South West Sea Kayaking

Hope Cove was pleasant yesterday, indeed it is a very nice place in general. Ten years ago however, I spent a night there that wasn’t much fun. I subsequently wrote about it …

I’ve been paddling alone along the south coast for nine days. I’m getting careless and I’m getting lazy. Why careless? Because poor planning has just given me a generally hair-raising day. A little pre-thought and common sense might have helped me to avoid finding myself utterly exhausted in a chunky swell, with miles of grim cliffs between me and my intended destination. But Hell, when has hindsight ever been any use? Why lazy? Because after surviving everything the South Devon coast can throw at me, there is no way I’m going to waste my valuable energy and motivation on something as minor as putting a tent up.

I see it while I’m dragging my over-laden sea kayak (I carried umpteen tins of beans for 400 miles and never opened one) up the beach. A ‘mouse-hole’ opening in the cliffs rimming the cove, above the high water mark with a flat sandy floor. Perfect, no fiddling around with wonky tent pegs tonight.

Whilst I cook up a nutritious dinner of dehydrated ‘Beanfeast’ Mexican Chilli, various people wander over and chat to me about my trip. They ask the usual tourist canoeist questions about how far I’ve come, is it safe and can you do that thing where you go over and come up again? The last visitor is particularly impressed by my apparent affinity with outdoor living. Not wishing to shatter this image, I manage to keep pretending that the alleged ‘Chilli’ is edible until he is a safe distance away. My word, that was foul. I throw the rest behind a rock for the seagulls (seems they really will eat anything) and dash up to the pub for a curry.

After dark, I make the usual call home (”no honestly love, this trip isn’t just about enjoyment. I’m touring the South West’s beaches to discover myself…”). Leaving the phone-box, I see that the pub has emptied out onto the street. Everyone is admiring a spectacular free light-show which is performing across the horizon. Lightning is doing some fairly elaborate things, at least enough to muster the odd ‘ooo’ and ‘ahh’ from the crowd. Clearly some interesting weather is heading our way. What do I care? I have a nice sheltered cave to doze in.

Inflating my sleeping mat, a noxious whiff hits me. Déjà vu, I know that smell. If only I’d packed the washing up liquid separately. I barely need to rig my tiddly gas lamp up, the cave is almost constantly lit by the lightning. What a night! The rain arrives now; it persists it down with a vengeance. I sit up in my sleeping bag reading, wondering how long it’ll be before this deluge moves on. Suddenly I’m soaking wet, where in Hell is it coming from? I leap out of my bag and run to the very back of the cave. Water is hissing into the cave through a thousand cracks in the roof. At least there is a sheltered spot along the back of the cave. The thing is, it’s rather less comfortable there. I’m lying on heaps of rocks, rotting seaweed and lager cans. It could be worse, I suppose…I turn out the light and try to get some sleep.

I wake up with a start. Something is crawling over my leg! Swearing, I fumble for my head-torch and unzip my bag. The inside seems to be moving. Moving the light nearer, I see hundreds of shrimp-like bugs slithering around. This is not good. I try sweeping them out, but it’s like trying to plait fog. Come on, I’ve been through worse than this. I’ve slept in inches of water in the Tatra Alps, I’ve slept on a slalom kayak in Leeds city centre, I’ve even slept through Andy Pitcher’s snoring. All the same, I contemplate escape. I could make a dash through the rain to my kayak, grab the tent…

A loud crash stops me in my steps. What on earth was that? It takes a while before I gather what is happening. The rain has waterlogged the cliffs, and now they are beginning to crumble. This is very bad indeed. It seems possible to get out of the cave without being hit by falling rocks and rubble, but I know for a fact that I used up my weekly luck allowance during the day’s paddling. I’m stuck here for the night, with the rain, lightning, rotting seaweed, falling rocks and of course the slimy bugs. To add to this, my stomach is playing leapfrog…seems the ‘Barf-feast’ isn’t done with me yet.

Stuck in my self-inflicted cell, I try counting sheep. I mentally paddle the entire length of Chesil Beach, in fog, once more. I recall ‘Canoeist’ magazine editorials on the minutiae of British Canoe Union policy, I even dig a copy of the BCU ‘Coaching Directive’ newsletter out of a dry bag and try to read it. No joy. It’s going to be a very long night.

According to both Pesda Press and Amazon, the book is now officially going to happen.

Oops, I’d better finish writing it …

I’m writing a guidebook, and I really do hope that it will be of interest and value to paddlers.

That said, no paddlers using the guidebook will see what we have seen, experience what we have experienced, learn what we have learned, or feel what we have felt.

Sea paddling isn’t like that.

My wife Heather is a scientist, with a degree in Ecology. Last month, at an undisclosed location in South Cornwall, she managed to achieve a continuous two-way conversation with a grey seal, lasting a full five minutes in duration. The conversation consisted purely of raspberries and farting noises.

Sea Kayaking Guidebook Writing Top Tip #34 - Have a PhD Geologist to hand, at all times.

Because sea kayaking is still (just about) a small sport, real pleasure can be had from introducing others to it, showing them your favourite coast, and suchlike. It’s a bit like letting friends in on a big secret. I’ve been conducting an ongoing long-term indoctrination campaign to win hardened Thames Valley white water playboaters over to sea paddling, and the latest success was Alice, who visited us this weekend.

Getting Alice sea kayaking was problematic, as she is very small. So small in fact, that almost no WW kayaks fit her, and they tend to be a lot smaller than sea kayaks. Luckily, we happen to have the loan of a miniature sea kayak right now (Valley Avocet LV) and this proved to be perfectly scaled.

Alice took to sea paddling right away, all good. We did however have a minor mishap today, when the wake of a large Condor ferry broke over us at Old Harry Rocks, without warning. Thankfully, it turned out that Alice can roll a sea kayak as well as a WW boat …

Alice just got engaged. Splendid.

My favourite trip is the one just outside my front door here on the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset; Kimmeridge to Swanage. Normally I paddle it numerous times each year. I haven’t actually completed it so far in 2007, so it was great to get out on it yesterday with a group of friends. All the rocks are still where I left them.

As a boy, John Betjeman holidayed with his family each year beside the River Camel estuary.

Here Petroc landed, here I stand today
The same Atlantic surges roll for me

North Coast Recollections, John Betjeman

It’s generally agreed that I’m lousy at coaching (not a single qualification to my name, to my shame) but unusually I found myself running through a few things with a group at the weekend.

At the location pictured above, I was trying to explain how to use tide races . However I’d chosen a duff spot, where my fellow paddlers were being blown around all over the place. Furthermore, I began to suspect that they were all quite competent and all knew precisely what to do already, but were politely humouring the prat with the Napoleon complex.

Anyway, in due course it occurred to me that no one at all was paying me the slightest bit of attention, gazing glassy-eyed over my shoulder. What could possibly be more interesting than me, I wondered? I peered around, and the answer was …

… two dolphins, jumping out of the water nearby and reflecting the sunshine in blinding flashes.

Fair enough.

The Ocean Sunfish appears to have been designed by committee … it has all the appropriate fishy appendages, but they are stuck on in the wrong places, pointing in the wrong direction, with some extra leftover bits to spare. The result is an assymetric creature that doesn’t appear to have a top or a bottom, let alone a right way up.

The committee also forgot to assign a purpose to the Sunfish. They float around off the coast of Cornwall, lying on the surface at odd angles and slapping their longest fin lamely against the water. Seagulls peck at them, but they don’t seem to mind.

We spent a very pleasant and sociable weekend at the first North Devon Sea Kayak Meet, many thanks to Rob Mc for organising it. Met nice people, soaked up sunshine, enjoyed glorious scenery, ate burgers, watched dolphins jumping about. Splendid.

Off to north Devon this weekend, to attend the NDSKM. Could be fun.

The small memorial garden shown above is located outside the now disused Penlee lifeboat station, on the outskirts of Mousehole in south Cornwall.

19th December 1981 saw the final launch down the lifeboat station’s ramp. The Penlee lifeboat Solomon Browne and her volunteer crew of eight Mousehole men headed out into 100mph winds and 16m breaking seas to rescue the crew of the stricken MV Union Star. The lifeboatmen understood the risks; Coxswain Richards had barred one crew member from boarding, saying “No more than one from any family on a night like this”.

They did not return home.

The above scene more or less sums up our frustration a fortnight ago, when we had splendid sunny weather down in Cornwall, but couldn’t paddle due to relentless howling winds, day after day after day.

The irony is that high pressure and settled weather is now well and truly entrenched, classic Indian summer conditions. However I can’t paddle through the week now as I returned to my day job last week, the holidays being over. I could have gone out and paddled this weekend, but to be honest I have so much work to do on the book that I’d feel guilty. Maybe I’ll sneak out for an evening paddle in this week …

If anyone cares for the nitty gritty details, the majority of the South West coast is now written up (in first draft at least) but with plenty still needing tidying up. I haven’t even made a start on sorting through photos. The problem is that my creaky old home computer more or less keels over and dies, every time I try to sift through folders of digital photos. Getting sick of endlessly waiting for it to grind through the most simple of tasks, I actually just got a bargain on some kind of fast über-computer on eBay.  So, no more paddling for me in 2007. Just the joy of geekdom.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be at the keyboard.

Simply to amuse myself, I just closed my eyes and picked a photo from my South West Sea Kayaking folders, entirely randomly. It turned out to be this one, which is actually quite an old photo of some local paddlers out and about on the coast near Swanage. If I recall rightly, the wind was pretty horrible and I declined to paddle myself, being a soft fair weather type.

There are 8870 photos in the folder, the vast majority of which were taken in the course of this year. Whilst its the only way to get reasonable photos for the book (take loads and surely some of them will turn out okay …), it makes me wonder how I’ve managed to get any paddling done.