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… I’ve been doing my best not to be dull recently and have enjoying the fine weather of the  last week. I’ve been mixing my days between work and pleasure. It’s weeks like this where I really appreciate living in North Wales and being so close to fantastic playgrounds for many different disciplines. On Friday I drove 20 minutes to the mountains and climbed a snow gully. On Saturday and Sunday, we drove 40 minutes to the west coast of Anglesey and enjoyed seakayaking around the beautiful Stacks, with a play in the tidal race at Penrhyn Mawr. Today I had a bit of a longer drive, an hour an a quarter to go to the river Dee for some canoeing. I’m lucky enough to be a long term student for Jules Burnard, who is training to be a level 5 canoe coach. He’s giving free coaching to a group of us, in exchange for us being guineapigs for his assessment at the end of the year. It seems like a good deal to me!

If you have ordered a “This is Canoeing” DVD and wondering when you are going to get your hands on it, then don’t worry I haven’t been neglecting your needs. If you live in the US/ Canada/ Australia or Europe then your DVD has been posted. If you live in the UK, then it will be posted on Wednesday 2nd class. Hopefully everyone will get them on the release date of 12th March. Your local shop should have them in stock by Friday aswell.

2 weeks ago, John Domoney and I tried to climb up Wales’ highest mountain via the Trinity Gully on the North Face, a lovely looking grade 1/2 winter route. We were both very excited by the adventure up Snowdon but due to an unexpected white out, a bitter cold wind and the fact that we both forgot a map and compass, we decided against it! Instead we battled up the miners track feeling like we were in an Alpine blizzard.

So I was very pleased to get a text from John yesterday saying he had the day off on Friday and did I fancy having another go. Today the carpark was bathed in sunshine and balmy. As we got higher, the cold started to bite and clouds appeared, but they couldn’t stick. They blew in and out for the rest of the day; one minute hiding the sun and everything around us, the next minute revealing a brilliant blue sky and beautiful snowy peaks.  

We climbed the gully, enjoying the company of 2 lads we met on the approach, had lunch on the top with the seagulls, and came back down. I was back at my desk by 3pm, getting on with my work… well, I will be when i stop writing this!

Life is good!

I recorded the route live on the Sanoodi website, although I forgot to start recording until we put our crampons on at the base of the gully, sorry! See the track here. 

“Dougie Down the Pet”, one of the 12 films in “This is Canoeing” has won the best professional documentary film at the American National Paddling Film Festival. I’m very excited to win this award, especially as it’s a film festival that I keep missing the deadline to enter. I entered “This is the Sea” about 5 years ago but for a mixture of reasons usually involving bad planning or not knowing about the festival deadline, I haven’t entered since. This film is one of my favourites from the DVD as it’s a really warm story of a father and son on an canoeing adventure together and it reminds us all of the wide-eyed excitement and wonder that we all once had for being outdoors. Dougie is a cutie, and his dad, Scott MacGregor ( publisher of “Rapid Magazine“, “Canoeroots” magazine and creator of the Reel Paddling Film Festival) explains why he has decided to run rapids with his 4-year old son while there is ice on the side of the river! It might sound crazy, but Scott’s reasoning makes total sense!

I had a lot of fun paddling down the Petawawa river in Algonquin Park with Scott, Dougie & their friend Paul last October, and I hope people enjoy the film.
Watch an exclusive clip from the film HERE on the Canoeroots website, and also hear what Scott has to say about the film. 

You can see who won the other awards at the NPFF here.

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.