For a small country, Scotland is exceptionally rich in long journeys with historical significance. Old drove roads run through spectacular highland zones, where cattle were once led from islands to lowland trading towns. Or there’s the voyage of the Stuart prince whose flight, in the opposite direction, inspired the Skye Boat Song. Retracing those routes would mean passing through landscapes transformed by both urban growth and a changed ecology of the hills.
Yet there’s a more recent voyage that carries as great an air of adventure and historic purpose as these ancient, more romanticised roads. It was made by two young journalists in 1934. Seamus Adam and Alastair Dunnett were deeply invested in the cause of reviving the struggling cultures and economies on the western seaboard. They had travelled the islands before, hitching lifts on cargo tugs and herring drifters, but now set out to kayak from Glasgow through the Hebrides. Their boats were little more than car-tyre inner-tubes attached to bits of wood and canvas, their clothing was thick woollens, and their training was just a few sessions in a boxing gym and casual conversations with a mariner.
Imitating their voyage is, for the sake of safety, an undertaking to plan and train for now and then mount in 2021. The journey can be done by several means, in trips of 10 days, two weeks or more. Experienced sea kayakers can tackle the whole route by water and sleep each night beside their boat, embracing in full Adam and Dunnett’s desire “to test the zest of physical living that town life denies us”. Non-kayakers can cycle between notable sites and stay in holiday accommodation along the route.
The most attractive option for many, however, will be to combine road and water, whether by car and kayak or bike and packraft. It is possible to get the best of the route in short and scenic sea journeys, without needing to tackle the three great threats along the way: the wild tides of the seaway known as the Dorus Mor; the raw exposure of Ardnamurchan Head; or the open-water crossings round the Small Isles.
Adam and Dunnett began on the outskirts of Glasgow, seeking a route through the peninsulas and islands of the Hebrides that guaranteed them as wide a diversity of landscape and human community as possible. This is therefore a voyage of staggering range that nonetheless provides shelter from the force of the Atlantic for much of the route. A kayak is also an unrivalled nature hide, immersing its occupant in the natural world at the level of other species. Expect close encounters with otters, porpoises, dolphins, seals and eagles; in the intertidal zone smaller creatures can be found, from mussels and shore crabs to wading birds. To move through the crenulations of these coasts is to be reminded that Britain is less consistently urban and less diminished in biodiversity than it can sometimes seem.
But while there is wildness here, that isn’t what makes this route most remarkable. The book that resulted from Adam and Dunnett’s journey, The Canoe Boys: The First Epic Scottish Sea Journey by Kayak, is a celebration of human ingenuity in building communities on the edge of land and sea. Reading the book in advance will reveal rich but difficult histories; repeating their journey (with a few modifications) will reveal the similarities and contrasts to the 1930s.
A first day’s journey moves from the mouth of the Clyde to the Isle of Bute. I’d plan to buy provisions at Helmi’s in the village of Rothesay: a glorious bakery founded by the island’s community of Syrian refugees. The next day doesn’t take the obvious route south round Arran, but turns north to “Britain’s most beautiful shortcut”. The Crinan Canal bisects the Kintyre peninsula and ends among beautiful, wildlife-rich woodland at the picturesque village of Crinan. (If you’re travelling by road but would like to experience a little boating, this is the place to cover the gentlest nine miles of Adam and Dunnett’s journey.) From Crinan, a third day moves through the atmospheric Slate Islands. Timing tides well should mean there’s little need to paddle, as great salt rivers flush a kayak through remains of important industries that blend perfectly into dramatic seascapes.
Tiny roll-on/roll-off ferries, many built bespoke for their particular little jetties, serve the small communities here. Norman Bissell’s poetry collection Slate, Sea and Sky is a wonderful introduction to the region. The route then passes along the channel between Mull and the Morvern peninsula. This is one of the eagle capitals of Scotland, and Morvern’s coasts are among the most underappreciated gems in Britain. Then comes treacherous Ardnamurchan Head, before a stop to recoup in Sanna Bay. This breathtakingly beautiful spot is the subject of a powerful account of the passing of coastal crofting traditions, Alasdair Maclean’s Night Falls on Ardnamurchan.
By now, the paddling is in the shadow of the high mountain ramparts of Rùm and Skye. There’s some respite from tides, but exposure to swell from open water to the west. The rugged coastline to the east is Moidart, described beautifully in Margaret Leigh’s A Spade Among the Rushes, first published in 1949. If the weather is changeable, I’d choose to hug the land, but if winds are fixed low I’d follow Dunnett and Adam out to the islands. A day paddling to Rùm, Canna, Eigg or Muck will be remembered for ever.
As the journey edges further north, the great bulk of the Skye Cuillin dominates the skyline. It then reaches Sleat, the most southerly peninsula of Skye, where Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the world’s leading centre of Gaelic learning, perches on the shore. That makes this the beating heart of the Hebrides.
• David Gange is the author of The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian’s Journey from Shetland to the Channel
• This article was amended on 11 September 2020 to correct a misspelling of Alastair Dunnett’s first name as Alasdair.
