Author: Justine

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny Spring day today with a HUGE tide.

Barry, Roger Chandler and I decided it was a fine day to paddle 22 nautical miles around Holy island.

I’m sure many people don’t know that the town and harbour of Holyhead is actually on an island, to the west of the island of Anglesey. It would be easy not to notice this as you drive to Holyhead because 2 bridges connect Holy island to the rest of Anglesey.  As you drive over ‘Four Mile Bridge’ or ‘Stanley embankment’ the inland sea looks more like a lake, but actually the tide flies through these 2 bridges in both directions every day. The waves formed by the narrow gush of water are often paddling destinations in their own right, but today we were trying to pass through the bridges close to slack water – especially Stanley embankment where a nasty stopper forms at full flow on spring tides.

We started from Rhoscolyn at 11am and paddled south to the entrance to Cymyran Strait which leads to 4 mile bridge. Loads of birds make their home on the islands here and we spotted goosander, curlew, oyster catchers, geese and lots more. We ferry glided against the tide for a couple of miles before reaching the bridge and finding there was only just room to paddle under it! Despite it being after high tide, the tide was still flowing in. A mile or so across the inland sea and we reached Stanley embankment. As we expected, the tide was still flowing inwards here quite strongly so we stopped for a bit of lunch. Within 20mins the flow had reversed and we rode the current out of the inland sea. A long paddle into the wind brought us to the end of Holyhead breakwater where the waiting ferries kindly stayed put in the harbour as we crossed the entrance. We we rewarded with an exciting bounce through North Stack & South Stack with the tide. Despite stopping for a brief play we reached Penrhyn Mawr before the tide turned against us  (just about) and continued on to Rhoscolyn. The tide at the Beacon was also just trickling against us and the landscape looked quite different from normal at close to low tide on a 10metre tide! When we landed almost exactly 5 hours after we left, we were greeted by an awful lot more beach. The tide which had been lapping almost onto the slipway at 11am, was several hundred metres away!! A long carry later, we finished off the rest of our food and felt very pleased with our lovely day out.  

The latest edition of “Canoe & Kayak UK” magazine featured an article I wrote giving 10 reasons why you should make a trip to the Mountain River in Canada’s Northwest Territories. I had an amazing 2 weeks travelling 370km down this wild river last August with the guiding company Blackfeather. It’s an expensive place to get to, but it’s an amazing area with exciting whitewater and endless wilderness. The film of that journey is one of 12 films on “This is Canoeing”. Read more about the trip here. Or buy the magazine!

There are lots of website and forums anticipating the release of “This is Canoeing” in just over 2 weeks. It’s been fun for me to read some of people’s comments and impressions of the preview clip. If you haven’t seen it, click here. I am looking forward to people being able to watch the whole DVD and hearing feedback from that … not long now.

I have sent out some review copies of “This is Canoeing” to magazines and websites and reviews are starting to appear.

I have been pleasantly surprised by how popular the DVD already is in Germany. I didn’t know canoeing was big over there, but now I do!  It seems fitting that one of the first reviews is by the German Kanu magazine. Here is their review ( in German).

The Minnesotan website, Up Nortica reviewed an almost finished copy of the DVD here.

Canoe & Kayak UK magazine has written a review in the next issue of the mag, on sale soon.

Ceufad, the magazine of the Welsh Canoeing Association will also have a review in the next issue.

Many blogs have written about their impressions of the preview clip, including ‘The Adventure Blog‘ & Wenley’s amusing take on things.

I’ll add links to more reviews as they are published and/ or I find out about them.

The photo is my award for ‘Best water based adventure at the Montreal Film Festival of Travel & Adventure. ‘South island circumnavigation’ from ‘this is the Sea 4’ won this award last October and I just received the pretty trophy yesterday.

I had an unusual phone call on Thursday asking if I’d help film a crazy young man who wanted to cycle off the end of Bangor Pier!

I decided that anyone who would consider doing that in February in Wales, with snow on the mountains behind him should be supported!

Plus it gave me the chance to work with local climbing film makers, Bamboo Chicken. Dave & Lynwen Brown recently made a DVD called ‘Welsh Connections’ and Dave formerly made films for ‘Hot Aches’. Matt Barlow is a professional mountainbike trials stunt and display rider, coach and guide. All of us live within about 10 miles of each other in the Welsh hills, although I’d never met Matt before, or worked with Lynwen and Dave.

So on Friday morning, we met for breakfast and headed to the pier. I was in my kayak on the sea to film ‘the money shot’ of Matt plumetting about 10 metres into the void on his bike! While I sat in my Kokatat drysuit and 2 layers of thermals, rubbing my hands in the chilly February air, Matt was performing stunts on his bike sporting jeans and  a green t-shirt advertising one of his sponsors, Tarty Bikes. I hope they gave him lots of t-shirts for this! I’ll even give them a link in the hope that they can stretch to a fleece next time!

It was fun to help out. Even though I only had to get one shot, it was a bit of a struggle to be in the right position at the right time as the tide and wind were pushing me away from the pier at about 2 knots and there were just enough salty corrosive waves to splash an expensive camera if I paddled back into position a bit too eagerly. Once Matt was in the water, I helped get him back to the steps at the end of the pier so he could get out and get that green t-shirt and jeans off.

The film will be shown at Llanff – my local film festival – in March. I hope some of my films will also be showing but I haven’t heard yet.

Thanks to Matt for the photos.