Take a look at this site to see my mini adventure for this year. I’m attempting to kayak around Cyprus with my friend Naomi in May….
http://roundcyprus2016blog.wordpress.com
We’ll be hoping to update this blog in the same way as I did with this one and once I remember how to embed a map onto the page, You’ll be able to track our progress too.
This is long overdue, but I’ve finally decided I should write down some post-paddle thoughts. I’ll try not to waffle too much.
Firstly, there is no way on earth I can begin to express in words the gratitude I owe to such a large number of people. To everybody who went out of their way to donate to our page, send us messages of support, bring us cups of tea, offer us hot meals, welcome us into their homes or RNLI stations, cheer us on or who simply smiled and said hello as we landed, exhausted after a long slog paddling into the wind…Thank you. Your acts of kindness made this trip so enjoyable and ultimately successful. Mike and the team at Rockpool…there is no way I would ever have left Swanpool beach without the fabulous Taran 16 you made. Thank you. I was excited about meeting people on this journey, but there is no way I could have predicted the generosity Lee and I experienced from numerous people on the trip.
Before I left, I wrote a blog post thanking some of the people who had helped get us and our boats to the start line. Now that we’re back, I can’t begin to thank everybody, so I just have to hope that I thanked people sincerely at the time, and that they know how much their kindness helped get us back to Swanpool beach. I’d like to think that we were willed on by the generosity we experienced around the coastline of Britain, and that one day we may pass it on to future adventurers we meet.
Secondly, I have to say thank you to Mum and Dad for putting up with the worry of me being out at sea, sometimes without contact and often in bad weather. I’m not sure when I’ll be forgiven for not phoning when we landed on the Isle of Man. It became a bit of a running joke, but thank you to Mum for sorting us out with some of the best coastal accommodation in Britain. Somehow she managed to phone up campsites in remote areas of Scotland, Wales and Norfolk, occasionally just 15 minutes before we landed and we would almost always strike lucky.
Thirdly, I could never have predicted the fun we would have with other adventurers who we were fortunate enough to journey with. Nick Ray, still paddling around Scotland…keep it up! Then Nick and Duncan with whom we formed our little team of four around the roof of Scotland. Well done on your epic trip, and thank you for all the shared memories. I would never have believed we would paddle round Cape Wrath with two new expedition buddies who were strangers only days before. It is incredible how we can work and laugh together when we share a common purpose.
Nick and Duncan
I’ll try to be honest about post-exped. life and adapting to reality back on dry land. For a few days I loved it. Small things like toilets and hairbrushes were luxuries, it was great to catch up with family and friends and not being at the mercy of the wind and tide was something of a relief. Yet, somehow I couldn’t focus and I missed waking up with a clear purpose each day. Only a few days ago, I was preoccupied by four things; the wind, tide, tent and food. Now, it felt like this had been taken away from me and I was flailing around lacking any direction. Despite this, I enjoyed readjusting to ‘old’ life and saw it as a challenge.
Hairbrush excitement 🙂
The first thing to strike me was how quiet it was inside. Not hearing the wind or sea outside the tent when going to sleep was slightly disconcerting and I couldn’t get used to not waking up next to my Taran. My eyes and nose streamed for the first week inside and I would wake up sneezing. As unbelievable as it may seem, it felt like I was allergic to being inside.
Yet I feel like this post-journey grump is all part of the process and that it will teach me how to crawl back into society. I’ve somehow managed to get a full time job starting in a few weeks and have rediscovered a love of sea swimming which should keep me entertained while my hands hopefully stop swelling up. I’ve bimbled around on the sea in Taran a few times, but not been out in anything significant yet. I’ll get around to that soon enough though.
Last, but by no means least, I should probably thank Lee. I don’t know where to start, but I’m not sure I’d have got back to Falmouth without him. It certainly wouldn’t have been as enjoyable. Lee, I’ll maybe even forgive you calling me ‘bumder’ for 4 months solid. Cheers buddy. Oh, and Lee… guess what?
For now, I’m not going to lie. I think I’ll miss this a little bit….
After our first crossing, S. Wales
Our last day had finally arrived! We soon realised it wasn’t going to come easy though. The British weather wasn’t about to let us finish without a bit of a fight. The wind was pretty noisy and the tent was flapping away. We got up and managed by some miracle to be on the water by 6.45am. We were desperate to get back, but the headwind was pretty annoying. After failing to prepare any food, we resolved to have a quick pit stop, but I’d forgotten how far any landings in Fowey were up the river.
We landed quickly at the entrance to Fowey and before long we headed back into a now stronger headwind, past Gribbin head and across Mevagissey bay past a myriad of small fishing boats being chucked around by the wind and swell. This was the toughest bit, but once we had rounded Dodman point at slack water, the wind died and the tide was finally with us. We managed to make much better progress and the realisation that we were about to finish hit me. I couldn’t believe Gull rock was just THERE… right in front of me as I rounded Dodman point! Then all of a sudden Portscatho appeared. From here on in it actually took a while for St Anthony lighthouse (Fraggle rock) to appear, but as I came round the corner I had a lovely surprise as 3 of the friends from Fal cc who had started the trip with us had paddled out again. Lee blasted back quickly to land first while I chatted to Sarah, Mike and Julian and thought I’d keep with tradition by being the straggler at the back, landing a few minutes behind Lee.
I was so surprised how many people had turned out, it was really lovely. It was so great that even though a lot of my friends have now moved away from Cornwall, their parents or families had come down to see us land. It was really appreciated, so thank you!
From about the 2nd day of the trip, Lee had said to me that he was going to spray me in cheap fizz when we finished. I was worried about wasting good alcohol, but Lee assured me it was fine so we made right arses out of ourselves. When I did get round to finally drinking some, the combination of being dehydrated and exhausted meant that it went straight to my head. Anyway. .It was a lovely end to a fantastic adventure.
We knew this was the last day we would have to paddle and set up camp at the end, but there were still a lot of miles to go before we got to Looe. We packed down our rather cheeky tent pitch and got on in glorious sunshine by 8.15 am. We made our way out of the estuary and along the coast towards Plymouth. From this far out, it was actually a really pretty paddle.
We stopped for a lunch break on a little island which we decided was ours in Plymouth sound. It was bliss. I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly sociable person, but on this trip I’ve discovered a certain disdain for crowds or groups of people. Since the Hebrides, where we pretty much had beaches to ourselves every night, my heart sinks when I see hoardes of people on the beach where we’re about to land!
After Plymouth, we still had a fairly long way to go, and after an unexpected siesta, we found ourselves paddling into the sinking sun past pretty coastal villages towards the distinctive harbour light at Looe.
The slipway here was used by the lifeboat, but the shore crew assured us they were already out on a shout so we were safe to land. They were looking for a missing man, but the search was fruitless. Let’s hope he was in the pub.
We pitched the tent right by the slipway and the lovely crew let us have a quick shower!
We could taste Falmouth now and we knew we just had to pull hard for a few days to get home. Finally the weather had calmed down and we were ready to put in some long days. As we packed up the soggy tent in Lyme Regis, I began to realise I might miss this. Even in the damp weather, I had a purpose each day and it kept me moving forwards.
We climbed onto the water and began the paddle across the bay. We were moving slower than we hoped, the wind and tide were still pushing us but the weather brightened up and we spotted so many barrel jellyfish.
We arrived at Hope’s nose just at the turn of the tide and this made it easy to move past both headlands. Berry head only had a tiny bit of swell, and behind here there were some pretty cliffs. It began to look more like home. After a brief stop where a lovely kayak group handed their campfire and some marshmallows to us, we set off for the final stint around start point and into Salcombe. There was a tide race here but nothing compared to some of the stuff we’d seen!
I remember the last section of today being really slow. We could see Salcombe once we rounded the last headland, but it seemed to just get further away as I paddled. Once we landed and saw the distance we’d done was about 36NM today. It made a bit more sense.
A lovely family on holiday offered us the use of their hotel shower, and I must have looked exhausted as one of the chaps ran me a bath. Absolute luxury. Thankyou. We chatted to their children afterwards and I felt very honoured as one of them asked for our autographs. All a bit embarrassing.
Very slow progress, but we really had to claw some miles out today. A blustery start saw us dodging some waves out of the harbour as Virginia waved us off. We tucked in to the coast, but this made little difference and we arrived at Lyme Regis where we had a lovely chat and cup of tea with the lifeboat station man.
Jason, the relative of a good friend of mine was an absolute hero and let us store the boats in the gig club shed. He also very kindly took us back to his house where Liz, his wife made us the most amazing dinners and they very kindly let us wait until the weather was kinder. Thankyou so much!
Finally, we had good enough weather and had moved far enough to get around Portland Bill. We crept along the coast to start with for a few miles and then headed directly for the Bill. Despite a bit of a headwind, we ploughed on and before long could see the strangely large prison and army buildings on Portland. It seemed such a contrast from the pretty surroundings and large cliffs, but hey, I guess it makes it hard to escape. With Portland now in our grasp, we made a dash for the tip before having a quick break just before the lighthouse. It was was a gorgeous area and plenty of tourists were enjoying the sun.
Once we jumped back on, the tide was definitely with us and we had a fantastic tail wind with swell. This is my favourite type of paddling in a Taran, downwind with the tide. We were flying! The next few hours along Chesil beach went quickly, but we still had a fair way to go to reach our target. For the last few days I’d been paddling cagless which was a great feeling, but at the end of today for the last 2 hours, I began to get awful chafing under my arms. Not particularly good, but Lee came to the rescue with an emergency Mars bar that managed to get us in the fading light to West bay, where there was a festival happening. How did they know we were arriving?!
Today was a little frustrating as we were hoping to maybe get around Portland Bill, but the wind definitely seemed to be stronger than forecast and hampering our progress. We woke up literally 3 metres from the sea so got a good early start at 7.30 but had to make a stop for some food after about 1.5 hours as we were running low.
The first section across the bay saw us passing a fair few stand-up paddle boarders and we got to paddle past Poole/ Bournemouth, admiring their sandy beaches and the strange hot air balloon on a wire! We approached a small tide race section around Anvil point near Swanage and the beautiful chalky cliffs soon revealed themselves. Old Harry Rock was a stunning paddle along stacks and arches which gave us a great incentive despite an annoying headwind. Plenty of sailing boats were out enjoying the wind and some jet skiers also disturbed the peace and quiet as they zoomed around.
After passing Dancing Ledge in Purbeck and admiring the many sea cliff climbers dotted along the cliffs, we had a quick break at 6.30pm to eat our dinner at Chapman’s pool before ploughing on as far as we could in the wind.
An outdoor theatre production was well underway when we landed at Kimmeridge, which looked great fun and we met some friendly kayakers who brought us some of their cake down after the performance. Thankyou! A visit from a warden got us worried that we were in trouble, but he kindly gave us permission to camp and let us know about the fishermen camping out around the corner.
Today was a glorious sunny day and one of the most memorable because of the fantastic scenery. I didn’t expect the Solent to be so pretty, but it was really beautiful and the sunny, calm weather made it a great day for eating up miles. The huge number of sailing boats on the water kept us on our toes, sometimes turning into a game of chicken. To start off, we paddled a tiny bit along the coast past Hayling island, where Lee finally admitted that a drysuit was overkill and opted for t-shirt and shorts! After a brief faff we carried on and radioed in to cross the main shipping channel between the impressive forts built in the middle of the sea. We made a blast for it, paddling as fast as we could to avoid being mowed down by large ships and once on the other side, we started to feel the effect of the impressive tide. For the next section we sped along; dodging ferries and trying to avoid angering sailing boats. We calculated we moved at about 6 knots for the whole time in the Solent, which was fantastic news. We briefly stoppped near Cowes for some lunch, and after being shooed away from some posh Royal yacht club which definitely did not want smelly kayakers runing their view, we found a more suitable public slipway.
Having timed the tides perfectly, we were whishked through the West solent, and began to see the impressive needles, some stacks off the end of the Isle of Wight. We navigated a small tide race near the end of the Solent and admired some more military forts on the mainland before turning the corner and having a quick break on a shingly beach. We wanted to continue the theme of eating up miles, so jumped back on and landed just near Christchurch, where we slept soundly listening to the sound of the sea just by our tent.
Paddling adventures 