Author: Justine

It’s been a while since I was assessed for anything, but on Friday, I jumped into an open canoe for the first time for about a year ! Barry, Ulrika, Dave and I were put through our paces by Nick Cunnliffe and we all took our two star award in the open canoe! I have to say it was great fun and I really enjoyed trying to control a bigger boat than usual with only 1 blade!

These days, if you want to be a kayak coach in the BCU scheme, you also have to grasp open canoeing up to 2 star level as a pre-requisite. To gain the Level 2 coach award you have be able to teach and assess 2 star (in canoe & kayak).

After the assessment we enjoyed messing around in the currents underneath Menai Bridge, seeing if our skills would keep us upright in moving water!

I’m pleased to say that we all passed! And I’m looking forward to getting out in my open boat a bit more!

I just received the July issue of “Canoe & Kayak UK” magazine on my doorstep with a free ‘seakayaking DVD’ containing an hour’s worth of films from all 4 “This is the Sea” DVDs. The DVD is being given away totally free  if you already subscribe to the magazine. If you don’t subscribe and you want to get your hands on a copy of the DVD then simply order a copy of the July issue of CKUK from their website. It costs £3.80 (& international delivery is available).  CLick HERE for details.

The July issue also has a 5 page interview with me in it. It’s a totally different interview from the one which appeared in Issue 25 of’Ocean Paddler‘ magazine a couple of months ago. They asked me a lot about filmmaking aswell as a bit about my trip to Tierra del Fuego and paddling with Sarah Outen across the English channel.

I also received ‘Canoe Focus’, ‘Ceufad’ & the latest issue of ‘Ocean Paddler’ magazine today! I’m trying to ignore them all until later while I get on with some work!

If  anyone was lucky enough to fly to the Canadian north in March or April then you might have read about my trip down the Mountain River last year. “Northern Flyer”, the inflight magazine of Canadian North Airlines ran a 2-page story I wrote about paddling this wonderful wilderness river. I received a copy of the magazine today and it brought back some great memories.

Canadian North fly to many places in far North Canada and I hope to fly with them again some day and experience even further north in Baffin Island or Inuvik……

I’m also tempted to look through the ‘Blackfeather‘ website again to look at some of the other wilderness canoe trips that they run in that part of the world.

If you haven’t seen the film I made of the ‘Mountain River’ trip you can now buy the half hour film as a high quality digital download for just £1.99 (just over US$3). This, and other, canoeing films are available for amazingly good prices. Click me!

Or you can buy the Mountain River film and 11 great other canoeing films in the double DVD disc set “This is Canoeing” for just £19.99 or US $29.95.

Watch a preview clip here.

Adventure means different things to different people, but it’s important for all of us to get some!

My adventures recently have been paddling trips close to home and taking part in a seakayak race on Anglesey. I’ve also dusted off my mountain bike as I prepare to play another small part in a very big adventure! I’ll be joining Sarah Outen in Kazakhstan to bike with her for a week and film part of her human-powered loop of the globe. She’ll have been biking for close to 3 months by the time I join her so I need to get a bit of training in (or secretly pack one of those bits of elastic that adventure racers use so she can tow me!).

In other watery adventures, Jon Turk & Eric Boomer have completed the first leg of their circumnavigation of Ellesmere island – they’re traveling north on skis, dragging a kayak behind them. As they reached ‘civilisation’ they were met by a pack of wolves. Read their blog here.

Tim Taylor is attempting the first continuous circumnavigation of New Zealand by kayak. He started on the east coast of the North island, headed south, has kayaked around the whole of the South island and is back near the top of the North coast. You can read his blog here.

Stuart Trueman is quietly making great progress on his paddle around Australia. He’s decided to paddle around the coastline of the Gulf of Carpenteria (like Paul Caffyn 30 years ago), rather than cross it (like Freya Hoffmeister a year ago). He hopes to complete the loop in August. Read his blog here.

Harry Wheelan and Jeff Allen succeeded in getting a speed record around Ireland, paddling around the Emerald isle in just 25 days, desite a lot of headwinds. Their trip blog made interesting reading. Local northern ireland paddler, Elaine ‘Shooter’ Alexander is currently taking a more sensible pace around Ireland. Visit her website.

Every day life can be an adventure if we want it to! If things go a bit wrong for me  (for example a 1TB hard drive containing all my footage from Tierra del Feugo and most of the filming I’ve done with Cheri & Turner dying – yes, that really did happen 2 weeks ago).. When these things are sent to try us, I get really annoyed and upset, and then eventually I start to see it like an adventure; another problem to overcome, another twist and turn in life. When I can view any challenge as ‘another adventure’ it becomes easier to deal with! I still have all the original video tapes from my watery adventures … but the way I’ve chosen to edit with HD footage, means it will be a lot of work to get it back onto another drive in the same format. … Such is life! Getting annoyed doesn’t make it any better!