South West Sea Kayaking – Savage Shores   Sea Kayaking in South West England – Britain's Coastal Environment

The following article was originally published in Canoe Kayak UK magazine. It describes our splendid Whitsun trip to the Channel Islands. Enjoy…

——————————————————-

Channel Hopping

Exploring the Channel Islands of Guernsey, Harm, Sark and Alderney by sea kayak

Gannets! Thousands of ‘em! The sky is crowded full by our largest seabirds. Tidal rapids drag us inexorably towards to their colony, a series of isolated peaks rising from the sea like miniature Matterhorns. This alpine illusion is further borne out by the gleaming whiteness of the stacks, but the white isn’t snow; every spare inch of the soaring rocks is colonised by squawking gannets. Their two metre wide wingspan gives them a hunting range of hundreds of miles, but on this day all five thousand inhabitants of the colony seem to be roosting at home, or soaring in wide circles overhead. Paddling closer to the colony, one thing that we can’t ignore is the smell; but we are distracted from this stinky stench by the natural wonder commencing before our eyes. High above, a cluster of gannets tighten their circle as they spy a shoal of fish. They flutter their wings rapidly backwards to fix their position and take aim. In close succession, these huge birds roll over, fold their wings behind forming a sleek dart shape, and accelerate into a headlong plunge, terminating in jarring 50 mile an hour impacts. Air sacs in the gannets’ heads allow them to survive this dive-bombing onslaught, but their prey are utterly stunned. And so are we.

Our week of sea kayaking had been thoroughly planned, with one small caveat; we hadn’t actually figured out where we were going. The general idea was to head up to Scotland, because that’s where all the good sea kayaking is, right? However, as the date drew nearer, we kept dwelling upon the looooong drive up from our home in Dorset and wincing. The Eureka! moment came one evening whilst we were camping on our local coast. Watching the lights of passing ships in the English Channel, the penny dropped that there were islands only 65 miles south across the Channel that we’d never visited. I am embarrassed to confess that in fifteen years of living just a two hour ferry crossing away, I’d never seriously considered visiting the Channel Islands, and knew nothing about them. The very next morning we booked our tickets, job done! Other friends also abandoned their Scottish plans and decided to join us; we had ourselves a Convoy (I’ve always wanted to say that).

First impressions were confusing. We drove off the SeaCat ferry onto the left-hand side of the road on a grey and rainy island of Guernsey; very English. We then stopped for brekkie (um, petit dejeuner) at the first place we came to, which happened to be a French-speaking boulangerie. We should probably have read up on this stuff beforehand, but we quickly learned that whilst pledging loyal allegiance to Our Gracious Queen, the Channel Islands/ Îles Anglo-Normandes are not actually part of the UK. In practice, they seem to form an amiable buffer zone between John Bull and Johnny Foreigner. To greater or lesser degrees depending upon which island you’re on (and whether you’re drinking red wine or bitter at the time), you can imagine that you’re in rural south Devon (with French place names). Or on the Atlantic coast of Brittany (with pubs and chippies). Or something.

We drove up to the northern tip of Guernsey, and gazed out to sea. Every now and then, gaps in the weather allowed us to spot the island of Herm, a few miles east across a tidal channel known as the Little Russell. Sometimes we could see past Herm, across the Big Russell to the island of Sark. Just once, the rain briefly cleared enough to reveal the cliffs of Alderney, lurking a daunting twenty miles away to the north.  The plan formed itself; islands exert a magnetic draw upon sea kayakers, and we knew that we couldn’t go home without having paddled to these isles. We arranged parking and launching at a friendly marina and worked our way though the general faff involved in loading and getting afloat. One member of our group was a wheelchair user; we were impressed to find that all manner of folk were happy to assist in shipping the chair out to the islands or even to arrange the loan of a chair on the island.

We hadn’t all paddled together up to this point, so it was morbidly interesting to see what would happen as we launched into a grim and grey Force 5-6 for the passage to Herm. Thankfully (but slightly disappointingly) there was no carnage, and all seven paddlers survived the squalls to reach Herm’s harbour pier. Rather obligingly, a group of islanders were waiting to greet us and to carry our gear away from the beach by tractor. We followed the tractor up the lane past quaint cottages, immaculate gardens, smiling locals and ancient standing stones; lovely, but perhaps ever so slightly ‘Summerisle’. Luckily, at the top of the hill we found not a waiting Wicker Man, but a campsite boasting panoramic views of the surrounding seas and reefs. Once the tent was up and dinner finished, my wife and I strolled Herm’s cliffs, and were delighted to spot puffins bumbling around their burrows. We love puffins. Everyone loves puffins. Back at the campsite, I found my tent festooned with streamers and balloons, with champagne and cake waiting. Yes, it was my birthday. My 21^st, naturally…

The next day’s pootle across to Sark was conducted in slightly milder weather, but nonetheless involved a fair amount of excitement (for sea kayaking, generally considered to be a bad thing) and the odd nervous paddle slap. The tide flows in these parts never really cease motion, forming numerous tidal rapids and doing bewildering things like flowing fastest at high and low water (the opposite of pretty well everywhere else).  Somewhere mid-channel whilst we were preoccupied by the choppy waves, something rather large and dark briefly surfaced among us. My book about these things tells me that it may or may not have been a pilot whale; we shall never know for sure! Arrival on Sark really is something. The island rises abruptly from the sea with impregnable cliffs on all sides. There is no naturally sheltered landing; the harbour walls back dramatically onto the cliffs, with a tunnel drilled through the rock to access the island’s interior plateau. Having arrived late, cold and soggy, we were pretty delighted to discover that Sark’s welcome topped Herm’s. A tractor appeared to carry not just all of our gear but also all seven of us up to the campsite, clinging onto the outside in a non-Health and Safety Executive-approved manner.

For centuries, tiny Sark was burdened by a quaint but ridiculous feudal government that was (in as far as we understand these things) only replaced in 2008 by something approaching democracy. Judging by the various island newsletters we read in the cafe over breakfast, Sark’s 600 locals mainly seem to exercise their newfound rights by publishing nasty libellous things about each other! The islanders are also reeling from an ongoing and bitter dispute with the über-rich Barclay brothers who own the neighbouring island of Brecqhou and have recently sacked all 100 of the ‘Sarkese’ who worked for them. One benefit of visiting beautiful and isolated offshore communities by kayak is that you are able to fully savour the local scenery, culture and welcome…but that you also have a paddle-powered getaway vehicle, ready to be utilised as soon as the apparently inevitable claustrophobia and ‘island-fever’ begin to take hold of you. Don’t misunderstand us, we loved Sark; but we gained the definite impression that staying there too long would mess severely with your head. As further evidence of this, we offer the Karaoke event which we chanced upon in the woods one night; experiencing a burly 6’5” islander murdering ‘Bright Eyes’ was only marginally less painful than being sacrificed in a burning Wicker Man…

Oh yes, this article is supposed to be about kayaking. I guess you’ll want to know that a circumnavigation of Sark is among the finest day paddles in British waters. The tidal rapids at every juncture would be sufficient in themselves to keep you amused, even without the spectacular cliffs and beaches, and the guillemot, razorbill and puffin colonies. Sarkese rock is riddled with caves variously accessible at different stages of the tide, meaning that you really need to do this trip more than once! The Gouliot headland near Brecqhou is frankly incredible. The tide flows swiftly through a latticework of dark tunnels, feeding plankton to the millions of multi-coloured sponges and anemones that completely plaster the walls through the full ten metre tidal range. Trust us; you have never seen anything like this. This unique underworld ecosystem is protected by ‘RAMSAR’ status (no, we also have no idea what this means, but it sounds important), but can be carefully explored by kayak and by swimming.

For no particular rational reason, I had a ‘thing’ about visiting the most northerly Channel Island, Alderney. Purely to satiate my obsession, everyone found themselves sitting bleary-eyed in their boats at the northern tip of Sark at precisely 0746 one morning, on the off-chance that the not-so-great forecast would turn out to be wrong. It was indeed wrong, so we all pointed north-ish and paddled off towards the horizon. Did I mention that Alderney was over twenty miles away? This long crossing was less boring than you might imagine; we dodged very big ships, ohh-ed and aah-ed at jumping dolphins, surged up and down repeatedly on the rather large ocean swell and at the end of all that, completely missed Alderney. That final point is slightly embarrassing, but how was I to know that the tide flows never do as asked in those parts? Instead, we arrived at an enormous solitary rock named Ortac, which was (rather alarmingly) surrounded by shallow surf-pounded reefs and huge rolling tidal rapids. Impressed as we were by Ortac and the population of gannets living upon it, we really weren’t supposed to be there and some frantic course alterations were needed to prevent us from being dragged to our doom. How we laughed.

Kayaking is one of those sports that takes you pretty well everywhere, but you’ve never been anywhere like Alderney. The island feels and looks markedly different from the other Channel Islands, whose residents describe it as, “two and a half thousand drunks clinging to a rock”. Our arrival by kayak was unusual enough to warrant a visit by the local press! Alderney’s isolation is enhanced by the fact that it sits amidst vast areas of tidal races, and by its epic defences; one side of the island is defended by sheer cliffs, and the other side is entirely covered by fortifications. There are forts overlooking forts guarding forts. We built much of this to keep the French at bay (they’re only eight miles away) but the Nazis are also responsible; arriving in 1940, they found Alderney totally evacuated. They set about transforming this sun-kissed backwater into Hitler’s dreamed ‘Festung Alderney’. The absence of local witnesses allowed them to indulge in their worst excesses; nobody knows for sure how many Russian prisoners died building the (pointless) concrete defences, but the toll was at least in the high 100s. Only the overgrown bunkers and tunnels now bear witness to these horrors; putting our tents up behind the dunes in stunning Saye Bay, it was hard to comprehend that this idyllic spot had been the exact location of an SS concentration camp.

We relished our time exploring Alderney by foot and paddle, including a visit to the teeming Les Etacs gannet colony (described at the start of this article). But, no sooner had we concluded that we never wanted to leave Alderney, than it was time to go. We were caught out one evening by a surprise weather forecast suggesting that the best ‘window’ to paddle back would involve getting up at the terrifying time of 2 am the following morning, just a few hours hence! Several folk were sinking beers in the pub when they heard this news, so some frantic sobering up was required. However, all credit to the team; everyone somehow managed to wake up and get packed in time to launch by starlight. Barely conscious, we drifted past sleeping puffins and out into the smooth ocean. By the time the sun rose behind Alderney, we had left the island far behind. We eventually arrived back where we’d first launched from at the Guernsey marina, just as the sailors were finishing their breakfasts! We crawled ashore, put up the tents and instantly flaked out…

Mark Rainsley channel hopped with Eurion Brown, Claire Cailes, Claire Cheong-Leen, Adrian Disney, Chris Evans, Heather Rainsley and 5000 pairs of stinky gannets.

Many more photos here.

Further Information

The Channel Islands offer a surprisingly wide variety of fantastic sea kayaking experiences and really should be on every sea paddlers’ wish list. Our impression was that ‘island-hopping’ the Channel Islands is best suited to experienced sea kayakers, given the very strong tide flows. There are however many great paddle trips for all abilities along the coasts of Guernsey and Jersey. Guernsey’s south coast is a particular highlight, with its rugged cliffs and the Hanois lighthouse. On this trip we did not visit Jersey and its outlying reefs, but now plan to return and explore them ASAP!

www.condorferries.co.uk – You’ll need these folk, unless you fancy a 65 mile paddle across the English Channel? They will accept kayaks onboard with foot passengers, with prior arrangement.

www.quaysidedirect.com – ‘Quayside Marine’ beside St Sampson harbour on Guernsey sell books, charts and also a good range of kayaking gear.

The Channel Islands by Peter Carnegie – published by Imray, this book is indispensible. Tide flows, mini charts, lovely aerial photos to get you drooling.

Admiralty Leisure Folio SC5604: The Channel Islands - This huge folder of charts covers every rock and frond of seaweed in the archipelago; you should be able to buy it new for around £20 on eBay.

Wildlife of the Channel Islands by Sue Daly – a lovely outline of the local flora and fauna, and where to find it.

www.ukseakayakguidebook.co.uk – useful information and advice.