Two Lochs Radio

Just done the first interview about a book that's a year away from publication. This is the UKs smallest commercial radio station, serving two and a half thousand people. Community radio at its best. And we've known the presenter Liz Forest, for years having stayed at her B&B in Kinlochewe for a Hogmany many moons ago.

We're in a fabulous part on the country with two more weeks to comoplete this trail. We shouldn't worry too much about the weather.

We drove ahead to Rubha Reidh today. Seriously scary in these conditions. It's 20km by kayak to get there and more before we could land.

We also drove ahead to check out Mellon Udrigle, Aultbea & Laide, places we've been before but didn't study with 'kayak eyes'.

Then we went online and checked the weather. There's agreement the wind will drop tomorrow but disagreement about when it'll build again, and how strong it will become. That's too uncertain for us to wish to attempt Rubha Reidh. I'd ideally want a spell of settled high pressure, not a brief gap between lows.

So the current plan (which might change!) is to skip ahead to Aultbea and try to go to Ullapool in two days. We'll still have to get around Greenstone Point, which might be too much, and crossing to the Summer Isles seems out for now.

All this is actually superb research for me. Creating a trail which has options for bad weather and ensures the reader doesn't feel a 'failure' for not rounding a headland or reaching the Summer Isles, is hugely important. If we'd cruised through here, we might have taken this for granted and the resulting text been blase, to the point of being dangerous. Hopefully, no chance of that now.

Will things go to plan? I'll let you know.