What a great few days – and what a feature the Falls of Lora is!

Alun and I have been to the West Coast of Scotland to film some awesome paddlers playing on 2 infamous tidal races – the pretty and relatively friendly Grey Dogs and the mighty munching Falls of Lora. It was exciting to be part of the procession of vans loaded with shiny seakayaks darting from fantastic paddling location to local pub to scary, amazing paddling location to another friendly pub…. and so it went on….

I have a brand new boat – continuing on the ‘big cat’ theme! I’m really pleased with her and very grateful to Scott in the NDK factory for doing such a good paint job! I wanted a shorter boat than my Explorer so it would be easier to maneouver and surf in the tidal races and sure enough, my new Romany looked after me!

THE NEW TIGERSKIN ROMANY IN ACTION!!

The Falls of Lora in particular impressed me. It’s a tidal rapid which flows under the bridge of Connel. On the ebb, the seawater in Loch Etive pours out through the narrows over shallow ledges and provides some very swirly water, some nasty churning boils and some great surfing waves. It’s more like a river than the tidal races I am used to, with sharper eddy lines and sucking whirlpools. I was glad to be in a buoyant seakayak ( rather than a small playboat)! Alun and Webby ( from Rockpool) filmed from the bridge and I filmed a bit from the water.

AXEL GETTING STUCK IN

Watch out for some great footage in ‘This is the Sea 3’, due out 31st March 2007. You heard it here first!

We finished off by joining in with the first UK Storm Gathering symposium on Mull. The organiser Mark Tozer managed to provide the promised storms but no-one seemed to mind as the atmosphere at the event was great. Mull is a really dramatic island and I’ll definately return there sometime.