A toast or two on the Sound of Sleat

We dawdled along until the cloud lifted a little and built into a more substantial sheet, flattening the light. It had been a truly remarkable morning and yet we'd paddled only about six kilometres! Approaching Corran we stopped at the very smart "Ceildh House" which has local information, an exhibition/performance space and toilets. Immaculately clean and well kept, this is a true community hub. We took the opportunity to replenish our supplies of drinking water, and left a small donation. Places like this are really good to see, and there's even an arrangement for a couple of motorhomes to park for a couple of nights for a very reasonable fee. Unfortunately we were a couple of weeks too early for the opening of Sheena's tea hut... 

 At the other end of the village of Arnisdale is a building on an altogether grander scale. Arnisdale House was built in 1898 as a hunting lodge by Valentine Fleming, father of the author Ian Fleming, who wrote the James bond books. So, maybe this is the real "Skyfall".....

On this third and last night of our trip we returned to the same spot we'd used on the first evening, a reef topped with turf with great views up and down the Sound of Sleat.  We got the tents up and had a leisurely few hours in the late afternoon exploring on foot and collecting driftwood for the evening's fire.

The sun went down behind Skye's Sleat peninsula in a pale blaze and the temperature dropped - it was the last night of April after all.  Our tents were pitched on the highest ground so we found a good spot to shelter from a chilly "sundowner" breeze......

...where we cooked our dinner of home-made sweet potato curry.  We all consider good food a key part of any trip and when sea kayaking there's really no need to resort to tasteless processed food on shorter trips.  Each meal had been home-made prior to the trip and made a great end to the day, especially when accompanied by a frothing sports recovery drink and a dram.

Our fire was needed on this evening; although the showers of the previous day were thankfully absent it was certainly not very toasty warm.  We had another use for that fire too....

Baked potatoes in the embers of the fire followed by toasted marshmallows made for a most satisfactory supper!  We finished up with another toast - to the trip and to being back together after the lockdowns.