Sat in the campervan wondering what to do as the weather looks grey, wet and miserable. We had planned to go up a nearby 6 pointer walking from our stopover campsite on the way home but we want to avoid getting everything wet now it is all finally dry!
We are also a bit tired from the all the walking on this holiday, nearly 90 km and almost 4 km of elevation just for SOTA over some quite difficult terrain, never mind the tupperware hunting and other jaunts. All this for 10 hills and only 14 points! I have told Carolyn she will take a long time to get to goat that way. Admittedly 5 of those hills had not been activated previously.
The islands (Rum and Eigg) and the remote locations (Glenbrittle on Skye and Knoydart) have been fabulous with friendly people and some basic but comfortable accommodation. It is well worth the trip to have the experience of being so remote from the rest of the UK.
We have enjoyed our backpacking, island-hopping adventure. We read the thread on how much do people carry. Well for us between islands we have had three backpacks (2 large, one small which we carried) containing sufficient clothes for 6 days, full wet weather kit, a power supply and lipo battery charger and all the usual SOTA kit (with two antennas) which we then took on the summits.
We achieved most of what we wanted to do apart from a summit on the Rum Cullins when the weather beat us with the wind being too strong and the vis too short for the ridge scramble to Askival. The only thing we have not managed this trip is a Munro but I think we have done enough.
We might just have a day of rest today and have a little walk as a break on our way home as the weather looks better tomorrow in northern England but keep an eye on the alerts as we may suddenly get an urge to go out later.
Superb Helen, and I am rather jealous. Jimmy and I have looked at an island-hopping trip in that area, but without yet making any firm plans.
I see that one of your ferry journeys required a stop on Canna - but you didn’t activate the SOTA summit on Canna. Was this just a question of times and logistics?
You really should try to get out there… the whole area is fantastic.
Indeed we did dock at Canna but only for 15 minutes. Our fixed times on our timetable meant the best approach was 3 days on Rum and 3 days on Eigg. With some other requirements we could have used a different route with stopovers on each of the islands. Some friends we were meeting up with for geocaching and walking did just that, but they only had a day each on Eigg and Rum.
Also there were no geocaches there (there is one now) and the summit had been activated previously so the incentives were reduced. Having said that another trip to Canna and Muck will need to be organised in the future ;o)
Will both of you be going back to Rum in the future to activate GM/SI-009 as both of you failed to activate this SOTA summits due to weather conditions.
it may take us a while to get back to the Small Isles given all the other trips we have planned but it would be good to get back to Rum to see how things change.
The village has just been given (as a trust) to the 32 islanders by SNH so it will be interesting to see what they can acheive. We met the new development officer who also visited Eigg to get ideas on how they can produce a sustainable community.
A trip up in to the mountains would definitely be something to do if the weather is good but, as I am sure you know, the weather can be great one day (such as the day before our failed Askival attempt) then terrible the next.