An adventurer who plans to break the record for living on Rockall, an isolated islet roughly 230 miles west of the Outer Hebrides, has sent home a shopping list for extra supplies – including a kilogram of fast-setting cement and a radio.
Cam Cameron, a Scottish teacher and former soldier, has been occupying a tiny guano-flecked ledge on Rockall since 30 May in the hope he can survive there for up to 60 days.
For the past 11 days, Cameron, 53, from Wiltshire, has been there on his own after two companions, radio operators who took part in the first week of the expedition to help him raise money for military charities, returned to the mainland.
Cameron said his greatest frustration was forgetting to pack a shortwave radio so he could talk to his friends and family; his satellite-enabled laptop has been erratic, making it far harder than he expected to communicate with home.
He could also pick up music and the weather forecast – Rockall is famously one of the Met Office’s maritime forecast zones. It is exposed to huge winter storms, with waves powerful enough to make the 17.5-metre-high rock vibrate on impact.
He has been relying on sporadic calls via WhatsApp and text messages, so has asked Harry Brayford, his friend on the mainland helping to coordinate the mission, to see whether any ships or mariners planning to be in the area can help.
There were “many things I now wish I had packed but thought better of it”, Cameron said via text message. “Radio is the biggest regret. I do have one but I was so preoccupied with logistics and transport and funding and weather that I forgot about what I personally needed for the trip. For my own comfort and sanity.”
His only company on Hall’s Ledge, which measures 4 metres by 1.5 metres, are the cacophonous seabirds that inhabit Rockall; their guano and nests “stink”, he said. Their presence also raises the risk of contracting bird flu, he has been warned.
“It is an amazing place. It’s just literally a dream come true,” he added. “The weather over the last few days has been damp, foggy and with some wind. It’s not been the blazing hot sunshine we got for the first few days.”
Cameron has had two visits so far: on 4 June the Scottish marine protection vessel Hirta came by. They “dropped me off a lovely Red Cross parcel”, he said. “So nice to see them. Also SY Boomerang with her skipper Eddie stopped off on 7 June but no one since.”
The Rockall expedition has become famous among sailors and ham radio enthusiasts after Cameron’s companions, Adrian “Nobby” Styles and Emil Bertsmann, broadcast to 7,300 hams worldwide while they were on the rock.
Brayford said he was putting the word out. “The shopping list he sent me is quite extensive. Amazon doesn’t deliver out there,” Brayford said. As well as fresh toiletries, “he wants a hammer, a chisel and a kilo of cement. There’s no Screwfix on Rockall”.
One of Cameron’s projects on Rockall, which was annexed by the Royal Navy in 1955 to the anger of the Irish, Danish and Icelandic governments, is to repair and affix signs that mark his and previous occupations, including one given to him by Nick Hancock, whose 45-day occupation record Cameron is hoping to beat. Hence the appeal for extra materials.
Alongside his daily diary for a book he plans to write about the expedition, Cameron is writing poetry. He recorded his first effort, called the Rock of Salvation and dedicated to his temporary home, in the style and voice of his country music hero Johnny Cash, with a chorus of seabirds audible in the background.
One verse reads:
It’s so far out of god damn anywhere it ain’t even on the chart
And if you want to get there soon, you better make a start
It don’t even have a zip code, so don’t bother sending mail
There’s no school or store or hospital, in case you’re feeling frail.
There’s no church to pray to god, no place to play guitar
And the thing that strikes most folks as odd
Is this place ain’t got no bar
But the damndest thing about it all is folks dream of landing here
And the risk of dying from a fall, to conquer all their fear
