Filey Brigg at its Best

A few stolen hours, launching from Filey we headed towards Brigg End. A fairly good northerly was blowing so we waited for the last of the ebb before tentatively moving in.













A couple of pics from the GoPro







We then cut across the bay and spent an hour or so surfing the lovely clean waves that were building of the sands, a perfect winter Sunday.

3* Canoe Assessment

A cold weekend in early December saw me heading to LLangollen for a 3 star assessment.

We truly love open boating so it just seemed natural to progress my skills. Day 1 dawned and we launched onto the LLangolen Canal, an amazing place in its own right and somewhere I had wanted to paddle since I heard about the local viaduct. Quite an experience, especially for someone who really doesn't like heights.







The following day we headed to Bala Lake for further skills assessment.









A brilliant weekend which resulted in a pass, must go back and take the lad over that viaduct.

Essential Sea Kayak Symposium

A fabulous weekend is always going to be guaranteed.  Our choices for the weekend...

Menai Straits on the Saturday, an absolute blast for me as I got to play in the brand new Rockpool 16, a lovely quick and very responsive boat, what more can I say.

 





Sunday dawned a gorgeous day, a trip to the Penryn Mawr was on the cards.

 

Then the final day the gang got together and we had a chilled out trip around Trearddur Bay



A perfect weekend with good mates..

Autumn on the Humber

With light winds forecast and an ebbing tide both Fi and myself put in at the old light house at Paull and travelled down river to Hawkins Point.

Canoe Fishing

Another lovely afternoon on the East Yorkshire backwaters in search of pike and the odd escapee trout from the fish farm.







Three for the pot and a long paddle back up to the car.

Flamborough Head Revisited

This is a regular paddle for us but I keep working on video editing techniques so this was a good opportunity to put another movie together. Its worth watching just to see me nearly wiped out at one point - I didn't see that one coming.

 

 Thank you for viewing

The UK Open Kayak Fishing Tournament

This event is one of the biggest and best on the East Coast, we fell fortunate with the weather but the fish were a little thin on the ground, still a brilliant and well organised day in Scarborough.

A thorough safety briefing.











A short video of events.

St Abbs Head

On a glorious day in late September I spent a lovely afternoon paddling around this fascinating headland with good friend Neil.



Another video I put together, I hope you enjoy.


Thank You for watching

Ailsa Craig

I've been wanting to get to this lump of granite for a long time, along with some good friends and lovely people I finally made it in early September.

I hope you enjoy a short video I put together of our journey.

 

 Thank you for watching.

Paddling Germany

We took a holiday to Germany and beyond, it just didn't seem right going without boats so they were dully strapped onto the car.

First stop was the lovely city of Cologne, camping on the banks of the Rhine it was the perfect opportunity to have a blast up the fast flowing river in the Rockpool Taran. It was actually quite fun dodging the large barges and cruise ships in the fast flows.









August in central Europe can be quite warm, in fact it was just too warm, the more time in the water, the better.

Our next stop was the German Eiffel, here we took the canoe onto Lake Rursee. A pleasant and chilled day on the water, I had good memories of this place as a youngster.











After more time discovering other parts of Germany we eventually made our way up the River Mosel, on our way towards France and ultimately Paris. The Mosel is a beautiful river, it has very little flow and other than the large commercial barges it does not present any real challenges. The canoe came in very handy at Bernkastle- Kues, the campsite was on the opposite side of the river to the town, it made ideal transport for the few days we were there.





Returning back to the campsite after a jolly good evening out presented its own challenges, least of all finding the campsite pontoon.



And that was really all the paddling, we spent another wonderful week roaming through France finishing with a few days in Paris and of course we just had to take the boy to Disney.