iona and soon we were ashore gobbling breakfast bacon butties in the Fionnphort Ferry Café. Sally had been fretting about stores and we were able to stock up with enough food to see us to Tobermory.
At 11:30 we paddled through Bull’s Hole to find the fog forming. Neither of us had remembered to pack the compass and we were about to embark on a long open-water passage with very reduced visibility. We decided to paddle NE with the swells coming in from the W. With the swells on our port aft quarter our plan was to close the misty headlands and then turn N to find to Inch Kenneth where we planned to camp. With the swell pushing us on we made quick progress and within an hour we could pick out the distant cliffs that turned out to be Inch Kenneth.
It was lucky that our progress was fast as the distance was at the limit of bladder range and we finished at speed with whirring paddles to get Sally ashore at full speed. We camped on the spine of the island amidst the orchids and the wild thyme. A magical spot a few hundred metres from a ruined 13th century chapel with views of Ulva to the N and Ben More to the S.
By morning the fog was back and we hugged the island’s E coast before pointing towards the Sound of Ulva a couple of miles to the N. There was no swell to guide us this time but it wasn’t long before we could discern the various shades of grey that turned out to be the southern entrance to the Sound.
At 08:40 we came ashore at the ferry slip and the Boathouse Restaurant proprietor gave us the time for neither of us had brought a watch with us. That was the third time along the way we had had to ask the time and we needed a more reliable method that didn’t involve turning on iPhones and wasting precious battery that we couldn’t re-charge. From then on I took a photo to record the time which was then visible on playing back the image.
Muffins and coffee powered us north where the outgoing tide met a sea breeze that was sufficient to kick up a steep chop that submerged our deck and sent us submarining north. We pulled into a sunny, sandy beach to let the wind settle which it did. It was calm again when we hugged the coast passing caves, cliffs, coves and forts before pulling out on Calgary’s white sand beach where day trippers were still frolicking in the shallows. The beach was too busy for us so we camped on the granite pier. It was from the end of this derelict pier that I managed to raise 1 bar of 4G which was sufficient to book us into the Tobermory Hotel for Friday night where we would be assured of crisp, cotton sheets, a hot shower and respite from the midges.
Traversing the North end of Mull we got caught up in a large school of bottlenose dolphins that took 30 minutes to pass us on either side. We had earlier heard the warbling chatter of a 100 Shearwater that approached us out of the fog, circled us a few times and then flew off. We had seen puffins, guillemots, razorbills, terns, plover and even a mink. Mull is well known for its ecotourism and we had seen most in glorious slow time slow-time.
Tobermory was bustling with boats and people and the harbour master greeted us enthusiastically when he realised just how far we had come by kayak. Fine food and a soft mattress made up for all those restless nights in the ‘Tadpole’. We awoke to a brisk breeze blowing from the SE but the tide would be with us in the early afternoon and so we spent the morning cruising coffee shops and set off at 14:00. The tidal chop gradually gave way to the evening calm and we paddled for Craignure.
For the first time ever I had to fish out a flare when the skipper of the Col ferry steered repeatedly straight at us despite our best endeavours to get out of the way. He was constrained by overtaking a tug and passing to port a bulk carrier heading the other way. We were between ferry and carrier and the ferry didn’t spot us until the last moment. He passed so close that we had to steer into the considerable swell that struck very soon after the Clansman thundered past.
The Sound of Mull is long and a bladder stop meant that we picked up a foul tide for the last hour which made us dig deep as we passed Fishnish. Angry terns dive bombed us in the rain as we rounded the point into Craignure Bay and we were at a low ebb when we hauled out and camped next to the ferry terminal. It was getting dark, we were soaked by drizzle and vast clouds of midges set about savaging any exposed flesh. We had decided to catch the morning ferry!
But once within the warm embrace of the ‘Tadpole’ the mood lightened and when I looked at the tide times and weather forecast I couldn’t think of a reason not to finish what we had started. At midnight David of Carsaig rang as he was keen to join us on our last day. Itching and sleepless at 2am I figured out that the early morning tide would carry us SE past Duart and then, we would be in bladder range of the S end of Kerrera and a leisurely breakfast before catching the ebb through the Sound of Seil and back to our boathouse to finish our adventure where it had begun.
David was on the slip and almost ready to leave at 06:04 when we cast off to catch the tide. Somehow I didn’t find time to tell him that we were doing the long crossing to Traighuaine rather than the shortish hop to Oban. We broke the news to him at Duart when, breakfastless, he caught us up. He realised he had been kidnapped but went along with it given that we promised him a meal, a bed, a lift to Oban and a set of wheels to help him get his kayak onto the ferry for his return trip to Mull.
We did stop on Kerrera for porridge and at Clachan Bridge for crisps and a coffee. We did catch all the tides we needed and made light work of the chop in the entrance of Loch Melfort. At 18:00 we carried our boats up the beach to our boathouse and soon after we were fed, bathed and in bed - happy in the knowledge that the ‘Tadpole’ was drying on the line awaiting its next adventure.
