Wednesday 5th August: Arduine - Gallanachbeg (near Oban)

Launched in sunshine and gusty conditions, with the promise of more wind to come, and doubled back to Craogh Haven to get a phone signal and call ahead to Oban, where Barry Shaw had kindly arranged the help of his friend Colin McWilliams. From there, across to Luing and north until I entered the tiny inlet south of Torsa, exchanging friendly greetings with the crew of a gaff-rigged Cornish Crabbers Shrimper, and from thence via a narrow, weedy, channel and a short stretch of grade 1 whitewater to the strongly tidal Cuan Sound, which itself discharges into the Firth of Lorn via an impressive set of stoppers and eddy lines. Took shelter in Easedale Sound to land and fix a jammed skeg, and then ran with the Atlantic swell and a F5 south-easterly through the Sound of Insh, north-east towards Oban. To windward, the crags were punctuated with the ruins of several duns and forts, relics of a recent, more violent, history.
Entering the Sound of Kerrera, I spotted another kayak to leeward and paddled across to meet James, who is spending his summer holiday from St.Andrews University paddling the coast from Plymouth. We pulled in at the public slipway by the dive centre at Gallanachbeg (apparently some paddlers have been charged by the dive centre for the use of this slip) where we exchanged news, and from which James continued to the north-east and I landed to pitch camp at the nearby site.