Great Glen Paddle Challenge 2025

Two days on the Caledonian Canal. A big inflatable board. A third-place medal we didn’t see coming.

Signed up before I knew it

Kim and Megan signed me up before I had time to think about it. The Great Glen Paddle Challenge — 92 km down the Caledonian Canal across three lochs and a handful of locks, in two long days. Hard boards racing for the line up front, inflatables further back. 2025 was the inaugural year for the new Team class, and Kim and I went in on a big inflatable SUP — because what’s a Scottish race without doing it together. The kilt came too, because of course it did.

Portage with Alison and Alistair helping — Portage between lochs — friends help, strangers help. Alison and Alistair gave us a hand with bags (boards stay with the racers — them’s the rules).

On the water

Some canal stretches feel like glass. Some don’t. The locks pause everyone — boards out, short walk, slide back in. Half the field becomes friends by the end of day one.

Loch Lochy decided to give us weather.

Loch Lochy throws weather at us mid-paddle.

Checkpoint arrival with Emma and Alistair waiting — Pulling into a checkpoint — Emma and Alistair already on the pontoon.

Morning of day two

Day one ended at Fort Augustus, and on day two the whole field reversed direction — Emma and Duncan’s call to start everyone from Inverness and paddle back south. New legs, different sky, a busy startline. The morning began with the traditional toast — Great Glen Distillery Gin for those who’d brave it, Irn Bru for the rest.

Shaka pose at Inverness start day 2 — Shaka pose at the Inverness start.

Day-two startline — a few dozen paddlers heading out together.

Fifteen metres from the line

Kim made the whole sixty miles. About fifteen metres before the finish line, with the cheering already in her ears, she sat — straight down, fully wooden, the way people sit when their legs have decided they’re finished. I thought she’d taken a stroke. Half the watching field gasped. She’d just run out of standing-up.

She didn’t get back up. From half-lying on the deck she paddled herself across the line with her hands, then laid flat and stayed there a while. It was, in the end, very funny.

Kim’s famous finish — fifteen metres of “no thanks” from her legs, then a hand-paddled glide across the line from the deck.

Kim across the line, lying on the paddleboard — Across the line — and a horizontal break earned in full.

Third place

Same medal as everyone else’s third place — and the look on Kim’s face when they put it round her neck is the only finish line I really cared about.

Alison J Renie hugs Kim after the finish — Alison hugging Kim after the line.

Kim on the pontoon with Richard and Emma — Alison hugging Kim after the line.

Kim and David in the Nessie frame at the after-party — #ikickednessiesbutt — afterwards, with Kim, in the frame they hand round at the party.

The Great Glen will be back next year. We probably will be too.

More events through the year — group paddles, hill days, seasonal trips. Follow @kiltedpaddler on TikTok or @legendaryadventuresscotland on Instagram to hear about the next one first.