Every Journey has a story – Keith Wraight

Every journey has a story, and for Keith Wraight from Inland SUP, that SUP story started with a dream. Then with a bit of encouragement and planning, that dream developed into a spectacular, solo, Scottish SUP adventure. Glassy flat lochs, stunning scenery, beautiful sunsets, some good whisky… and midgies!

The expedition began as the background picture on my PC desktop. It kept me dreaming over the winter of 2013/14. Dreaming of sunny lazy days lying on the beach, paddling in clear water and generally spending a few days on the beach relaxing –the idea never started as a 3 day SUP expedition into the wilderness on my own! That was my cousin’s fault who said ‘How about trying this loop?’ and after a few beers and a quick look over the area on google earth, the plan was born.

The planning wasn’t in great depth – I didn’t want to feel like I was on an agenda and I believe an agenda makes you less flexible if something changes. Loch Morar is very exposed and Loch Nevis even more so and you have to work with the wind – not against. I obviously did enough planning to remember the area fairly well.

On Day 1 I paddled off the edge of my printed maps and realised I’d left the OS map in the car!

Day 2 didn’t go to plan, I pushed on too far and discovered no suitable beaches for camping for 10km. This coupled with paddling against the wind and the tide left me exhausted.

Day 3 was all about golden sand beaches and crystal clear sea.

The expedition was topped off by a day of just soaking in the scenery at Loch Shiel and making plans for next years adventure.

The film is quite long and I’m not going to make any apologies for this – how you get 3 days of life changing adventure into less than 10 minutes I’ll never know!

Words and Film by Keith Wraight from Inland SUP club.

So… don’t just dream about it. Get out there and do it! And remember to let SUPboarder know what you’ve been up to.