Island Hopping with a difference
The boat rode the whirlpools and breaking water, the pilot playing in the waves while he watched the surface. Tension mounted as we too watched the water. Then, suddenly it went calm.
“RIGHT! GO!” he yelled.
We leapt into the water and started swimming.
I had decided to try a swimming holiday because I do a fair amount of open water swimming and I was casting around for something a bit different. This holiday in the Hebrides involved swimming between the islands, trekking across them and then swimming on to the next.
Normally when you’re on holiday you get around by bus or by train, or you hire a car. I was drawn to the romance of getting everywhere under my own power. The holiday was organised by a company called Swimtrek, whose tantalising slogan is “Ferries are for wimps.”
Starting on the Isle of Islay, we swam to Jura, across to the uninhabited isle of Scarba, home to seals but not much else. From there, we swam north to Lunga and Eilean Dubh Mor, across the Sound of Luing to Luing Island and then on to Shuna and the mainland. The format was pretty simple. We camped overnight, then in the morning we would break camp and load our kit into the boat for a day of swimming and trekking.
For the swimming, we split into three groups: fast, medium and slow. The slow group left first, then the medium group, then the fast group. The idea being that we would all finish round about the same time.
We swam to the next island, while the pilot boat shadowed us. When we landed, we trekked across to the other side, while the boat went round with our kit and met up with us at the end.
Despite the benign effects of the Gulf Stream, the water in August was at 11ºC. Not exactly roasty toasty. Most of us chose to wear wet suits – except two who had a fair amount of natural neoprene.
The most challenging aspect of the holiday was dealing with the tides. Tides around the Hebrides are notorious. The Gulf of Corryvreckan, the “speckled cauldron”, which has the world’s second largest whirlpool is swimmable only at slack tide. To add a little spice to the crossing, slack tide is at a different time on one side of the straight from the other. You have about an hour to cross but fear is a wonderful thing and the group made it in less than thirty minutes. We were glad that we did, even as we were finshing we were beginning to be swept sideways.
But the pilot was incredibly experienced – we none of us ever felt that we were really in any danger. He could read the waters, he looked out for things we simply never saw. He new instinctively when it was safe for us to cross.
So could anyone do it? How good a swimmer do you really have to be? Swimtrek claim to have taken breaststrokers on their holidays, but if the crawl is really beyond you you’re going to find distance swimming pretty tough. It also helps if you have done some open water swimming before. Obviously, you have to be able to swim the kind of distance involved in the trip. For the Hebrides trip, that’s 3 km a day, although not all in one go. So, it’s not something to try if one length of your local pool is about your limit. The extra buoyancy you get from swimming in sea water is a plus but waves and currents make the swimming more challenging. But then that’s half the fun – if it were as easy as a swimming pool, what would be the point?
Swimming and trekking holidays are organised by swimtrek.