Go East

It is a delicious dilemma, one which many people would like to have. So as I write, in the front seat of our van in Tesco's Inverness car park, I realise how lucky I am. But it's still a dilemma.

We love wild places. I'm sure you do too. We've managed to organise our lives so we live in one of the wildest parts of Scotland. Yet when three work-free weeks suddenly appear in the diary we want to head somewhere even wilder, to kayak and to bike.

Our juicy, sweet problem is that there's not much wilder than home.

Which is why we had planned to head out to Orkney and then Shetland, the wonderful Northern Isles. Note the past tense.

Todays update forecast from the MetOffice was dreadful. It ammounted to 'bad, becoming worse'.

We wouldn't see the Northern Isles at their best; we'd hardly get on the water; we'd be stuck in our wee van; and we'd pay £500 ferry fare for these dubious pleasures.

New plan required.

Embarrassingly we've never kayaked on the East coast, so that looks like being our playground for the next few days.

I dug out Doug's 'Best of Scotland' book and we'll try to tick off a few of the routes in there, supplemented by suggestions of Donald Thompson in his Aberdeenshire Podcast (I'd link to it, but as this is an email, I can't).

No it will not be as wild as home. But it will be different. And we're looking forward to it already.