The wind continues to batter Anglesey so Barry and I headed for the Menai Straits again today for some windy paddling in relatively sheltered water. Another advantage of the Straits is that there are a number of excellent places where you can get out of the cold and have a warming drink!

Today we parked outside the Gazelle pub, opposite Bangor Pier, and headed into the wind and the tide towards Y Felinheli. That was Barry’s idea! Good fitness training, he told me! I didn’t really mind – we were sticking close into shore and had plenty to look at with all the houses perched above the water, and plenty of birds from oyster catchers, herons, shelducks, razorbills, redshank, swans, scoters, goosander and even a little grebe. We met some friends out on the water and felt happy to find someone else out on a windy grey day!

After lunch on the slipway of the Conwy centre and a few silly jumps to try to keep warm, we headed back north. The tide had turned and was now against us again, but we were looking forward to a down wind surf back. Unfortunately the wind had swung round to the NW and we saw very little of it behind us! More fitness training then! It was quite fun fighting against the tide to get back through the bridges.

And has become customary in this festive period – we finished with a drink — simply to justify our parking in their carpark, of course.

In amongst the paddling, I’ve been working hard to finish “This is the Roll” ( along with Turner Wilson & Cheri Perry). The finishing touches are happening over the next few days, although we can all be perfectionists so we’ve been filming new material right up until yesterday! Barry sportingly agreed to do some December rolling & to film me. The warm Reed Tuliqs make the ice cream headaches almost bearable, but we still didn’t last very long! We’re really pleased with the results of the DVD though — more news soon, once the editing is done!

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