North adventurers are in with a chance of winning a national award this month in recognition of their remarkable feats.
Nominees at the National Adventure Awards include a group of dedicated rowers from Skye and a devoted Ullapool man who completed a Scottish adventure of epic proportions.
Ullapool man Will Copestake took four months to kayak the 994-mile circumference of Scottish coastline before spending eight months cycling 1,553 miles and climbing 282 Munros.
Skye man Donnie Nicholson is nominated for leading a team of rowers who restored ann old boat and then paddled from St Kilda to Skye.
Also among the nominees are Aberdeen pair Neal Skene, who is completely blind, and Leona Glennie, who has been deaf from birth, after they climbed Kilimanjaro to raise funds for North East Sensory Services.
Aberdeen-based Paralympic silver medalist and adventurer Karen Darke is also on the list. She was injured in a rock climbing accident when she was 21 and was paralysed from the chest down.
Since then she’s crossed the Tien Shen and Karakoram mountains on a hand bike, handcycled the length of the Japanese archipelago, sea kayaked the 1200 mile length of the north American coastline, crossed the Greenland ice cap and skied the Valley Blanche, among other exploits.
And Dr Andrew Murray, of Aberdeen, is shortlisted in no less than five categories in the National Adventure Awards. Last month, Dr Murray and Skye man Donnie Campbell completed a world first by running across the Namib desert from Luderitz to Walvis Bay in Namibia.
David Scott, chairman of the National Adventure Awards, said: “This will be a fantastic evening, a gathering of some of the most amazing people you can imagine. If anyone is under the impression that the age of exploration is dead then this band of adventurers prove them wrong.”
Writer and television presenter Cameron McNeish, chairman of the National Adventure Awards judging panel, said: “I thought I’d lived a fairly adventurous life but as I look through the list of nominees for the National Adventure Awards and wonder at some of the amazing things that young people do nowadays. I feel as though I’ve been merely tickling the surface of adventure.”
The awards dinner will take place in the Central Hotel, Glasgow on Wednesday, March 18.