Following my summer trip to Canada I was advised to take a bit of time off paddling to allow my hand to heal (I slipped on a rock inspecting a rapid on the Magpie and caused soft tissue damage to one of my fingers – no heroic story!). At the end of November I had the opportunity to join my old uni kayak club on a trip to North Wales and decided that this would be the ideal way to ease myself back into paddling.
Jackson Villain Review
I have been paddling a Jackson Villain for the past few months and thought I would share my thoughts. Me in the Villain (courtesy of Simon Knox) About Me A bit about me to start with: I am 27, 6’6″ (198 cm) and weigh about 15.5 stones (95 kg). I…
Fine food and Fresh Air
Lindsay and I were looking for a hotel for a long weekend break with Mike and Rach (my brother and his girlfriend). Location-wise we weren’t particularly fussy. We had spent a long time looking for somewhere without success. Then I received an email from Rach about a Travelzoo offer she…
Multi-day kit list
My recent trip down the Magpie in Quebec, Canada, was my first self-supported multi-day kayaking trip. When I was preparing for the trip I spent some time chatting with other paddlers and researching on-line about what kit I needed to take. I struggled to find a list online of recommended…
Canada 2011 – Multi-Day On The Magpie
This trip had been a long time in the planning. Some time towards the end of 2010, Simon Knox somehow persuaded Martyn Read, Doug Johnson and myself that we wanted to travel to Quebec to paddle the Magpie river. Despite Simon mentioning the 26 miles we would have to paddle…
Canada 2011 – the warm up
This trip had been a long time in the planning. Some time towards the end of 2010, Simon Knox somehow persuaded Martyn Read, Doug Johnson and myself that we wanted to travel to Quebec to paddle the Magpie river. Despite Simon mentioning the 26 miles we would have to paddle…
A bit slack…
Well, maybe that is a bit of an understatement. It has been 8 months since my last post on my blog and a lot has happened during that time. A quick summary…. 22nd December I had laser eye surgery with Ultralase in St Albans. I have gone from a -6…
Sun Kosi 2010 – A journey through time
Flying with kayaks is always an interesting experience and this starts from the moment of arrival at the airport. We can really use public transport due to the kayaks so I drove. I dropped Jethro off at the terminal at Heathrow with our boats and all of our luggage before I set off to leave my car at a friends house in Ealing for the duration of our trip. Things started to go wrong immediately as I took a wrong turn as I left the airport!
Safe arrival in Kathmandu…
It turned out that we needn’t have worried about getting all of our kit under the 32kg weight limit for the flights after all…. My kit bag weighed in at 13.2 kg, Jethro’s at 9.7kg and our paddle bag weighed in at 6.2 kg. In order to proceed onto the…
The time has come….
To quote Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872: “The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax– Of cabbages–and kings– And why the sea is boiling hot– And whether pigs have wings.” Well, the last 75 days…