South West Sea Kayaking

‘Time and tide wait for no man*’ - attributed to Chaucer

*Or woman.

The lens of St Catherine’s Point Lighthouse on the Isle of Wight is around 100 years old.

Close up, numerous chips, flaws and imperfections can be seen in the lens. These date from 1st June 1943, when the site was bombed with incendiaries, blasting the glass out of the lighthouse windows. The three lighthouse keepers were trapped in the engine house, where they were overcome by the flames and killed.

Post-war, the lens was deemed effective enough to remain in use.

PS Several people have asked me what happened to the photo competition - it has now been re-started, unfortunately those who voted before need to vote again. Apologies!

Those moments, tasted once and never done,
Of long surf breaking in the mid-day sun.
A far-off blow-hole booming like a gun-

The seagulls plane and circle out of sight
Below this thirsty, thrift-encrusted height,
The veined sea-campion buds burst into white

And gorse turns tawny orange, seen beside
Pale drifts of primroses cascading wide
To where the slate falls sheer into the tide.

Cornish Cliffs, by John Betjeman

One of the pleasures of writing up this book (and then editing and re-editing what you’ve written, as I’ve spent the past two days doing) is reliving past adventures. Going through the photos and notes makes the actual paddling recede into the fog of memory loss that bit more slowly.

I’m currently trying to sort some tidal gubbins out. It’s making my head hurt and I think that some of the bumf I need for it is sitting in my office at work.

So, here’s a picture of Cornwall.

The Doom Bar is a sand spit in North Cornwall that obstructs the entrance to the River Camel and approaches to Padstow. It also gives its name to a splendid beer, brewed in nearby Rock. I’ve been saving the bottle pictured here, since I paddled around Cornwall in the summer.

Now, I am drinking it. Right now. It’s very nice.

I have just this afternoon completed the main text of South West Sea Kayaking; 50 routes and 8 section intros, totalling about 70 000 words. It’s hardly the last of the work, but it’s an excuse at least for an afternoon beer.

There’s a lot of it around, in Bigbury Bay.

We just returned from a pleasant and productive few days on the Isle of Wight. Got some writing done, had some good paddles, did some geocaching, saw Queen Victoria’s deathbed, took some photos.

Unfortunately, our visit was characterised by incompetence and misfortune. Last Saturday we set off early, drove to Lymington, caught the ferry, arrived at our intended launch point, took the boats off, began to get changed … and only then realised that we had left most of our paddling kit at home. Luckily, a friend was able to bring some spare kit to Lymington for us (cheers Steve!) so it only took two more ferry journeys to get organised. The other notable mishap was me slipping on some wet steps beside St Helens beach, and spraining my ankle badly. I don’t seem to have had a lot of luck with my right foot this year.

Although I’m within sight of the end, I’ve achieved virtually nothing in recent weeks. The problem is the day job, which is all getting rather full-on these days. I’m so busy that I no longer stop for break or lunch (but it’s never boring!) and so coming home and then finding the brainpower to bang out chapters of a book is a bit of a tall order.

Thankfully, I have next week off work, so I can sit down and concentrate on making some serious progress. We’re also going to paddle on the Isle of Wight, which happens to be the very start of the book and the start of the area covered. Although Wight is all written up and done, we’re going back partly because my photos of The Island are currently a bit lame, partly because it’s really rather nice there.

On an unrelated and purely geeky note … this evening I figured out how to make my computer run two monitors at once. I rule.

All of the UK sea kayaking that I’ve been doing during 2007 has been mightily pleasant. However, I’ve been sorely missing my usual white water paddling and overseas travelling fix. Hence, I have already have a few trips planned between now and next Easter* that will help make up the shortfall.

But … what I could really use is a short luxury holiday abroad with Mrs R, somewhere very hot and exotic, with the possibility of a days’ warm water sea paddling perhaps. So … I recently entered a photographic competition organised by the Independent newspaper entitled ‘Where Worlds Meet’. My photo entry is above (taken during a trip to India in 2006) and I am well chuffed to see that it has somehow made the final 10 photos.

Please take a look at the competition entries, and vote for the photos you like best! You can vote for as many pics as you like.

*In order; Spain, Portugal, Iceland, Germany, Poland, Belgium, France and Nepal. Really.

Had a splendid weekend in North Devon, surfing my playboat and watching cheese eating surrender monkeys get trounced at rugby. The titular quote is a classic surfing cliche, made for the benefit of our chums from Kingfisher Canoe Club, who didn’t arrive until this morning and hence missed Saturday’s much bigger surf.

All this sea kayaking has meant that I haven’t been in a playboat for at least a year. My body is now finely tuned for going in a straight line, fairly slowly. It certainly wasn’t tuned for a weekend spent going left, right, up, down at high speed. Hence, I now feel like I’ve been worked over by a baseball bat.

North Devon remains rather nice.

I should be working hard on the book this weekend. But instead, I’m planning to skive off.

Stuck in Cornwall on a bad weather day? You could do far worse than visit the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, located in Falmouth Docks. This is the spot where Sean Morley started and finished his epic paddle around the British Isles.

What is amazing, is how many kayaks are on display in the museum. Just count them …

Note however, that many of the kayaks (including Derek Hutchinson’s) are housed in this exhibit. Hmm.

e·piph·a·ny [i-pif-uh-nee] –noun

a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

What happened next?

Tonight I am home alone, wearing out the keyboard* and sorting through yet more photos. Mrs R has gone off to paddle some rivers with friends, whilst I am working. Frankly she deserves a break, from me and my bloody book. It occurs to me that I haven’t even begun to give Heather due credit for the masses of time she has put into helping me out and about with this project, and for her infinite patience with my unsociable evening work sessions back home.

Cheers, Love!

*I have even given myself tendon strain. I just bought a wrist support for typing, which appears to be worse for your body than paddling.