Two Men and a Kayak - Paddling Their Own Canoe
Two Men and a Kayak -
Paddling Their Own Canoe
Two men have just followed an old Eskimo or should I say Inuit kayak route to Scotland all the way from Greenland, a journey of some two thousand kilometres or twelve hundred of our Scottish miles. But in case you haven’t heard we don’t call this people Eskimos anymore, not the word unless you are in Australia and want somewhere to cool your tinnies, instead it is now correct to reference them as Inuit. It is the same thing with Lapps, they don’t like the name now and never had and we should always call them Sami, or Saami. I found this out when I was on a trip in Northern Sweden some years ago and went to buy some reindeer for a barbeque. The reindeer by the way was delicious, the gravad lax we buried in the ground and ate later less so. I was staying with the man who invented Max’ Hamburgers, if you are in Sweden you should check them out.
Finnmen Re-live the Adventure
The two adventurers Olly Hicks and George Bullard took 66 days to paddle their own canoe to demonstrate that the journey was possible and probably made many times by voyagers termed ’Finnmen’ in the 17th and early 18th centuries. .The present day canoeists were inspired by a story of an Inuit man who came ashore at Belhelvie in the 1700s. Belhelvie is a little coastal spot in Abedeenshire and all that I know of it is a taxi firm called Cadgers, I am sure they don’t encouraged the scrounging of free rides and the local agony uncle is called the Belhelvie Tattie Bogle and he provides unreliable relationship advice. Anyway back to the Inuit traveller, the poor man was found exhausted on this shore near Aberdeen and he didn’t live to tell the tale and died a few days later. The University of Aberdeen still have his kayak in their safekeeping.
Across the Devil's Dance Floor
The two canoers departed from Greenland on 1 July, Mr Hicks and then paddled to Iceland and then the Faroe Islands crossing ‘The Devil's Dance Floor’ which is a perilous stretch of open seas. Then finally they reached Scotland on the island of North Rona off the north Highland coast before they headed off to Balnakeil Bay near Durness in Sutherland their final destination.
If You Have a Mad Feat to Celebrate
Now I am not suggesting that you should emulate these slightly cracked Englishmen who paddled their canoe across hostile waters, but if you have something special to celebrate then have a little browse of our pages and select champagne glasses, wine sets or even a handy paperweight from those nice folks at Caithness Glass.
These Champagne glasses are all half price.
