This weekend sees the first ever Pyranha Dart Fest, a big get-together of white water paddlers at the River Dart Country Park near Ashburton, Dartmoor. There is a busy schedule planned, with paddling, coaching sessions and entertainment in the evening. My good friend Kevin Francis and I are presenting one of the evening slots, with the [...]
Archive for the ‘Devon’ Category
Pyranha Dart Fest 30th-31st January Leave a comment
SWSKM 2009 – Cheers All! 5 comments
The weekend was a great success, with plenty of paddlers showing up to enjoy the awesome coasts of south Devon. Many thanks to all who came along and helped, and thanks to the invited speakers, who were simply great! PH Kayaks supplied demo boats and helped out on the water, thanks as well to them. [...]
December News 2 comments
To my shame I still haven’t been near a sea kayak in the past month! Hopefully I will escape to the sea in a couple of weeks when the school term ends. We haven’t been wasting our time, however; we’ve been planning the work and travel that we’ll need to do in 2009 for Savage Shores. The [...]
Plymouth Sound 6 comments
The giant fish/lobster thing above is located beside the Mayflower Steps, on the city of Plymouth’s waterfront. It probably represents/means/signifies something, but I’m currently too tired to recall or research. I was in Plymouth for the past few days with a load of my Sixth Formers, giving them an introduction to ‘student life’ at the [...]
33 Leave a comment
Sunday dawned cold and windy. Many chose to head out onto the open sea and do heroic things, but the majority joined us for a sheltered paddle on the ria (drowned valley) of the River Dart. There are a number of these drowned valleys in the South West, being especially common in South Devon. I’ll [...]
Mind the Gap Leave a comment
The South West has been lashed by exceptional Atlantic storms this week, breaching flood defences all along the coast and cutting off the power supply to 30 000 houses (including this one, for most of yesterday). It’s seemingly a media regulation that after major storms, pictures and film must be shown of waves breaking over either the harbour [...]
Ice Prince 3 comments
Recently, Brixham Coastguard, the French Coastguard, the Royal Navy, Whisky Bravo, and the lifeboats of Salcombe and Torbay have all been having a busy time offshore of Devon. The Ice Prince is now adrift in the English Channel, carrying 313 metric tonnes of oil amongst other hazardous things. It’s impossible not to feel a sense of déjà [...]
Fellow Travellers #4 Leave a comment
LIke most people I paddle with on the sea, Graham is a white water paddler moonlighting on the salty stuff. Indeed, I met him today for a run on the splendid River Dart. Graham runs Ringwood Canoe Club and has paddled whitewater all over the world. I’m delighted to say that he is joining us on [...]
Cardinal Mark 4 comments
I took this photo of John Gilmour back in January, when we went to visit the very recent wreck of the MSC Napoli. The photo now adorns page 36 of the second edition of Franco Ferrero’s Sea Kayak Navigation. My photo is uncredited (dammit!) but I can easily forgive Franco, as the book is superb. I’ve never [...]
Don’t Mention the War 3 comments
Tor Bay in Devon is an odd place from the environmental point of view. There are plenty of interesting coastal landforms here, but also sprawling holiday resorts like Torquay and various unwelcome concrete encroachments on the coast. However, the area has just received Geopark status, a UNESCO designation. This will hopefully protect and preserve Tor Bay from [...]
Slate Leave a comment
There’s a lot of it around, in Bigbury Bay.
You Should Have Been Here Yesterday … 2 comments
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 [...]
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.
Epitaph Leave a comment
Here lieth the Body of Mr John Hurley, Custom House Officer of this Parish. As He was endeavouring to extinguish some Fire made between Beer and Seaton as a Signal to a Smuggling Boat then off at Sea He fell by some means or other from the Top of the Cliff to the Bottom [...]
Normal Service Will Resume … Leave a comment
I am actually mainly a whitewater paddler, as opposed to a sea paddler. I may be working on a guide to sea kayaking in the south west now, but several years ago I actually wrote the south west section of a white water guidebook to England! In order to take on working on the sea [...]
Snapshot Leave a comment
‘I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.’ Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories On Sunday, whilst paddling amongst the amazing sandstone stacks around Ladram Bay in South Devon, I randomly reached over my shoulder and took a photo of my friend Graham. He sent me some of his photos today, [...]
Devonian 1 comment
These deep red sandstone cliffs stretch along the South Devon coast. The rock was created by layers of sand and grit being laid down successively on a desert surface. The wavy patterns in the rock reflect desert processes such as dune formation, water deposition and wind erosion. All of this took time.
Downpour 1 comment
We didn’t much want to go paddling today, on account of the rain. Nor for that matter, did we much want to go to East Devon, on account of there being nothing much there that we wanted to see. However, the needs of the book meant that we left the house at 7 am and travelled [...]
22nd March 1993 2 comments
Today I’m writing up the coast of Lyme Bay from West Bay to Seaton, something I’ve had in note form for months, but not gotten around to completing. This is a lovely stretch of coast, with amazing geological and palaeontogical interest. However, whilst enjoying Lyme Bay, it is impossible to forget that a tragedy took place [...]
Pleasure-dome Leave a comment
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover ! A savage place ! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover ! Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan Whilst Coleridge was first writing down the words of [...]
