Scotland 2010

After several weeks of no rain, myself and a few friends decided to plan a trip of some sorts over last weekend. It looked like this trip was going to turn into a surfing/camping trip to Donegal. However at the last minute we realised there was going to be plenty of rain and organised a boating trip to Scotland instead! Surprisingly there was very few people interested in going, the vast majority of people not being interested due to the potential for there being too much snow or no rain. Thankfully there was enough rain and the weather was warm though.

I headed up to Belfast a few days beforehand to arrange getting myself a larger boat etc as I currently use a Cascade as a creeker which is a little big to fit in the bus. 3 other people; Eddie, Kevin and Peter also came along, using Eddie's van and a scrambler for shuttle in an attempt to save money.

Having managed to borrow a GTX we set off for Scotland! On arriving in Scotland we headed straight for the falls of Falloch. The water was a litte low for running the river but the main falls (35ft) and the rapid afterwards were running. On this occasion I was the only one who decided to run the falls as everyone else thought this was a bit much for the first river on the trip! However Kevin and Eddie decided to join me for the rapid after the falls. We then packed up and headed for the Etive, which was running at a nice medium level. The trip was great apart from Eddie spraining his ankle on Letterbox and myself dislocating my shoulder while swimming out of the Crack of doom, thankfully the hospital thought we were Ok and neither of us had to stop boating.

Due to myself and Eddie being very sore we decided to take it easy and run the Roy however it was not running so we changed for a very scrapey run on the Spean, running from Monessie down so at least there was some fun to be had. Due to the success of this we decided to go back and Re-run the lower part of the Etive the next day.
Unfortunately though due to rain overnight the Etive was too high to run so we contented ourselves with scouting a very intimidating looking Dalness falls and a stupidly high Alt a caorunn before running a medium-low level Loy, I was hoping with so much water on the Etive that the Loy might have a decent bit also but unfortunately not. On returning from the loy we decided to have a look at the Nevis and to our surprise found it was running at a decent medium level! Not having the time or desire to run it at this stage myself and Kevin contented ourselves with Polldubh falls. It was Kevin's first time running this drop.
This then unfortunately left us at our last day of paddling.

Myself and Eddie really wanted to run the Etive again after our swims, both of us beating the rapids that gave us trouble last time. Was quite annoying for me to swim and get hurt the first time only to not even get my head wet on my 2^nd attempt. We came off the river slightly early in order to head to Falloch as 3 of the 4 of us wanted to run it.

We very nearly didn't get home, when we arrived at the ferry terminal in Troon we were told that the ferry was cancelled and that we were supposed to get the ferry from Cairnryan 90 minutes later, lucky we came to Troon so early! The ferry company hadn't rung us to tell us the ferry was changed. We arrived in Cairnryan with literally minutes to spare, with the ferry doors closing as we drove through them.

In all a Brilliant trip, makes me wonder why I didn't return to Scotland sooner to paddle. Not bad at all for a trip that cost only £200 for everything.

I have video footage but haven't edited it yet, will post soon as I get it all sorted.