Justine’s Blog

KJELL & JOAKIM WITH NIGEL AND KRISTEN FOSTER
THE BOAT HOUSE WHERE THE SYMPOSIUM WAS HELD
Barry and I had a fantastic time in Norway in glorious sunshine. The symposium was a lot of fun, in a great location right next to the sea. Everyone camped perched amongst boulders on grassy patches, and we ate in an old boathouse right on the water, you could have fallen over backwards into the sea ( but fortunately no-one did!). The setting for the event is a pretty chain of islands and islets dotted on the west coast, from a few square metres in size to a few kilometres squared. Where you launch from is really sheltered and protected from any swell, but the further west you go through the islands, the more exposed it becomes and usually you can find challenging conditions for rockhopping. At the moment the calm weather provided at most a 0.5metre swell and we had 2 great days exploring the outer islands, paddling past colourful old boathouses, and squeezing through narrow gaps between islands. The Norwegian people we met were really friendly, fun and relaxed… we’d love to go back some time to explore the area more and hang out with them. Our group even got serranaded by a boat full of musicians on the way back from our trip, which was very cool! We gave a talk about New Zealand on the Saturday night and Nigel and Kristen Foster made a surprise appearance that evening, on their way to a symposium in Iceland – it was nice to catch up with them.

Thanks to Ronny at God Tur for putting us up ( and depite the weekends festivities, getting up at 5.30am to take us to the airport this morning!). Thanks to Njord for inviting us to the sympoisum. Thanks to Kjell for the photos.

BARRY ON THE BULKEN WAVE

NAEROYFJORD
JOAKIM JUST STANDING AROUND!

Barry and I are in Norway for the Njord sea kayak symposium near Bergen. We came a few days early to go paddling with some locals in some of their favourite spots. Thanks to Ronny from the shop ‘God Tur’ ( the distributor of my DVDs in Norway) for organising a great couple of days and to the other great guys for coming along. Yesterday we drove up to Naeroyfjorden, one of the most spectacular fjords in Norway and paddled to a great campspot for a lovely evening around a campfire. The mountains rise over 1,200 metres from the fjord and we were constantly gazing up at different amazing waterfalls and overhanging grey cliffs. Amongst the paddlers was a 15 year old boy Joakim who had incredible balance and paddled standing up in his cockpit for 8km on the first day (!) and who could not only stand up on the back deck of his kayak, but jump from there to the front deck of the kayak! And back!

SEAKAYAKING THE BULKEN WAVE

Today we paddled back down the fjord and then headed to Bulken, which is a famous standing wave on the Vosso river which is popular with whitewater kayaks and surf boards but as far as the locals know has never been paddled in a seakayak before. Barry had the honour of being the first seakayaker to surf on the wave, which was really playful and fun. Camilla, Hallvard & Kjell also got stuck in. It was great fun but the water is VERY cold though!!

Tomorrow we are running an incident management course, then on the weekend is the symposium!

We’re back home in the UK and seem to have brought the good weather with us. It’s been a really hot and sunny week in North Wales…. let’s hope it lasts.

On Wednesday 14th May, I’m giving the first presentation about our South Island adventure. It’s at the Keswick Mountain Festival in the Lake District and I’ll be talking in the Theatre by the Lake at 7.45pm.

Check out details of the festival here

If you want to see who is talking and/ or get a ticket for my talk then go here.

I’m also taking part in a fun race with mountaineer Alan Hinkes to open the festival at 5.30pm on Wednesday. Apparantly we have to abseil down a climing wall, run to the lake, paddle a raft around a marker, then run back to town where we climb the wall again. Whoever reaches the top of the wall first, honks a hooter which officially opens the festival!

Barry and I popped into the Anglesey sea kayaking symposium last weekend and paddled around ‘the Stacks’ with 2 different groups on Saturday on Sunday which was fun. Since then I’ve actually had to remember how to sit at a desk all day as I’ve been loading video footage into my computer so I can edit together a few bits of footage for this talk in Keswick. I’ve got some great snippets of dolphins surfing by the bow of my kayak, me getting trashed in the surf and of us fighting not to get blown out to sea by strong sidewinds.

WALKING THROUGH CAVE STREAM – AN UNDERGROUND RIVER!
HOME ON THE BANKS PENINSULA
BABS, PAUL CAFFYN & JUSTINE WAVE SKIING!
‘THE BOYS’ ON THE BBQ!
JUSTINE WAVE SKIING OUTSIDE PAUL CAFFYNS HOUSE
A FRIENDLY KEA ON MOUNT ARTHUR
WE CAME ACROSS MISHA HOICMAN, HIS WIFE INNA AND A FRIEND FROOM ISRAEL. MISHA HAS PADDLED AROUND FJORDLAND THIS SUMMER AND IS TRAVELLING AROUND NZ WITH INNA AND THEIR KIDS FOR 6 MONTHS. WE HAPPENED TO NOTICE HIS KAYAK WHEN WE WENT FOR A WALK BESIDES A LAKE NEAR ARTHURS PASS! THANKS FOR THE PANCAKES AND CONVERSATION!
THE ANNIES FRUIT BAR FACTORY
WINE TASTING WITH BLAIR FROM ANNIES
BARRY ON MOUNT ARTHUR, TASMAN BAY BEHIND ( WHERE NELSON IS)
We’ve had a fun 8 days travelling around the south island in a little hire car, visiting some of the people who we met on the kayak journey, walking in the mountains, finally meeting Babs, the Swedish kayaker who also paddled around the South island this year and enjoying the open spaces and lack of people in NZ!