Wave Shape
Wave Shape

Trip Report: Kinlochbervie 13-18 September 2021

Waves Shape
Trip organiser Kevin King reports

This September, nine travellers headed to Kinlochbervie in the far north-west of Scotland. A beautiful remote location, where we experienced stunning scenery both above and below water.

Our house at Sheigra

Our accommodation was a roomy bungalow in the remote hamlet of Sheigra; with five twin bedrooms and a large lounge, a kitchen/diner with a table with room for all nine of us. This enabled us to eat together each evening, which was really very sociable! We took it turns to cook a meal and this worked well. One evening we ate haggis, neaps and tatties (we were in Scotland). The haggis was sourced locally and quite delicious. Yours truly was even asked to address it!

For the divers, and there were seven of us, there was plenty of room on the boat for our CCRs, twin-sets, cameras and other clobber.

The dive team

The harbour at Kinlochbervie is quiet during the day and diver can park right at the top of the walkway to the loading pontoons. We had hoped to head out to sea each day to experience the best of the local dive sites, and we did do two dives each day as planned. However, as is often the case when diving in the UK, the weather had other ideas.

The harbour view

Although the sea was fairly flat, Atlantic swells caused by a recent hurricane in the US brought some spectacular waves crashing over the headlands and meant that some of the sites the skipper had planned for us to dive were inaccessible.

The Atlantic swell hits home

We spent a few days mid-week confined to the local sea lochs, but this didn’t detract from the diving, as the sea life was plentiful and the rocky scenery underwater was splendid. We saw cat sharks, octopus, crabs, lobsters, shrimps or were they prawns, brittle stars, walls of anemones and soft corals, and more besides.One of the wildlife highlights was experienced above water, as on the first day and the final day we saw a Sea Eagle, an extremely rare bird of prey.

In addition those who weren’t diving (or at least not diving everyday) did some site seeing including visiting Cape Wrath. This is a MOD site with restricted access and those that attended managed to get to the lighthouse, one of the most westerly within the UK. This meant taking a ferry and then a mini bus over a very bumpy road.

The wildlife downside was definitely the midgies. According to the locals they were worse than ever and not usually this bad in September. Most of us resorted to insect nets to cover our faces when stepping outdoors, especially at kit fettling time morning and evening.

Beware the midgies

When all is considered, this was another successful DSAC diving holiday in a beautiful and remote location.

Check out the full gallery of photos for this trip

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