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 …
Kayaking Archive
Sea Kayak Rack…
Something I’d been meaning to do for far too long was to replace the rather random, untidy mix of trestles and roof-mounted slings with a half-decent wall mounted rack for my sea kayaks. I was always too busy.. work, paddling, riding etc etc but having a month essentially away from my bike on return from the Atlas provided the ideal opportunity for catching up with stuff like that. Still haven’t got around to painting the kitchen …
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 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 …
Darth Kayak rides again…
Dusted off my greenland boat, nicknamed by persons other than myself as Darth Kayak, at the weekend for the first time in ages.. I’ve been paddling it less and less frequently the last couple of years – it’s ultralight construction means it’s not robust enough for the flavour of paddling that friends and I most frequently get up to, and I never really got deeply into the whole greenland rolling scene, but having said that it …
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 spot of Anglesey
Last Sunday I piled into a van with a couple of other friends for the long drive north to Anglesey for a spot of Welsh paddling… the idea being to enjoy the various tidal races that Anglesey is best known for in the paddling world. There are some good races down here in Cornwall but the main feature of Cornish paddling tends to be big Atlantic swells and surf. Anglesey gets much less swell but …
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 …
best laid plans and all that…
Typically just as I was getting some good form on my bike, and enjoying a new surf boat, injury has put a stop to all of it.. I spent last weekend doing my BCU 5-star sea kayak leader training with Roger Chandler of Coastal Spirit and Rich Uren of Paddlecrest Coaching. Despite hurting myself it was a great weekend with perfect conditions for the exercise in question – i.e between 2 & 3 meters of swell, …
a bit of a round-up…
Before I start rambling off about the usual stuff I think I’d better say a word or two about a Boatbuilder’s Story for all those patient readers who have been waiting for so long. It’s really close now… it has taken a long time, fitting it in around everything else but in a way that’s been a good thing has it has become a true Mitchell family effort.. Gary has finished writing the new chapter …
some mid-winter sun afloat.
as promised.. a couple of snaps to illustrate a day on the water that ‘wrapped around’ the instance of finding that little model sailing boat in my last post. The weather at the moment seems to be very much ‘all or nothing’.. from gale-force winds and heavy seas to no wind at all and a mirror calm.. and today back to gale force winds. So yesterday was a very quiet day on the sea, almost …
winter paddling, again
Yesterday paddled out of Pendower beach (+50° 12′ 19.70″, -4° 56′ 48.20″, going to start including some lat/longs as some folk apparently are interested in looking at the map/google earth…) heading east towards Dodman Point. Some satisfyingly bouncy conditions and a decent surf to play in at Porthluney/Caerhays (+50° 14′ 7.55″, -4° 50′ 32.78″) under passing rain showers followed by a gloriously sunny winter afternoon paddling home. I don’t have a waterproof camera at the …
a low winter sun
Having felt utterly uninspired to write anything at all for weeks.. the usual post-trip blues I suppose combined with a heap of work amongst other things I figured I might try and snap out of it by sharing a couple of things of a sea kayaking flavour… Firstly, a brilliant day out east of here with friends yesterday… a perfect winters day with clear skies and a chilly breeze from the north. Very little swell …
a quiet ocean
I’ve been feeling utterly uninspired to write this past few weeks.. something to do with the prolonged spell of proper summer weather so when not busy working just spending all my time on the bike, in the surf (when there is some…) or in the kayak. No real words today, just a few pics from a day on which the Atlantic ocean was exceptionally quiet.. potentially rather dull for someone that likes playing in the …