Morar – May 2018
The logistics of this trip took a little planning, three sets of people, coming from different directions in two different modes of transport, requiring a three-hour round trip to drop off one car.
The plan was to leave one of the cars at Kingie Pools, at the far end of the longest “no through” road in the UK, drive round to Arienskill eight miles east of Glenfinnan at the side of Loch Eil. Walk in up over the top of the hill, camp beside the old boat house of Loch Beoraid, before walking out on the track past Meoble to the jetty at Camus Luinge. From there we would inflate our Alpacka packrafts and cross Loch Morar to South Tarbet Bay, portaging, if we couldn’t be bothered to deflate the packrafts, walk over to Tarbet. Wind and tide depending we would then pass through the narrow section at Kylesknoydart before heading up Loch Nevis to Sourlies Bothy. Overnighting at the bothy, we would then hang a left and follow the River Carnach through the pass to Loch Quoich, staying the night at what looked on the map to be a ruin at the foot of Meall a Choire Bhuidhe.
The next day would then see us follow the track over to Glen Kingie with the intention of floating the River Kingie to Kingie pools to the other car.
On paper this looked like a pretty good route, the only thing that really concerned me was the impact of wind, mainly for crossing Loch Morar (it would be a long way around to walk), and also for heading up Loch Nevis as I had heard a couple of tales from friends who had canoed up Loch Nevis and had struggled to make any headway, even with the running tide due to strong headwinds.
This was a trip to find out a little bit more about packrafts, specifically Alpacka rafts like the Llama with a white-water spray deck that I was using.
The next big trip I have planned is a traverse of the Gates of the Arctic National Park, a self-supported trip of around 370 miles of which packrafting will play no small part, so before I spend my hard-earned pennies on one, I wanted a second closer look at how well they work for me.
Trip Report
We set off from the carp park at Arienskill around an hour and a half later than I had intended, things always take longer to do than you think, I should know this by now.
We each weighed our packs before shouldering them – none of us were going to win any prizes for Ultra lighters. I think from memory my pack weighed about 17kg whilst the heaviest was around 25kg and we felt it on the steep climb to the top of the hill – out of shape and out of breath.
We kept to the high ground (and out of the stream) circling around to come down to the foot of Loch Beoraid beside the small hydro station providing power to Meoble, we were very lucky with the light as we were struggling for visibility by the time we got to the bottom of the hill.
We got pitched up and ready to hit the sack as it was about 11pm with a fine drizzle providing some much needed cooling effect.
At breakfast next morning beside the boat shed we heard the unmistakable sounds of a Landover engine winding its way up the track towards us. I wondered how amiable the driver would be, given that we were camping by his boat house, albeit a very remote boat house. As it turns out after he had recovered from the shock of seeing 4 hungry lads digging into breakfast on his beat, we had a good craic, turns out he was the estate boatman, a fairly essential role for a place with access only by water.
After breakfast we headed down the track towards Meoble. During WWII Meoble was a training ground for SOE agents and you can still find some interesting stories about the place online, along with info on the family that own the Meoble estate – the Ferranti’s.
Fortunately, when we got to Loch Morar the wind was blowing from the south west and relatively gently at that, as it is the deepest freshwater loch in the British Isles, it even has its own monster “Morag”.
We inflated our rafts, secured our packs and checked one another over, had a brief play in the River Meoble as it entered the loch, then headed across. The wind started to pick up when we were about two thirds of the way across and propelled us rather rapidly to the other side, I would not have liked to be paddling the other way.
We worked our way around into South Tarbet bay passing a cottage by the shore side with two deer targets, one about 75 metres from the doorstep and the other about 150 metres away, how great must it be to be able to step outside in the morning in your PJs, slippers and coffee, balance your coffee cup on the window ledge and plink away at the targets.
I think laziness dictated whether we would deflate the rafts and pack them away or just carry them up and over the top to Tarbet – it worked pretty well, it’s not often you can get a photo at the top of a pass with a boat.
Tarbet was pretty rudimentary, a couple of farm houses, stone outbuildings and the constant hum of a generator. We ate our lunch there, closely watched by vigilant sheep, who weren’t quite sure if we should really be there.
As we were sitting by the water a fellow came out of one of the farm houses with his collie, pushed off in a RIB and set out along with loch with no return to our offered acknowledgement, strange I thought, probably a dour farmer who doesn’t like a pile of tourists coming through.
Low tide wasn’t for another three hours so we either had a good while to wait or we could chance it and see how close we got to the narrows at Kylesknoydart before we were pushed backwards more quickly than we could paddle forward. None of us wanted to wait so we pushed on, the bay was fairly sheltered, as was Loch Nevis and we made some good progress pulling past some fantastic looking homes and more than a few ruins from the clearances.
As we approached the narrows the water was moving noticeably faster and we managed to work out way up the eddies at the side, we met the “dour” sheep farmer and his dog coming back from putting out mineral licks for the deer, transpires he was a young Australian chap spending a couple of years here, and as the collie, paws resting on the side of the RIB eyed each of us up in turn we chatted about what he was up to out in this neck of the woods and where we were headed.
We made it through the narrows paddling hard against the outgoing tide and headed up the length of Loch Nevis to Sourlies bothy.
On the way we stopped off at Camusaneighin to have a look at the ruins, I find it so poignant to visit these places, and you can almost hear the echo of kids at play and the buzz of family life, although I dare say it would have been a tough existence.
As we approached the bothy, we had to get out and carry the rafts over the beach due to the low tide, we found large clumps of mussels growing amid the seaweed rock gardens and once we got to the bothy it was straight back out to pick a few to savour later on.
The bothy was empty, two of us pitched up outside and the other two set up inside the bothy, mussels were cooked and thoroughly enjoyed and daylight was fading fast through a prolonged drizzle, several head of deer were grazing contently by the front door, food was had and the whiskey and brandy were going down nicely.
A young Danish woman accompanied by an Israeli chap appeared, along with an older English fellow minutes later, we had a good craic for a while – it’s amazing who you meet in these places.
The next day we packed up and set off at a fairly sedate pace through very wet and marshy ground along the Carnach River, with a few crossings required. What an amazingly beautiful wee glen.
One of the most noticeable things about this area has been the number of ruined shielings, a note in the bothy book the previous night said there were enough young men in this small area for a Shinty team, so there must have been quite a population.
The track we followed disappeared from time to time and from the wear on some of the larger rocks it was evident that this path had been there for a long time and used by generations, you could just imagine folk from days gone by walking these tracks and seeing the cliffs and trees and the river much the same as it was today.
The bottom half of the glen was fine, but further on you had to pick your way through some rocky sections.
We reached the dam wall at the edge of Loch Quoich around mid-afternoon and after a quick bite to eat, inflated the rafts and set off along with loch to our destination for the night. After about 20 minutes the wind that had been a nice stiff breeze picked up and the waves soon became white capped, the wind growing in pace all the time, we started heading for shore – and in good time too as when the waves were lifting the bows of the rafts the wind was getting under them, and even with the weight of ourselves and our packs there was a danger of being flipped over, the packrafts would soon have been away and out of sight.
We made it safely to shore on the East side of the loch, deflated and packed away the rafts, then set off on foot for the remaining few kilometres to where we were camping for the night.
What looked to be a ruin on the map turned out to be a purpose built shed for an Argocat, so we camped back on the other side of the Allt a Choire Bhuidhe river.
The rain was quite heavy by now and the wind was still blowing hard so we made sure we were tucked away on the lee side of a promontory on the driest bit of ground we could find.
The next morning dawned dry but with a thick layer of mist obscuring the view of the pass we were taking over to Glen Kingie. It took a while to get the old muscles warmed back up, but it was easy going on a good track as we wound our way into Glen Kingie.
I didn’t know what to expect from the River Kingie except I knew that it was mostly floatable with a few minor rapids – Class II at most, for me it was by far the most enjoyable section of the trip, and it was here that the packrafts came into their own.
The first section was wide, deep and slow moving and I was starting to think it would take a few hours to cover the approximately 12 Km to Kingie Pools, but as we rounded a corner we came across the first set of rapids.
All of us were complete novices when it comes to white water, but there wasn’t a huge volume of water going down the river at this point, and I had a shot at this first one whilst the others portaged – needless to say it was the last rapid that got portaged.
It was so much fun trying to determine a route through, some sets we boat scouted, others we got out to stand on the bank and work out a route through – some were pretty hairy for us.
Beside the little lochan about two thirds of the way through we saw the unmistakable shape of a large Golden Eagle working the land and the thermals, although I can’t imagine it was hungry with the amount of carrion in the form of fallen deer on the hills in what must have been a very tough winter indeed. It was a huge bird, probably the largest Golden Eagle I have seen and it was amazing to lay back on the raft and watch it drift lazily by on its jagged wings.
The last rapids of the day almost proved to be our undoing, we stopped and had a look, an old wire suspension bridge hung suspended about three quarters of the way through, and there was a very pronounced downward slope, but we went for it.
The first section was fine until we came to about a 3 or 4 foot drop, seen but unavoidable and we all managed fine, we were still chuckling to ourselves about that one when a larger drop appeared, requiring a sharp right turn and serious concentration after the drop to navigate the remainder of the rapids. Only one of us made it through intact, I managed to beach just before the drop, as my spray deck had come off and the boat was full of water, Adam hopped off almost mid drop and we had to pick up his boat well downstream and Billy got stranded midstream.
It was a fitting end to a great day, but definitely reinforced the need for some white water training if we are to venture out on more challenging rivers.
We reached Kingie Pools for the last sedate paddle across, packed up the rafts and headed up to the car for a late lunch.
A lady from a nearby cottage came to see us with the kind offer of a coffee and biscuits, she and her husband had watched us paddle across the last section from their front porch and been intrigued as to the route that we had taken to get there, and obviously knew the country well.
We drove the hour and a half back to our starting point and said goodbye to Adam and Billy who were heading home. Ian and I headed to the Glen Nevis campsite in Fort William for a good feed and a few beers.
Ian had been training for the DAR24, a 24-hour adventure race, so was interested in a quick run up Ben Nevis in the morning before heading back to Dublin, so it was a 6am start from the Youth Hostel heading up the path to the summit followed by a run back down, total time was just under 3 ½ hours, a very enjoyable start to our morning and finish to our trip.
Route
