Posts Tagged ‘seakayak’

It’s a jet setting month for me – I’m only recently back from Sicily and today I head to Menorca. Well, you’ve got to admit that a slightly warmer climate is very attractive at this time of year! And direct, affordable flights from Manchester to Menorca make it far too tempting.

This time I’m visiting the Med with the very accomplished Sarah Outen. Sarah has already rowed across the Indian ocean and is in training for the even bigger mission of circling the globe. There are a couple of oceans called the Atlantic and Pacific that she hasn’t rowed across yet so that’s on her list! And to link them together she’ll cycle over the non-watery sections known as Europe, Asia and America. Where do I fit into that? There are a few watery sections which are more suited to a kayak than an ocean-going rowing boat so I’ve been asked to join Sarah for some of those.

In the meantime, we are heading to Menorca for a week to do some kayaking training. Apart from getting to know each other, if the weather is good enough we plan to kayak around Menorca. If the wind plays ball then we also hope to kayak across to Mallorca, but we’ll see. I’m looking forward to turquoise waters, impressive cliffs, a myriad of caves, meeting new friends and hopefully a bit of sunshine!

We are using kayaks and local knowledge from Carlos & Teresa from “Menorca en Kayak“. They offer rentals, courses and guided trips on the island & I’m looking forward to meeting them!

I’m back in a seakayak after 6 weeks of doing lots of other fun things! On Tuesday we visited Bardsey island with 3 Bardsey virgins – Mark Tozer, Jeff Cochrane & Pete Astles from Peak UK. The weather was quite kind to us and we enjoyed a fun trip & a warm cup of tea on the island with Jo & Ben Porter. Fish and chips on the way home rounded off the day nicely. Yesterday Pete, Barry and I headed round the Stacks in less Summery conditions. Penrhyn Mawr was a bit messy and angry but we dabbled around towards the back of the race before heading along the cliffs towards South Stack in the mist. The southerly swell was funnelling straight into Parliament House Cave creating a sporty landing onto boulders that we braved due to our hunger!

Barry and I are trying out North Shore kayaks – the Atlantic and the Atlantic LV. So far, so good! They feel very positive and trustworthy! they have the added advantage of being significantly cheaper than most composite seakayaks.

Today I’m back at my desk and the sun in shining brightly outside! Typical!

You may have noticed things look a little different around here.

We have finally unveilled a facelift that has been slowly taking shape over 6 months! When I started travelling a lot to film “This is Canoeing” I wanted to add webpages about the new DVD and the “Mountain River” trip that I went on. Derrick Mayoleth, who is the talent behind anything stylish on the website, suggested it was time for a complete overhaul instead. Needless to say we are both busy people and it took a lot longer than we’d hoped, but here it is and I hope you like it.

Much of the content is the same as before – the biggest change is the section on ‘canoeing’ and more specifically the new canoeing DVD, “This is Canoeing” which now has 2 exciting preview videos to watch, aswell as detailed information about all 12 films on the DVD. The double DVD disc set is released on March 12th, priced £19.99, US $29.95 or 25 Euros. You can pre-order it from my website, or ask you local store to make sure they stock it!!

We’ve got more socially interactive, with opportunities to follow our adventures on facebook, twitter, you tube and flickr, if you so desire!

I’ve added a few more video clips and moved them all to YouTube so they are accessible to more people, while still being embedded in the site. So if you go to the “This is the Sea 4” page then you can see all the video clips from that DVD. If you prefer you can browse “Justine Curgenven” channel on YouTube   or you can subscribe to so that you are notified if I add a new video.

There’s still a page where you can see what expeditions are going on at the moment, with links to the adventurers blogs and websites. If you know of a trip that’s not on this page then please get in touch. 

Mark Scriver, one of the worlds’ top whitewater canoeists has been added to the Paddlers Profile pages.

The RSS feed for the blog which has been broken for sometime is now fixed so you can follow the blog again if you want to.

The photos are of a paddle today in beautiful wintry sunshine with Barry and Greer to Puffin island.