Feeling surprisingly fresh after the previous evening's excesses, we de-camped and set off back across Lock Nevis in a fresh westerly wind. We passed the group of canoeists that we had been talking to the night before. They were making slow progress across the loch, and we were slightly concerned due to the increasing wind, but they made it across OK and into Mallaig.
With the freshening wind we left Kirstine and Stephanie in Mallaig and the remaining four paddlers continued back down the now exposed coast, back to the campsite at Silversands. With the wind gusting at F4-6, this made things rather entertaining and the rough conditions took our minds off the heavy rain that we were battling through.
With all the paddling now over, we put up tents and finished off our remaining beer and whiskey. We drove home the following day with batteries suitably recharged. It had been a good trip, the first time I had actually wild camped from my kayak. Just a shame we didn't really get any views of the hills on the four paddling days as the weather was pretty dreary. Never mind, I'll just have to go back again!
20k paddled.
Lessons learnt - I took far too much food, even considering the use we made of the pub at Inverie. I suppose I had considered the amount of food I used to eat on mountain marathons (2 day hill running, navigation events) and thought I would need the same number of calories, but I don't think the kayaking was as exhausting. I also took a load of spare clothes I didn't wear. I spent all the trip wearing the same tops and bottoms that I wore kayaking under my drysuit. I suppose if it had been wetter in the campsites, I might have needed to change clothes, but more time would have been spent in tents then.
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