Justine’s Blog

What great weather we’ve been having in Wales. So many warm, sunny days to entice us outdoors. Last week, Carol & Ross were down from Scotland staying with us. While Carol did her 5 star training, Barry and I took Ross around the Stacks on a lovely calm day… although we did take him against the tide both ways! Most of the time we were near to the cliffs and out of the strong tide, but going around South Stack against the flow was a fun challenge!

On the weekend, we scampered up Tryfan, one of my favourite Welsh mountains, before driving down the Llyn Peninsula for another treat; an overnight stay o

n Bardsey island. The sun shone on the car on the drive, until a few hundred metres from our destina

tion of Abadaron when we drove down into a thick layer of sea mist! It was a shame that Carol & Ross couldn’t see the island (or anything at all if it was more than 50 metres away!) but it was quite fun to do my first crossing to Bardsey in the mist. We chose our bearing but used a GPS for back-up. When we were about 200 metres away, we got a brief tantalising glimpse of the top of Bardsey briefly poking through the mist. We closed in on the north end of the island ferry gliding across a strong band of current off the headland. We could see the island now as we paddled against the flow (to keep a theme with Ross) to reach the harbour where we landed for the night.

As always we had a great time staying with the Porter family and enjoying farm life for a few hours. They have been busy lambing for the last month or so, and are now gearing up for the arrival of some more calves.

On Sunday, we climbed Bardsey mountain and were treated to a clear view of the mainland. By the time we crossed back the mist had crept in over the west side of the island and half way across Bardsey sound. We paddled on a bearing again, until we emerged into clear blue sky! Despite the poor visibility, we saw a porpoise & lots of seabirds including puffins. What a wonderful weekend!

I was recently sent 2 Dutch magazines with reviews of “This is Canoeing”.  This is the shorter one for those of you who understand Dutch. I’m told it’s a very positive review, for an award winning DVD which continues to bring smiles to the faces of paddlers around the world.

Now is a great time to buy “This is Canoeing” and one of our other DVDs as we have some great offers in our webstore during April.

Take advantage of our best ever offer – save £25, or US $35 when you buy any 4 DVDs. You can buy the DVDs using any other currency. If you are spending Euros you will save approx. 28 Euros.

Or buy any 2 DVDs for £30, US $45 ( approx. 34 Euros ). Shipping is always free worldwide.

Thanks to Rob Van Dijk for writing and sending me the reviews.

We made it to France with a night paddle across the Channel!

I’ve had a great time accompanying Sarah Outen from Tower Bridge to Calais over the last 4 days. A distance of about 110 nautical miles  in 65 hours! We’ve beasted it amazingly quickly, especially when you hear that Sarah hasn’t been in a kayak since October & she was having trouble keeping her food down for the first few days. She’s an incredible woman with bundles of energy, positive attitude and motivation.

My role was to help Sarah get safely to France on the first leg of her journey to loop the globe (and to film the adventure). She wanted to do it quickly so we did it quickly, making the most of the tides which whipped us down the Thames and along the Kent coast. The sea was calm so we paddled with the tide in the early hours of the morning and made good distances. When we reached Kingsdown yesterday at 10am, the person driving our support boat for the Channel crossing wanted us to leave more or less straight away as bad weather was due by midday the following day. As we’d been up since 3am and already spent 6 hours paddling 23 nautical miles, we didn’t feel it would be sensible to cross the Channel without a rest, some sleep and some food!

In the end we decided to leave 12 hours later, which would give us some chance to recover but should still get us to France before our weather window closed. The Royal Temple Yacht Club in Ramsgate kindly provided us with showers and beds to get some rest. Still tired, but feeling a lot better, we launched at 10pm in the dark and began heading towards France. The sea was much rougher than forecast and a real contrast to earlier that day. The first two hours required full concentration as metre high waves battered us on the side and occasionally broke. I was pleased to see Sarah dealing admirably with the conditions. Later on the wind dropped and the waves decreased, then the main battle was with the sleep monsters & tiredness. We stopped every hour for food but our paddling pace slowed down as our tanks grew emptier. If I stopped paddling I was in danger of falling asleep and I saw some amazing things that weren’t there, including a huge marquee, an unlit buoy & a giant wall in front of Calais with a deep pit in front of it! Finally after 8 and a half hours we surfed tiny waves onto a beach at Calais. It was 6.30am, time for croissants! I was delighted we’d made it (and we didn’t have to paddle any more!).

After 6 hours sleep today, I still feel tired and I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep. I’ve had a great adventure with Sarah and am delighted to have paddled with her from London. That’s the end of the adventure for me but tomorrow Sarah starts cycling from Calais towards Russia on stage 2 of London2London. See her website for updates.

A photographer, David Tett, endured a cold, long night on the support boat to take a few photos of us. You can see some of them here.

Sarah Outen and I made it from Tower Bridge, London to Kingsdown, a few miles north of Dover in 45 hours.  it’s a little over 80 nautical miles so that’s pretty good going! we’re tired as a result of it as we paddled 6 hours on, 6 hours off, with the tides. It was mostly fun – strangely! Exciting to be kayaking at night in quite a few knots of tide on the Thames, snatching sleep when we can….

We were looking forward to a good nights sleep before crossing to France tomorrow (monday) but it was not to be. The wind is due to pick up tomorrow so we have to cross tonight. ETA at our support boat in 45minutes so I’ll not write more now. I am eating fish and chips, packing and collecting myself. There may be updates overnight on Sarah’s website, www.sarahouten.com

There has been lots  of photos, publicity, and video about the trip so far.Do a search on the internet if interested. Here are a couple of links.

You can watch a film of the launch day here.

I edited a quick and very rough film of us paddling from Tower Bridge to Gravesend on Friday which you can see here.