In times of low, there is always retail therapy to turn to. And so to improve our mood we hitchhiked to Ullapool on Thursday morning. We had nice coffee and bought lots of yummy food to bring back on school bus. It was a very interesting experience, which made me realised that no, I don’t miss my work just yet.

Comfort buying is what distinguishes retail therapy from ordinary shopping, and so I have one of my comfort buys to share with you. Pretty, only how would it fit into my already full dry bags and where am I going to wear it?

But retail therapy works only for short while, so the day then resulted in the two articles, Czech and English. And none of us had good night sleep.

Friday was much better. Many of you sent us messages via blog, face book, phone or email. We are very thankful for them. It wasn’t easy to keep distance and perspective on the whole think but we think we got there now. Yes it was just small group of people who got maybe jealous or maybe just misunderstood our concept. There was a prominent voice of the one kayaker, and he still continued in sending us message in similar tone yesterday, but we do laugh at it now.
We are also overwhelmed by the support we received. We knew that our friends were reading our blog (compulsory) and then few other people did, too (fantastic), but so many? To see all this support really motivates us to continue with this journey, and hopefully it won’t scare us and change our perception and writing.

So while we were still a bit low yesterday we went for walk. In the end we are in a very beautiful place of Summer Isles. We admired them already during our arrival on Wednesday and took time to paddle past and around few of them.

The first island we passed was Priest Island. We had lunch there, but psst, don’t tell the R.S.P.B.it use dot be a favourite hunt for smugglers. The name of the island is apparently due to a priest using it as his retreat. Another story talks about Lochbroom priest who used it and isolated punishment island for licentious monks during medieval times.
Also an sheep-stealing outlaw was banished here by people from Coigach, but later was accepted back to the mainland society.

Stac Mhic Aonghais
It is named after Angus Kerr from Coigach,who having dishonoured the daughter of a respected local family, was apprehended and left to perks on this small rock.
People regularly came to check on him. Once, although they removed the pears from their boat, Kerr managed to slip unnoticed, took the boat and drifted to the mainland near Stoer Head. Here he proclaimed himself as progenitor of the Kerrs of Assynt.

Tanera Mor
Is the largest of Summer Isles. It’s history stretches 1000 years into the Vikings times and was known as “Hawraray” – the island of haven, and used as their hiding place and base for mainland raids.
There is also a tale of a legendary treasure still buried here waiting to be discovered by a “one-eyed” Macleod.
In 18 and 19th century Tanera was widely populated, but by the beginning of the 20th century only two families remained.
Today there is a cafe, holiday homes and a post office.

Our campsite has a view of Risol Island. It used to have a fishing and curing station and inn for seamen.

Also we befriended local pig.

And since the weather wasn’t suitable for paddling, we at least tried some flying instead.

We hope to be backbone water on Sunday and finally making some progress towards the north.