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 [...]
Archive for September 2007
Insomnia
Reality Check
According to both Pesda Press and Amazon, the book is now officially going to happen. Oops, I’d better finish writing it …
Subjectivity
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.
Breakthrough
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.
Collect the Set
Sea Kayaking Guidebook Writing Top Tip #34 - Have a PhD Geologist to hand, at all times.
Engagement
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, [...]
Home Run
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 [...]
Poet Laureate Leave a comment
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
Distraction Leave a comment
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 [...]
Mola Mola 2 comments
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 [...]
1st NDSKM 1 comment
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.
The Gathering Leave a comment
Off to north Devon this weekend, to attend the NDSKM. Could be fun.
Service Not Self 2 comments
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 [...]
Indian Summer Leave a comment
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 [...]
Long Odds 2 comments
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 [...]
Here’s one … 1 comment
… I made earlier.
Serpentine 3 comments
Serpentine is a stone found on Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula in reddish or greenish varieties. The stone looks quite mundane, until you wet its surface. Only then, do you see the colourful veins in the stone which – resembling snake’s skin – give the stone its name. During the nineteenth century, this wonderful stone was popularly utilised for fireplaces [...]
Close Call 1 comment
Caught out on Cornwall’s north shore in rapidly building wind and swell, there is nowhere to run to … … most of the time. We were very relieved to paddle in through the portals of Portreath Harbour, the only sheltered landing for at least ten miles in either direction. They were enjoying their annual fete, [...]
Closing the Gap Leave a comment
This weekend we completed the last of the ‘scheduled’ paddling that needs to be done for the book, although no doubt there will be more … for the fun of it. We paddled between Dawlish Warren and Dartmouth in South Devon, a coast of remarkable contrasts (from the sublime to the amusingly tacky). After a [...]
