Archive for the ‘wales’ Category

Feeling a little weary with jet lag after only 36hours back home, Barry and I met Axel at Porthdafarch beach this morning, and headed out to Penrhyn mawr tidal race. It was a fun few hours in quite a lumpy sea. Great to be home!

Axel has also written a blog with some photos of the day. And I somehow forgot to mention my 3 pop outs and resulting rolls! An exciting salty return home!

This weekend, Barry and I paddled joined Kev, Gill, Chris & Matt for a paddle down the Menai Straits and an overnight camp at Aber Menai Point. Although, the snow on the Welsh mountains has largely melted it was still a frosty cold night, so was a good chance for Barry and I to test out some of the kit that we’re planing to take to Tierra del Fuego. It was exciting to sleep in our new Hilleberg Tarra tent for the first time and our first impressions are great. It’s roomy, very sturdy and a fantastic shade of red! We’ve both got a large porch to ourselves so there will be no squabbling over space to put our kit! The footprint extends underneath the porches so our kit is off any wet soggy (or frosty!) ground.

While we were testing out our kit, it wasn’t all serious! I am happy to confess that we spent most of the evening in Kev & Gill’s big family size tent, crowded round Kev’s homemade fire pit, drinking mulled wine and scoffing mince pies! Kev & Gill were in a canoe which meant they had lots of space to make life very comfortable!

I was also trying out a few new bits of kit from Kokatat. I’ve had the dry suit that I’ll take on the trip for a few months already and I’ve been wearing it most of the winter so far! but on Friday I received a box with some extra goodies in it. I tried out my new destination paddling trousers which I’ll live in when I’m on land. They are very comfy, and fit over my thermals nicely ( which was definitely needed on Saturday night!). I also had on Kokatat’s long sleeved base layer which is very warm and snug, and the new Msfit tour buoyancy aid ( PFD). The new Msfit has slightly larger pockets than the original one and has a new piece of material over where you can clip your knife, so that it’s less likely to get caught on anything. Thanks to Kev & Gill for inviting us to join them! I’m looking forward to a couple of months of camping in Tierra del Fuego. 3 weeks to go!

We optimistically strapped the surf boats to the van roof, just in case all the webcams and forecasts were lying about the gale force winds and wild white seas. Plan A was really a walk in the elements to North and South Stack on Anglesey, but the boats were there on the slim chance that we’d find a surf bay protected from the Force 11 winds. Needless to say we didn’t, and we parked the van as much out of the wind as possible and had fun trying to walk on the cliff path without being blown off it, peering through our hands at the stinging spray and the heavy waves pounding down on the sea and shooting 20 metres up the grey cliffs. Bits of gorse were being blown up gullies like tumbleweed, and at times I couldn’t stay on the path while remaining upright. Definately a day to enjoy watching the water from the land!