This past weekend was the West Cornwall Sea Kayak meet.. an informal gathering of sea kayakers from all over the country. It was excellent. Something like 80 paddlers from far flung corners of the UK showed up which was especially brilliant as we are out on a bit of a limb down here in darkest Cornwall so it does take a bit of effort to make the journey.. the reward however is some really world-class sea …
Cornwall Archive
The Manacles
The name is derived from the Cornish words Maen Eglos, meaning Church Rocks… possibly a reference to the spire of St. Keverne church which is visible from the reef, it is quite likely however that it is an allusion to the numerous gravestones of drowned sailors and their would-be rescuers that can be found in local churchyards… Centuries of shipwrecks, over a hundred, on this notorious reef are responsible for more than 1000 deaths. The wreck of the Mohegan …
A perfect mid-winter day
There was quite a thick layer of frost on the sand as I carried my kayak down the beach yesterday morning but with just a light northerly and not a cloud in the sky the sun soon sorted that out as it rose from behind the hills. It turned out to be a simply perfect mid-winter day. Incidentally the name of the peninsula ‘Lizard’ is nothing to do with reptiles. It is instead a derivation …
To the west
Some really great skies here yesterday as squalls swept across the bay on a chilly north-westerly gale.
Not entirely disagreeable..
Well… the hoped for, and originally forecast, squally showers and fresh winds that would have made for some interesting conditions failed to materialise.. at least until much later in the day.. but what happened instead wasn’t entirely disagreeable, although significantly less interesting. Mustn’t grumble though eh, January so rarely looks like this ;-)
Chilly off the end..
Perfect conditions, albeit chilly, off Lands End yesterday for some sea kayak flavoured fun :-)
Solstice sea kayaking
I don’t always take my camera with me paddling, as has been the case on recent paddling trips if the light looks flat and uninteresting I generally can’t be bothered. Other times, usually when the weather is bad, there is a great promise of interesting stuff happening.. so I do bother… but it doesn’t always work out, today being a case in point.. with the wind rising rapidly to 30 knots, some decent sized piles …
An hour to spare..
In general when I’m at home I’m not particularly inspired with regard to street photography… rural Cornwall isn’t a particularly ‘street’ sort of a place as far as a density of interesting stuff going on, and I think because it is home I’m just not as interested as when I’m on the road. I do try and remember to have a camera handy sometimes when not riding or paddling for example.. and especially at this time …
A Boatbuilder’s Story… it’s here!
To everyone patiently waiting for this moment.. thank you! It’s been a lot of work for all of us to fit in around everything else going on, and it has been a true family effort with lots of support from friends with things like proof-reading so a huge thank you, and especially to my sister, Sally Mitchell, who has done a wonderful job with the page layouts, cover design and a bunch of other things. …
Epic Skies Afloat
I really hammered myself riding in Morocco, promptly picked up a cold on my return and have been feeling rather run down ever since, it always takes time to recover from a particularly hard expedition/ride so paddling with a couple of friends today was deliberately limited to around 16km in easy conditions by way of starting to get some paddling condition back into my upper body without inhibiting my recovery. It turned out to be a proper …
A Boatbuilder’s Story – proof
Today was a good day… I got to see the bound proof of A Boatbuilders Story, it looked fantastic – printed on a heavyweight silk finish paper it’s a slightly larger format than the original. My sister, Sally Mitchell, has done a fantastic job with all the text and layouts and I was very happy to see how well all the old photographs have reproduced. The new section written by Gary has added a great …
a late summer weekend
Now that racing has finished for me for the season making the most of what is left of summer to catch up on some paddling. We weren’t able to get on the water until after lunch on Saturday so stayed local with a quick 17 mile dash west in idyllic conditions to pitch up for the night on Gwenvor followed by a similar distance again Sunday morning albeit into the teeth of a stiff north-easterly.
A New Beach
Last winter destruction was visited upon the coast of Cornwall by a series of storms of rare ferocity. The cockpit of a sea kayak is a perfect vantage point from which to appreciate the legacy of those storms.. whole sections of cliff tumbled into the ocean leaving fresh scars and giant boulders with jagged edges to be smoothed by decades of wave action. Even the apparently super-hard granite of the far west was not immune – calving enormous slabs into the …
A very rare day indeed
It is a very rare day indeed when the ocean has not a ripple on the western side of the Lizard Peninsula. Fully exposed to the Atlantic there is usually at least some swell to play with as it surges around and through the various rocks and gullies that characterise this bit of coast. But not today. Not a ripple. While it does not make for particularly exciting paddling it is still a fantastic place …
A joint training exercise with the Penlee Lifeboat
The sea kayak community down here in the far west of Cornwall, and in particular my friends from Coastal Adventure Training, have some close ties with the local RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution). Last night we all got together for a joint training exercise as with the growth in sea kayaking as a sport the Penlee lifeboat crews were keen to gain some specific experience with incidents of a specifically sea-kayaking flavour – for example how to …