Freesteel Blog

Last week we completed the unfinished business of properly kayak diving the underwater cave at Pen-y-Cil headland Aberdaron in Bardsey Sound in perfect conditions

Just look at these conditions:

We had 10 metre visibility, lots of air, and got a nice swim through with lots of crabs.

Even did the side cave too. As Becka’s neckseal had split, I dived the Glenocum wreck on my own on the way back. It was so relaxing.

On day two we did some (very cold) snorkeling off Criccieth looking for seagrass (didn’t find any pipefish).

On day three we were going to paddle around from Whistling Sands through Bardsey Sound, but decided that would be too scary, so we went and played in the overfalls by Nefyn. The waves looked huge when we were there, but don’t amount to much in the photos.

We got air fills at Tyn Rhos Diving which surprisingly still existed. And beforehand I visited my mum for one night in Machynlleth before driving up for a night in the campsite behind Eric Jones Cafe and meeting Becka off the bus in Tremadoc, after much protesting that I didn’t want to drive up and fetch her from Caernarfon ridiculously late in the night.

Not at all keeping up with any blogging of late, so here is a late report a 5 day sea kayking trip from Oban with the Liverpool Canoe Club

Those who served:
IB, SH, RC, CH, AV, Julian Todd, Becka Lawson

I’m proud of underplanning and not thinking ahead, especially when doing something new.

Becka and I had never been out for more than one night in a sea kayak, and this trip was supposed to be 5 nights in the Scottish wilderness. We had the kayaks, we had a trangia stove and enough old soda bottles for regulation supply of water. At the last minute we grabbed our one working tent that wasn’t the pop-up kind. I was sure we could simply shovel enough packets of random food from the larder into the holds around this gear to make something up each day.

Becka drove us up to Oban while I provided the entertainment by reading aloud someone’s kayak camping packing list off the kayarchy website. By the time we reached Glasgow Becka had to panic buy yet more provisions at the Aldi supermarket, so we arrived quite late.

Other last minute decisions that happened frantically in the morning included packing our thickest sleeping bags (which could barely be rammed in even when you fed them right up to the bow through the hatch), and our choice to wear our skinny wetsuits for the whole trip because we didn’t have enough confidence that we weren’t going to capsize or be able to roll.

The rest of the group were polite enough not to make it too obvious we were holding them up as we squabbled over what to take.

And then we set off south towards the slate islands.

We got lucky with the weather. It was never too windy or wavy, and it tended to rain during the day and often during the night, with brief sunny respites for a few hours most afternoons during which time we could dry out our wetsuits. That was another advantage of going on a trip lead by IB — aside from the air of competence and expert decision making — the early starts and early finishes. You got your 5 or 6 hours on the water experiencing sore arms, sore thighs and a sore back from sitting in an insanely unnatural position (those who can’t take it probably don’t go kayaking), with enough time afterwards *not* in the boat to recover and straighten out. If left to do our own planning, Becka would probably have maxxed out the paddling for a minimum of eleven hours a the day, which would have meant I’d refuse to get out of bed in the morning. On a multi-day trip you need to pace yourself sensibly; it’s not a weekend blast.

The sea was flat enough to let us go round the far side of the Garvellachs and camp by the site of the monestry on the same patches of grass where the previous kayakers had camped the day before where they’d left their two-way radio.

The next day we headed back to the coast in a horrible wind and rain through the Grey Dogs north of Scarba and around to the south end to look at the Bothy that overlooks the Corryvrecken. Here we met our first group of other kayakers just getting ready to head out to sea (pretty lazy), and gave them back their missing radio. Then we had lunch in the bothy, which is a depressingly ruined not-cosy two story cottage, before moving on to a campsite on the mainland.

The most notable wildlife were the geese who liked to fly back and forth overhead honking wherever we walked. Someone saw an otter. Every so often there was a seal head poking out of the waves. There were no midges at all because it was too early in the season and too cold. In the evenings SH entertained us with different ways of not lighting a fire (apparently the driftwood was too salty) until he used a lighter. Becka and I had neglected to pack whiskey. We also worked out that a one man tent was too small for two people.

The final night (cutting short one day because of the wind forecast) put us on the north coast of Shuna on a gusty headland of squelchy mud and cow-pats where we gave a demonstration of how a married couple decides which of two spots a metre apart to pitch their tent. So we put it onto the wetter ground with the door facing into the weather across two cow-pats that Becka scooped and thrown over her shoulder using a paddle as a shovel. I sulked and didn’t come out for the remainder of the soggy day. I only had sandals and the mud sank up to your ankles, which would have made the sleeping bag filthy.

Final day before the wind really picked up involved shooting through the Bridge over the Atlantic before the tide changed and then an approach around the back of Kerrera Island to Oban. Here I was able to practice my downwind surfing, which we had been taught to do on surfskis earlier in the year on our train trip to Spain. It was fun, except I had to keep ignoring Ian who kept calling me back to the shelter of shoreline where the waves crashed on the rocks and the paddling was just a right slog.

It got very hard around the north of the island where we now had to paddle south directly into wind. No matter how much force I applied to the paddle, all the others seemed to pull away into the wind at twice my apparent speed. They waited for me to catch up in the shelter of a small island, and pulled away again and got to the shore miles ahead of me. By the time we packed everything back on cars and vans the wind had almost died and children were out on the middle of the sound on a raft made of barrels.

We all went out to dinner in the slap-up Wetherspoons Pub in Oban called the Corryvrecken.

I’ve been having some adventures, including one successful flight over the Black Mountains (I didn’t get round to blogging about), a five day kayak trip out of Oban (I wrote up and Becka decided to rewrite, so maybe I’ll post my original here), and an unsuccessful flight in Yorkshire where I deserved to crash horribly, but got away with an on-the-spot landing across a single track road between two dry stone walls (I should never have got to that place).

At the weekend we were in the Farne Islands and had a lovely time with the seals.

You always get a little nervous when they open their big toothy mouth.

That was the shallow dive. Then we dived the Knivestone and shook hands with a lobster (one among many, they’re under every rock),

… and resisted the temptation to bother the octopus.

I got to do a bit more blogging, announcing various electronics work (of which there is lots), but so much is ongoing I can’t be bothered to report it. I’ve now forgotten what’s missing (nearly everything). Maybe it’s because I’m putting things in twitter instead. Oh well.