The club trip to Arran in the first week of June was very enjoyable but didn’t include quite so much paddling as we’d hoped because it was too windy. On the first day a group paddled from Lamlash Bay around Holy Island – which started out easy but got to be harder work on the way back. On the second day we had a nice easy paddle down the sheltered East Coast – launching at North Sannox and getting out at Brodick with non-paddling partners providing the shuttle. That was followed by two days with gale force gusts and no paddling, but Arran offered plenty of other things to do and it was a chance to see places we weren’t able to visit in the kayaks. On the last day we were able to launch from the campsite at Kildonan and make the most of the tide taking us past Dippin Head and up to Whiting Bay. The photo framed in the drain pipe is a view of the tiny island of Pladda from the campsite but we never visited it as there is a tide race in that channel and conditions weren’t right. The photo of a square lighthouse is on Holy Island. There is also a photo of the dinosaur footprint in the rocks just along from the campsite which most of us managed to visit.
