Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

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!

I am pleased to announce that you can now download your paddling inspiration directly from the Cackle TV website! No more waiting for a DVD to arrive in the post – if you want to watch a film then it can be on your computer within minutes. And you don’t have to buy a whole DVD if you are only interested in a few of the films. As each of our DVDs contains about 12 different short films, we’ve made most of them available to buy individually. Many films are just 99p (about US $1.65 or 1.15 Euros), which is cheaper than a cup of tea or coffee.

Our longer award winning paddling documentaries are about the same price as a beer, which is still very great value!

The prices are given in UK £s, but you can buy the downloads from anywhere. The price will be converted into your own currency when you make a purchase. Please don’t let the fact that the price is not in your home currency put you off ! You can click here for a quick currency converter.

You don’t need any special software to download a film but you will need a fast and reliable internet connection, a reasonably fast computer with a recent version of the QuickTime movie player. You will also need enough disc space available on your computer to store the file. A 10 minute film will need about  300MB and a 30 minute film will need about 1GB of space.

The format of the films is: Quicktime .mov file encoded with H.264 codec.

If you buy a film, you will be sent an email which contains a unique link. Click on the link and your download begins. Once it’s finished downloading, it’s ready to watch! The link is valid for 24 hours and you have several attempts, in case something goes wrong. If you want to buy more than 1 film then just add them all to your cart before checking out. You will get a separate email containing a link to your download for each film that you buy.

Increasingly our films will be offered as HD (high definition) downloads. These are higher quality than the DVDs (which are SD – standard definition). Our latest film, ‘Islands of Fire’ is available now as a HD download. It’s won 2 awards for ‘best seakayaking film of 2011’ but it’s not yet available on DVD, so if you want to see it first then now is your chance – click here!

We also have a couple of never-before-seen films! You can watch paddling under the iconic Golden Gate Bridge in 2003, or a feature on Dutch seakayaker Axel Schoevers ( both for 99p). Click here for more info!

I think we might be the first paddling filmmakers to offer our films digitally, and I’ve uploaded about 50 of them  so please bear with me if we have any teething problems. Feedback is welcome & please tell your friends! Oh, and enjoy the films, of course!

Strong Easterly gusts last weekend didn’t prevent 60 participants from having a great time at Kari-tek’s first Midwest seakayaking symposium. The normally sheltered Tayvallich (close to the Sound of Jura) was subject to the full force of the Easerlies, but nooks and crannies were found, instruction was given and scenic paddles were enjoyed!

Barry & I joined other coaches to help out in this beautiful area – and I even saw an osprey! It was a great event aimed at beginners to intermediate paddlers.

Cheri Perry & Turner Wilson are staying with us now which is great! They have a couple of places left this weekend for a day of instruction with these world-class Greenland style paddlers and rollers! See here for details.