As he paddled his sea kayak around Scotland’s coast, Nick Ray gave his many social media followers a glimpse of beautiful places up close and from the water’s edge. His photographs and short videos showed spectacular views of west coast sunsets, cascading cliffside waterfalls, dark caves and wildlife – cormorants and seals, dolphins and otters – as the waves lapped calmly against his sea kayak and the breeze whistled by. But when Nick’s year-long round Scotland kayak journey reached its end, dark clouds loomed overhead.
(Image: PA) Eventually his social media and blog updates posts documented a more troubled journey, with scenes from Nick’s bed in a locked psychiatric ward and his open, honest and worrying updates of wrestling with feelings of self-loathing, depression and suicide. “I’d completed this incredible journey around Scotland, and everything was going well for me,” recalls Nick. “I was enjoying being at home, and I was really pleased to have accomplished what I had.
“It was the week after Christmas and the gloom began to deepen. I tried to fight it, but it got deeper and deeper.” Eventually Nick, known to his 110,000 plus followers on X/Twitter as @LifeAfloat, for his passion for the outdoors and his hard-fought battles with depression, no longer felt an urge to go outside.
“I lost my ability to even go kayaking or find any enjoyment in doing things that are good for me,” he says. “I was thinking about suicide. I made a plan.
I realised.