Boris Johnson 'leapt from kayak' and battled in vain to avoid Scottish drowning disaster

Boris Johnson had to leap from a kayak and swim to safety to avoid being washed out to sea and drowning or causing a major rescue operation, he has revealed.

The former Prime Minister has told how he battled in vain to paddle an Argos-bought inflatable kayak back to the shore in the sea off a remote part of north-west Scotland.

Once he realised he was going nowhere fast, he chose to swim instead, Johnson reveals in his new memoir published next month.

Boris was taking time out with his wife Carrie from the stresses of running the country in the height of the Coronavirus pandemic when the couple chose to stay in a small cottage at the remote Kyle of Lochalsh in the Applecross area in mid-August 2020.

He had decided to take the two-person boat into the sea after Carrie decided against it, but found his frame made a solo journey impossible.

The water leads out to the Isle of Skye in the Atlantic Ocean and he soon realised that was where he was heading unless urgent action was taken.

He wrote: "I squinted at the shoreline and heaved harder on the plastic paddle. It was getting on for 5pm. The wind was freshening, the swell starting to rise... and there was no doubt - the land was getting more distant and things were going more wrong by the minute."

Johnson said he chose the location due to "blissful childhood memories - of swimming and kayaking and gathering mussels."

But, in some ways he regretted the choice after being plagued by midges, tracked down by the media and then facing certain death on the open water.

In an extract of the book published today in the Mail on Sunday, he said: "So that is why I now came to be on the open water in an inflatable kayak from Argos: I was trying to get away from the goddamn midges - only to find a more serious problem.

"No matter how hard I gouged that paddle in the brine, I was going in the wrong direction. I was being tugged by wind and wave into the fast-flowing channel between the mainland and the Isle of Skye, and thence to the Atlantic, where the rolling black gulfs of ocean were waiting to wash me down.

"It looked as though our short summer holiday was about to climax in disaster, and though my sinews were now popping with effort there seemed to be nothing I could do.

"This blue plastic Argos inflatable kayak was in theory a two-seater; but after briefly subjecting herself to my nautical expertise, Carrie had decided to sit this one out on shore.

"The result was that I was weighing down the stern, while the bow of this fatal barque had reared up and was taking the wind like a sail - and soon I was scooting in the wrong direction, away from safety, away from the shore, away from the detectives that I had last seen a few minutes ago, stick-like figures waving despondently at my departing form."

"My breath came in rasps as I asked myself what would happen. Would I be able to wrestle the kayak back on course - or would nature prove too strong? The events of the next 20 or 30 minutes were to be an excellent lesson in human folly, and a warning - if only I had spotted it - about the struggle I was to wage that autumn with the ineluctable waves of (the coronavirus) disease.

"As the wind got stronger and pulled me further from shore, I had to choose between two bad options. I could either get swept out to sea and drown, or at least trigger a ludicrous coastguard helicopter rescue; or else I could ship the oar, abandon the kayak and swim for it, while the coast was still just about within swimming distance.

"So that, I am afraid, is what I did.

"I had a lifejacket. The water wasn't too cold.

"It was only about 600 yards from shore, and when I was quite close one of the detectives - a rugged, kite-surfing man called Mick - heroically stripped off and struck out in my general direction, though I wish to stress that at no stage did I need his assistance."

He said the kayak, lent to him by a No10 aide, was lost from view, and must have drifted out to sea.

Boris added: "It is a testament to the amazing discretion of the detectives that the story of my aquatic humiliation never got out. Perhaps I should have stuck it out. Perhaps I could have paddled on for five hours, in the dark, until I made landfall on Skye."

Unleashed by Boris Johnson (William Collins, £30), will be published on October 10.