toby started here in south—east iceland, and went to faroes, and then across to north utsira, south utsiraht, humber. then he went down to this bit here, the yellow bit — so biscay, fitzroy, trafalgar. and so what i was left with was all of this, round ireland and round scotland, down as far as tyne in north—east england. he basically left me with all the wet and windy bits, which would bejust like him — as a challenge. shannon! it's a lovely, rainy, misty, very scottish—looking day. so we've just rounded the island — yoo—hoo! and now we're waiting to cross the shipping lane, because we've heard on the vhs that a big boat is coming through, and we don't want to have to sprint it through there. distant ship horn blows can't do it. ach! expecting a bit of swell as we go around the corner, there? i think more a bit of wind. wind — that's why i think it's best to go anti—clockwise... anti—clockwise, yeah. ..so that we're coming straight into it. into the wind, rather than... oh, yeah. ok, but head up! more into the wind! 0k. i can't turn around, though. ok, that's fine. just relax, relax. 0k.

there are warnings of gales in viking, north utsira, south utsira, forties...hipping forecast in the uk is the world's first storm warning system. ..southeasterly seven to severe gale nine... it covers an area from the south coast of iceland and mid—atlantic in the west, to the danish coast in the east, right down to the north coast of africa. the funny thing about the shipping forecast is that i think so few people understand its actual meaning or relevance, but so many people love it and enjoy listening to it. whilst i was growing up, we had a small boat on the east coast of england. because of that, we'd also grown up listening to the forecast having a real meaning. so i can't remember ever having not listened to the shipping forecast. my clearest memory of this is listening to it when we were in a gale. we're sitting in the cabin of the boat, sort of all kind of huddled in, in the rain. so i've got two days to go. i'm going through all my stuff. it's a bit daunting, cos i've got to get all of this stuff into a kayak, so i'm just trying to go through what i