Angelsey Easter weekend

Sunday 12th April 2009

A long one to finish take two!

After lunch we gathered a group og 8 kayakers who intended to paddle back to Porth Dafarch, there were 6 sea/touring boats and two guys in river boats, one of which being a short Pyrhana Burn, a tug boat shaped boat that would sap its paddlers energy!

We set off, and passed through a gap in the headland, or at least those who had plastic boats did, it was now just passable and even my fairly flat bottomed boat scraped as I passed through.

We set off North up under the cliff edge, and as we got into the slightly rougher sea, we were alerted to something going on by a shout behind, it seemed that they just needed us to wait so we hovered around, and eventually the guys caught us up. It turned out that actually, a new to the sea paddler had managed to take a swim whilst negotiating the rock channel!

I now discovered that the mild back ache I had experienced in the morning was going to be a problem, I had take a couple of Ibruprofen at lunch along with some paracetomel, it hadnt had the desired effect though.

I had printed some small maps of this bit of coastline before leaving home, but not knowing exactly where we would be paddling, I had managed to miss the early part off, so as we moved on, I had the challenge of picking up where I was on the map. This was proving to be more difficult than expected, the cliffs looked similar wherever i looked, and the houses and buildings on top didn't look anything like the ones marked on the map.

Eventually we had a rest in a little inlet, where a caravan site, and a slipway was situated, this turned out to be Porth-Y-Garan, and had two very expensive looking speed boats moored.

Two paddlers swapped boats here to allow the one in the shorter boat a rest, he paddled the clubs brand new P&H Capella.

A small group including dad set off ahead now across the final leg of the trip, the bay of Trearddur was littered with speed boats, jet-ski's and general noise and tom-foollery, I was quite concerned about getting mown down as the drivers seemed to spend most of their time looking back at whoever they were towing!

I looked ahead and saw dad and the others were really making a good headway on us, so I made it my mission to catch them, a good test of my stamina, and forwards speed. i kept stopping though to get pictures, and as I hadn't got a waterproof camera, it meant putting down the paddle, undoing the deck bag, undoing a dry bag, then another which the camera was in! take a quick picture, and re-do the process in reverse! (mental note: purchase waterproof camera!)

Holyhead mountain in the distance

Trearddur bay-speedboat city

I managed to get acroos to Dad before he reached the bay, but with a now very painfull back, Dad had done very well, I am actually really impressed by the way he has embraced this touring lark! On any previous trips we have done in the river boats, the have been stability issues, and nervousness when things get 'choppy' or challenging. Now, its head down - paddle through, and all totally at ease, and so far no drama's. - Keep it up, here's to the next trip!

A very frenzied hour and a half now followed packing the tent and all the gear away for the journey back to Dronfield.

The journey was trouble free, and made the weekend even more enjoyable thanks in part to the completion of the A55 from the M56 right through to Holyhead.