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Axel and I went to Bardsey on Sunday, in a brisk breeze. Axel hasn’t been there since about 2002 so we took the scenic tour, including using the eddy close to the mainland, and then going around the island. I also thought Axel would appreciate a slightly longer and more challenging route so we chose to go to the island with the strong tidal streams giving us more hindrance than help. ( If we’d left from “Whistling Sands’ on the West coast of the Llyn, we’d have been able to drop onto the island using the ebb, and make the most of the afternoon flood to take us back later).

You can see the resulting ‘tracks’ that we made on our journey, as recorded by our Blackberry and the free Sanoodi software. The tide is strongest nearest to land and you can see that we were swept downstream as we approached our destinations on the way there, and back. On the way back we were aiming about ENE, even though the tide tide took us much further West than this!

Once on Bardsey, the Porter family were very busy in the middle of the lambing season. After a cup of tea, Axel and I were happy to help move some young lambs from the stable where they were being looked after to the field outside. Steve took the mum while we got to carry the cute cuddly lambs. Later we went on ‘patrol’ with Steve and Jo looking for any new-born lambs, or any mothers who needed some help with a difficult birth. We saw 3 new lambs come into the world – 1 set of twins and 1 single lamb. Despite the goo, there is something magical about new life!


The technology I used to track our progress to and from Bardsey will be used on my next trip. In theory, an update from ‘twitter’ should alert people to the start of a new paddle, and you can follow along live, or check the progress once we’re reached our destination. For some reason, the twitter update part didn’t work on the paddle to Bardsey – perhaps because the phone signal was very week? I’m trying to find out if that can be fixed.

Click HERE to see the outward route to Bardsey and HERE to see the return route on the Sanoodi website, from where you can navigate around and look at other things.

You can read Axel’s account of the trip here.

You may have noticed that a strange box has appeared on the top of the blog, which says ‘Twitter’ in it. A week ago, I didn’t know what “Twitter” was and I didn’t really care ( I’m getting old already!)! But then I got told that ‘twitter’ could automatically let people know if I was about to go on a kayaking trip, and provide a link to a ‘live map’ of the kayaking route. I signed up and have spent the last week or so working with “Sanoodi” and Derrick to work out the nitty gritty of it.

Today is a beautiful warm sunny day in Wales and when I got a phone call from a friend, I didn’t need much persuading to get out on the water – just to test the system out, of course!

The upshot is that as I’m kayaking somewhere, my position is uploaded live onto a website, superimposed on a map or an aerial photograph. Check out the map of the test paddle today – it’s amazingly detailed. You can even see where Jeff and I stopped for a play in the moving water. For those people who have better things to do than check up on my progress (!), you can look at the map at the end of the day and see where we kayaked, the total distance covered and the average speed. And, by the way, we were against the tide today – in both directions!!

How this works is quite simple – thanks to some very clever software – and the good news is that if you want to do the same thing, you can download the software you need for free from Sanoodi. You need a phone with a GPS in it – either a blackberry, an I-phone, a Nokia S-60, or a windows mobile phone. Then you can download a free copy of the SMap software from the Sanoodi website and upload your own tracks live to their website. Or go to wap.sanoodi.com from your phone. We have a blackberry because it has the best battery life.

Barry and I are planning a trip in the next few weeks which I’ll write more about soon – and we’ll be using the blackberry to give live updates of our position. To follow along, you don’t have to join twitter. Just check the blog and whenever we set off, you’ll see a link to the map of our route. If you want to join twitter, or you are already a member, then ‘follow’ CackleTV and you’ll automatically get the update everytime I go on a trip.

It actually felt like Spring this weekend. On Sunday, the surf on the Hells Mouth webcam was looking good and the sun was shining. Eve and I drove down the Llyn Peninsula with our surf kayaks in the van and had a great couple of hours getting wet and thrown around by the waves. Eve was rolling like a demon, recovering from front loops, back loops & washing machine rides! A great day to get excited about warmer weather and fun adventures to come!

Yesterday was a really big tidal range with a high tide of 9.7 metres in Liverpool. Perhaps more importantly for us, the low tide was REALLY LOW! Only 0.4metres… That meant that the standing waves at the Swellies in the Menai Straits should be really well formed and calling out to be surfed! The only problem was that action time, when the waves form was about 6.30pm — about the time it gets dark! But we couldn’t resist such a big tide. Barry also wanted to check out a different wave, a bit higher upstream from the ”Swellies wave’, which he’s only seen ‘working’ (i.e surfable) when the low tide is REALLY low. It was working well last night, with the tide tanking through there, making it hard to get onto the front wave. The traditional Swellies wave is still my favourite though, and on our way back, in near pitch dark, it was steep and powerful. It was a bit scary, to be honest, especially when we could only see each other if we were very close. After Barry capsized and rolled, which I didn’t see, we decided to get off the water, and go for a well deserved Pizza-and-a-Pint!