Justine’s Blog

Barry and I have booked our flights to New Zealand. We leave home on 22nd January and arrive in Christchurch on 24th. We’ll start the expedition as soon as we get organised and buy things like food & flares – probably around 25th or 26th. A big thanks to ‘the North Face’ who have not only given us some of their lovely kit to keep us warm, but who are also giving us £2,000 towards the trip. (We’ve just given it all to a travel agents to pay for our flights!). Our kayaks are already half way to NZ thanks to Seakayaking UK and Lendal ( and Shawna and Leon from Body Boat Blade who are helping transport the kayaks from the NDK container to Lendal in Washington). Thanks to all of them.

I’m very excited for this huge challenge in a beautiful place, and I’m also full of anticipation. I’m reading with great interest how Freya is getting on on her circumnavigation of the South Island which is going on right now If you haven’t done so already then check out her blog – she’s not having an easy time of it with dumping surf keeping her off the water for longer than she’d like. http://freyahoffmeister.blogspot.com/

For the next 2 months, I’ll mainly be at home in Wales, starting to edit ‘This is the Sea 4’ ( to be released in late 2008), and getting out in my kayak in surf and challenging conditions as often as possible. I have just found out that I will be going to Israel around 22nd November to help Hadas Feldman out with a symposium that she is organising there, so that will be fun!

TRAINING SCENARIO PHOTO

I’m in Glenmore Lodge in Scotland doing a 6-day course about Wilderness First Aid. 5 days into the course my brain is full of all sorts of things that can go wrong in a remote place where we are far from outside help! But hopefully I also have a much better idea of how to deal with it. On previous expeditions that I’ve been on, someone else has had good first aid experience, but neither Barry nor I have much knowledge. Now when we go to New Zealands’ Fjordland and are miles from a roadhead, I’ll be panicing everytime Barry gets a headache but I’ll be able to make much more informed decisions if something does go wrong, from dislocated fingers to a severe bang on the head! II’d recommend the course to anyone who is leading groups in remote situations, or who is planning a remote expedition where medical help is not on hand. There is even a diamond miner who works in Africa here, and amazingly a girl who i went to school with and havent’ seen since! The course is quite intense, most days are 10 hours of lectures, practicals and scenarios. Today in our pretend scenarios we had to deal with injuries including a woman who had fallen on her paddle and impaled herself on it causing it to go all the way through her body. The photos are of the scenarios – not real injuries! I’ll be writing an article about the course for ‘Ocean Paddler’ magazine ( which is a ‘Wilderness First Responder’ course run by Wilderness Emergency Medical Services Institute, WEMSI ( Europe) .

A wild storm ushered us off the Hebrides this morning – not by kayak, but by ferry! Winter is definately on the way and it was definately too stormy to paddle 20-odd miles into. I had a great time on Lewis – it’s a beautiful, wild, wind-battered place with hundreds of craggy islands, improbably white sandy beaches and steep bleak cliffs pounded by swell. We had great fun paddling with the locals and appreciated their love of down-wind paddling. I’m glad we got to paddle down Loch Seaforth in a stiff southerly as I remember Mike talking about it a year ago on Mull – what a fantastic idea to just paddle one-way pushed by the wind! The Storm Gathering was a great success and everyone seemed to have fun braving the weather in a stunning location. Barry and I went off twice on overnight trips, travelling up the west coast, finding beautiful campspots and always being pushed northwards by a force 4 or stronger wind. We had a fun evening on Taransay with Mick Berwick ( the location of the BBC Castaway programme), and enjoyed a 29 nautical mile day which ended with us being pushed by the wind and the tide around Galen Head as darkness fell. I am already planning to come back next Summer and I hope to make it out to St Kilda and the Flannans aswell as see the summer birds. Tomorrow ( Saturday ) we are off to the Scottish Canoe Show in Perth where we’re both giving talks – Barry about his trip around Britain and me about the Queen Charlotte Islands. Then tomorrow night, it’s another ceilidh!! My sore back survived the Storm Gathering ceilidh so should be OK for another one!!

Today was the first day of the 2nd UK Storm Gathering in Stornoway. I went surfing at Tolsta ( sorry if I spelt it wrong) which was great fun. Some 3-5 foot waves making for some fun rides. Patrick Winterton was enjoying looping his kayak numerous times!

The 4 days previous to that Barry and I paddled on the West Coast of Lewis, exploring some of the islands in the Pabay area. The swell was pretty exciting – bigger than we typically get in North Wales and good practice for New Zealand. I’ve never paddled in so much FOAM! We ended by paddling to Barvas, on the doorstep of Mike Sullivan and family! Thanks to them for leaving us a car and trailer on the beach, all unlocked with the key in!! It’s great here on Lewis, very beautiful and I feel very at home. I’ll try to post piccies later