This week the Torridon activities team caught up on a bit of personal training. We had a rough plan that if it snowed we would head for the hills, if it rained we would head for the rivers and if it did something else we would head for the sea.

It neither snowed nor rained, so we grabbed a couple of sturdy sea kayaks and headed for the open seas. We decided to stay on the west coast and had a quick look at the map to see where we had not been before. Gruinard Bay stood out.

On the way up we watched the sea for signs of how it was looking and most bays seemed pretty calm. But we knew we were heading into a northerly breeze so we opted for the most exposed bit of land for a laugh.

A quick drive up the peninsula landed us at a stunning beach with only a few waves breaking.

We suited up and promptly threw ourselves out into the sea. No sooner had we rounded the corner of the protected bay than things started to get interesting and what I mean by interesting is 6 – 10ft rolling waves.

More than once we could not see each other as one of us would drop over the wave and the other would be left behind – only to then climb the same wave and look down on the other; it was awesome.

We made our way out of the bay and into the open sea thinking we could break left run along the shore and find a bit of shelter to land and grab some lunch. Sadly the ocean had other ideas. We quickly found ourselves about half a kilometer from land in waves the size of my bungalow thinking that landing anywhere but the sandy beach we launched from would be suicide.

The decision was quickly made to start heading back. We would be against the wind and when heading inshore, we would be going with the waves so we would be forced to engage our brains and not just play around.

The day finished with us back at the stunning remote beach having paddled in waves larger than anything either of us have done so before, knowing however that we would be back.

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