Thursday last week, along with a few good friends from the Penzance Canoe Club (a happy club sea paddlers get together sort of a thing) I hopped onto the overnight ferry from Plymouth to Roscoff for a few days sea kayaking of a Breton flavour. The idea being to paddle out of the port, find a good spot to camp and enjoy a few days exploring the local coastline. With high winds in the forecast …
Kayaking Archive
Summer.. at last!
a fabulously sunny, self-indulgent weekend consisting of lots of miles on my bike Saturday and a terrific day on the water today. Launched out of Sennen for a trip around ‘the end’ with friends. Just enough swell coming in from the Atlantic to make it fun, and admittedly jangle the nerves a little at times negotiating some very tight spots in and around the cliffs below Lands End (there’s a joke in there about ‘cracks’ …
a bit more sea kayaking of a Lizard flavour
it’s a beautiful day and the surf is pumping but I have a sore throat and a cough.. if it was summer I’d ignore it and go in anyway but it’s only a couple of degs C outside as I write so prudence dictates I leave the waves to my friends today and catch up with kayak repairs and so on instead.. I should probably get some work done too… I figured I’d post a …
Thursday, Lizard o’clock..
Met up with a couple of friends for a paddle out of Kennack Sands, approaching Lizard Point from the eastern side for a change, and continuing on round to Kynance Cove, very much a favoured lunch stop, for, err.. lunch before heading back… It was a fabulous early winter day on the water.. mellow with a bit of sun, some dramatic skies, enough wave action for some fun and very quiet. Perfect.
Carbonology catch-up
It dawned on me just recently that so far this year I hadn’t mentioned any proper ‘carbonology’ at all.. I was reminded because another big roll of the shiny expensive black stuff was delivered last week ready for an autumn of moulding.. I have no surf kayak fins left in stock which is a situation to be sorted soonest I think, and I’m making myself another carbon Greenland paddle.. not because there is anything wrong …
more Lands End sea kayak
Yesterday I joined a couple of friends, Mark, visiting from Dorset, and regular paddling buddy Sam, for a day out padding the seas around Lands End.. again.. but it never gets boring there. This time conditions were a perfect balance of light winds but with some wave action to make rock-hopping and ‘caving’ fun, some swells to surf and big spring tides so the tidal races off Gwennap Head and the Longships reefs were going …
Cornish Sea Kayak Rally..
This past weekend was the annual SeaCornwall Cornish Sea kayak Rally, a weekend of camping and sea kayaking in west Cornwall. I went along Saturday and Monday, partly to enhance further the ratio of leaders to attendees but also to enjoy some good social paddling. I couldn’t make it on the Sunday as I was guiding a group for Cornish Cliffhanger. As it happened Sunday was blessed with the best weather of the whole three days, …
Scilly paddling..
Here we are…further to my last post I’m back from guiding for/with Sea Kayaking Cornwall in the Isles of Scilly , a tailor-made sea kayaking destination if ever there was one. I lucked out with a terrific group which made the week so much more fun… including a bureau chief for Janes Defence (we had lots to talk about given my background..), a Doctor of Geology and even a certain Steve Backshall.. which just goes …
Bag Lady..
.. not what you might expect, and you’d be unlikely to find one as shapely as this.. the lady in question being a sea kayak, more specifically an NDK Romany called Rosie, named as such by her owner who has left her in my care… I tend not to name kayaks but thinking about it a sea kayak is probably not a bloke.. whoever heard of a kayak called “Dave” for example.. which no doubt …
back on the water..
back on the water after an enforced layoff of 5 weeks… I felt very out of tune with my boat and I’m still not fully recovered but it was so good to be afloat again. Some pictures follow from the last couple of days. Very little swell running but with the perigee moon we have at the moment the tides were flowing very strongly around Lands End and out around the brooding Longships Reef.. so …
hiker envy…
The summers in eastern Canada and the north-east US are hot and buggy. These places were my weekend playgrounds for the years I lived in Montréal. Winter-time one could travel by snowshoe, ski and crampon without suffering the attention of hordes of miniature bloodsucking monsters, not to mention being mindful of bears and so on. In the summer months however by far the most relaxed way to travel for multi-day wilderness journeys was by Canadian …
winter ocean
While the rest of the nation apparently froze it’s collective nuts off yesterday, west Cornwall was, at +4C merely a bit nippy. With light winds and just a lazy groundswell running paddling conditions out along the west coast of the Lizard between Poldhu and Kynance were particularly mellow… although later in the day the tide, in spots, was running at between 2 and 3 knots and kicking up some impressive overfalls, adding a frisson of …
North Cornwall Caves…
so, having determined that Bob is an appropriate name for my kayak (see previous post..) I met up with Ben in North Cornwall for another terrific day of paddling. Ben is the same Ben I guided with in the Hebrides and he’s a big chap… too big in fact for Rosie, being an uncomfortably tight fit… <ahem> He doesn’t have his own boat down here so Rosie was left languishing in the shed with one …
a quick kayaking the Lizard post
while I’m at it… <like Cornish buses these posts…> a few pictures from a fun day of sea kayaking with a couple friends on Tuesday. These are not my pictures, they were taken by another kayaking friend, Taran (more great pics and goings on over at his blog here). Conditions were quite lively so we enjoyed some spirited rock hopping under the brooding cliffs of the Lizard before returning to Poldu Cove for a couple of …
final few island images…
I’m leaving these islands on Sunday morning… feeling a little sad, I feel very at home here. However all being well I’ll be back next summer for another season of kayaking and in the meantime I have a whole winter of ‘stuff’ to look forward to back in Cornwall. I have no travel plans as such for a change – just riding and paddling at home.. & I could do with earning some proper wedge …