Saturday morning and it was clear from just past 6am today was not going to be drysuit weather. The usual pre-sea kayaking faffing began with what are we going to do discussions, first job – identify trip leaders and then fill in the blanks for Keith’s idea of A, B and C trips. The large number of sea kayakers gathered meant 3 groups on the water. Next challenge where to meet, we had decided on 3 trips of varying lengths from Treaddur Bay, turn right and see how far you want to go before the tide turns summarises the plan quite well. After much cogitation it was decided to unload boats by the beach on Ravenscroft road and move cars to the car park. Very sensibly paddlers moved boats about to reduce the number of cars, better for the environment and the pocket if you were sharing a £10 car parking charge.
Best laid plans, boats were unloaded at both ends of the beach…..
A quick call to Ian Bell, who arrived that morning at the RNLI end of the beach and eventually we had a rather large group of paddlers together for a briefing and organising into 3 groups, Andy G organised us into 3 groups led by Steve, Neil and Ian – was that a cunning plan Andy?
I joined the group planning as getting as far as possible before we lost the tide, so 11 of us set off to see if we could get to South Stack, the coastline was ignored in favour of tidal assistance and distance, at Penrhyn Mawr the race was dying, you could see the water dropping as we got closer, so round the corner we went to land on a beach at Abraham’s Bosom for an early lunch.
After a sunny lunch stop we got back on the water and snuck up towards South Stack taking care to not disturb the nesting birds. It was now time to take the coastal route back, exploring the caves and rock hopping back to Treaddur Bay. Time to practice the art of timing the moment to paddle through gaps and avoiding being dumped on top of a pointy rock is the best way not to scratch your boat. A gentle meander back to the beach at Treaddur and a longer boat carry to the car park was rewarded for some with ice cream from the Sea Shanty café.
A lovely day on the water with many Ian’s and Andy’s plus Martin, Miles, Eamon, Gary and John
Frankie
