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There are a few more chances to see some films from “This is canoeing” over the next month or so. “Dougie Down the Pet” is a finalist at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival on 20-21st November and will be showing several times over the weekend. Also at Kendal, proving that a grand adventure can be had locally, “Rannoch Moor” is showing on the Friday night as part of the Wildwater Evening. I’ll be there for the whole weekend and I’ll have some DVDs for sale at a reduced price.

The whitewater antics of Paul Mason, Mark Scriver & Andrew Westwood are on show at the Mountain & Adventure Film Festival in Graz, Austria from 9th-13th November in the film “The Moose”.

“The Moose” and “The Mountain River” are showing at the International Festival of Outdoor Films at 24 locations around the Czech Republic until the end of the year.

Click on the names of the films to watch a preview clip, or here is the preview to “Dougie Down the Pet”, if you haven’t seen it. Many people have told me this is their favourite film on the DVD.

You can buy “This is Canoeing” or “This is the Sea 1-4” at the Cackle TV Store, or at many good outdoor shops. In the UK/ Europe / Australasia store I also have a few copies of “The Canoe Movie” left.

The UK Storm Gathering in Northumberland last weekend was a great, fun & friendly event. It was my first time paddling in the area and I was really excited to kayak to the Farne islands & see what the coastline had to offer. NE England is not typically at the top of a seakayakers ‘hit list’ but it’s well worth a visit. I find islands hard to resist anyway and I enjoyed the rugged wild feel of the Farne islands       –

enhanced by a Force 3/4 wind and a healthy swell!  We paddled around most of the islands and had lunch at Longstone Lighthouse, surrounded by hundreds of seals. In July, there are thousands of nesting birds here and I hope to come back and visit one Summer. The end of the day was spent surfing some great fun, friendly waves at our take out beach.

On Sunday we paddled a pretty section of coast from Berwick to Eyemouth, exploring lots of sandstone caves.

The symposium was organised by Ollie Jay who runs guided trips in the area. His company website is here. Jim Krawiecki is putting the finishing touches on a seakayaking guidebook to the North of England and he gave us a preview of some of the photos on the Saturday night. The book will be available from Pesda Press early  next year.

I just returned from a great week of kayaking in Menorca with Sarah Outen. How nice to be in short sleeves in late October! Menorca is a great location for kayaking with limestone cliffs peppered with caves on the south coast, and a colourful smorgasbord of red, grey, white and brown rocks on the north coast. At about 170km around it’s very feasible to paddle around it in a week (although the weather is very changeable at this time of year). We paddled sections of the north, south and east coast in flat calm and howling storm, and we kayaked 20 nautical miles across to Mallorca. I’ll write more next week with a few more pictures but I wanted to put up a few pics to give a taste of the island before heading to the UK Storm Gathering in Northumberland…in about 5 minutes!

Thanks to M.Teresa & Carols from “Menorca en Kayak” for being brillnant hosts, driving us around the island, and sending us weather forecasts. Thanks to Eva, who put us up when we weren’t camping – and as you can see the view from her house isn’t too bad!

It’s a jet setting month for me – I’m only recently back from Sicily and today I head to Menorca. Well, you’ve got to admit that a slightly warmer climate is very attractive at this time of year! And direct, affordable flights from Manchester to Menorca make it far too tempting.

This time I’m visiting the Med with the very accomplished Sarah Outen. Sarah has already rowed across the Indian ocean and is in training for the even bigger mission of circling the globe. There are a couple of oceans called the Atlantic and Pacific that she hasn’t rowed across yet so that’s on her list! And to link them together she’ll cycle over the non-watery sections known as Europe, Asia and America. Where do I fit into that? There are a few watery sections which are more suited to a kayak than an ocean-going rowing boat so I’ve been asked to join Sarah for some of those.

In the meantime, we are heading to Menorca for a week to do some kayaking training. Apart from getting to know each other, if the weather is good enough we plan to kayak around Menorca. If the wind plays ball then we also hope to kayak across to Mallorca, but we’ll see. I’m looking forward to turquoise waters, impressive cliffs, a myriad of caves, meeting new friends and hopefully a bit of sunshine!

We are using kayaks and local knowledge from Carlos & Teresa from “Menorca en Kayak“. They offer rentals, courses and guided trips on the island & I’m looking forward to meeting them!