National Geographic’s March 2009 issue majors on Islay, sea-kayaking and whisky

Entitled Will Paddle for Whisky, the main feature of National Geographic’s March 2009 issue is a sea-kayak round Argyll’s Isle of Islay with – the title gives the game away – splashdowns at a few of the island’s famous single malt whisky distilleries.

This article brings all of Argyll’s big strengths into a single focus – beauty beyond taming, opportunity, the marriage of man and the elements and the heat of a good dram. Everything about this feature is mouth watering – and after a few days of serious testing of Islay drams,  water – in some volume – is what your mouth would most cry out for.

How many people have grown up with National Geographic somewhere around? It’s great draw has aways been its photography – so this is the perfect marriage: Argyll – in this case Islay – and NG’s camera hotshots. They do not disappoint. Among a series of evocative shots there is a standout and unforgettable image. It’s of the ruins of Dun Naomhaig Castle (Dunnyvaig in English).

The actual ruin, as most of us would normally see it from the land, is little more than a thin finger pointing crazily upwards at the tail end of the fragile little rocky land spit it sits on, jutting out into the Atlantic on Islay’s south coast. But this photograph shows us something unknown, gothic, grown from the rock that embraces it, majestic, unknown and unknowable.

It’s taken from sea level and from the sea and, if not from one of the sea kayaks, it catches two of them, low to the water on the shoreline below the castle. You’d expect them to stand out but they don’t. One is all white, one has yellow upperworks. They’re long and low. They’re dwarfed by the magnificence of the rock above them and obliterated by the challenge of telling the boundary of the natural and the built.

The yellow lichens on the rock claim ownership of the yellow sea kayak. The long veins of flint in some of the rocks do the same for the white one. The kayaks aren’t alien or even visible. They’ve become part of something beyond time and imagining.

Argyll has fabulous sea-kayaking pleasures and challenges to offer, the best in the UK at the very least. Islay has some of almost everything Argyll has to offer – and the bonus of eight distilleries.

The article features the only activity business in Argyll to offer courses and trips in sea-kayaking and a place to stay and eat well into the bargain – on the edge of the Falls of Lora at the neck of Loch Etive. This is Tony Hammock’s SeaFreedomKayak and Strumhor, the Guest House it operates from at Connel on the south shoreside of the falls.

Sea kayaking is on the brink of being Argyll’s next big sporting development. Everything needed is here. Oban Canoe Club is three years old and already has two hundred members. They rave about the opportunities and they are evangelists. Islay has its own Canoe/Kayak Club that attracts a lot of attention for the experiences the island offers to the sport.

On Islay, the NG team stayed at An Taigh Osda, winner of both the Best Accommodation and Best Restaurant Awards in the ForArgyll Awards 2008. This acclaimed new boutique hotel and restaurant has the added advantage of being within staggering distance of a couple of the Islay distilleries.

The distillery visists were to Laphroaig, the most iconic of the peaty Scotches and a virility test never to be forgotten; Lagavulin, near the ruins of Dunnyvaig; Ardbeg, whose 10 year old Ardbeg Uigeadail was named World Whisky of the Year 2009 by the Whisky Bible – with a score of 97.5 points out of 100; and Bunnahabhain, one of the silkier of the Islay malts.

Laphroaig, Lagavulin nad Ardbeg are the three most distinctive of the Islay malts and all are within range of Dunnyvaig Castle. The water source around there must be pretty special.

The National Geographic feature is going to do a lot for Argyll. You read it – you want to be here, you want to take to the water, you want to get to Islay and you want to relax with a dram. NG is the long stay magazine to end them all. The heart of it – the photos – never go out of date. It’s the magazine everybody picks up in a waiting room or a foyer – to look at the photos.

This piece has become a love letter to one of these photographs – and it’s for life. See it. You will feel the same.

The photograph at the top was taken by Strathclyde Canoe Club, kayaking in the Falls of Lora, where SeaFreedomKayak is based. It is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence. The second photograph is by Ron Steenvoorden of Islay Weblog who retains the copyright and has given permission for the photograph to be reproduced here. It shows a recreation of a viking longship on passage from Norway to Dublin in Ireland and coming in, en route, to Lagavulin Bay by the ruins of Dunnyvaig Castle.