We whitewater kayakers always joke about how we’ll take up sea kayaking when we’re old and no longer hardcore, but hey I’m thirty now so…

A fairly big group of us “oldies” decided to go for a weekend of sea kayaking. It was also originally supposed to be an experiment in multi-day expeditioning, but some of the oldies were not even hardcore enough for that, so we didn’t bother trying to cram tents and sleeping bags into our boats, and just parked up the car near our overnight camping spot.

Flamborough head is a craggy peninsular on Yorkshire’s East coast (map), with spectacular white cliffs and caves. Exploring these was good fun, and mostly not too scary, although I did have a lingering feeling that a slight misjudgement of a wave could leave you with broken bones. Mostly the waves were fun too, and quite surfable in places. In retrospect though there were hardly any waves at all on the Saturday, and blue skies.

Sunday’s waves on the other hand were really quite something. Here’s Rik’s photo of me setting off into the relatively small waves of this sheltered inlet.

Further out beyond the breakers, we were bobbing up and down with some really mountainous waves rolling beneath us (the ones you kind of see in the distance). The wind was blowing onshore, but also slightly to one side, so we could get across to the next cove, staying well away from the cliffs this time, but we had to abandon attempts at getting back. That all felt fairly hardcore, although we were off the water and into a tearoom by midday like the bunch of OAPs we are.

photos by Rik Williams, stolen from his facebook album

I went to see a talk by super-kayaker Doug Ammons last night.  He flicked through slide photos of amazing wilderness locations and big rivers, while talking about his philosophies and the mindset needed for taking on these big whitewater challenges.  It was interesting and slightly hypnotic  (I think Francine found it more hypnotic than interesting)

Photos don’t really show the scale of things well. That’s why seeing fireworks for real, is always more impressive than photos of fireworks.  It’s true no?  But it works for landscape scenery too, and seemingly also for really big rivers.

There is also a classic problem, even when looking at a river for real, that if you’re viewing from really high up the valley side, it’s very difficult to judge whitewater. You see white rapids and you’re always tricked into thinking “Yeah that looks like it could be some nice whitewater” (when if fact you’re looking at a terrifying honking great deathfest)

A lot of Doug’s photos were from quite high up,  and although he had quite a few pictures with kayakers in, showing scale, it only really registered when he showed some video.   …”Ok so it’s *that* kind of whitewater we’re talking about“. …Absolutely insane. I won’t be paddling the Grand Canyon of the Stikine any time soon.

At the beginning he also showed a beautiful photo of “Agua Azul”. Amazing light blue colour of the water. That looked more tempting. Hang on….  no maybe not.

I’ve never been to a kayaking talk before, although I have been invited to a few (river rats used to organise a lot) Quite liked it. It’s a different way to spend a Friday night.

I can’t help feeling a little old when hanging around with Imperial College Canoe Club these days, but the “freshers trip” (first trip of the university year) is still an exciting time for freshers and older club members alike. Just at the time when all these new beginners are joining the club and nervously taking their first paddlestrokes on moving water, the weather turns really wet and the UK kayaking season steps into full swing. Beginner kayakers and peak river levels! This unfortunate combination occurrs every October. Personally I relish the extra challenge of advising newbies on how to stay upright, and fishing them out when they fail to do so.

This year was certainly challenging. We had a relatively high proportion of beginners arriving in the two bus loads and three car loads to the Lake District …and flood conditions which made the news!

Read the Freshers Trip 2008 Trip Report for the full story and see more photos. Happily the weekend passed without a hitch… well OK… without any serious incidents. All in all I’d say the kayaking season just kicked off in style! Awesome fun, but I’m aching and blisterred and bruised today.

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It’s funny how stressful things always seems to accumulate during the period in the run up to a holiday. This week’s been a bit frantic. I’ve ended up with a lot of work to finish off today, and now my PortalBuilder server has come up with a new and unexpected error message to thwart me.  Looks like I’ll have to give up on that. I’ll be leaving a semi-half-finished-non-operational mess behind.  That’s shame, but what the hell…. I’m going whitewater kayaking in the Alps for a week!

That’s right, I’m off kayaking, for the first time since January.  I feel a bit out of practice. I’m also feeling a little bit apprehensive because I will be the only one of the group in a silly little playboat. Everyone else will be in more heavyweight creek boats. I have visions of being left behind looping in a stopper while everyone else punches on through. The plan started out as just a small group, with at least half of us being of a “laze around in the sunshine, take it easy on the rivers, and have a relaxing holiday” persuasion. But the group has since expanded to seven people (I think), most of whom will be persuading me to stop being a wuss and take on some adrenaline challenges. Right now that feels like the last thing I need.

I will be spending a fair proportion of next week chilling in the Alpine sunshine with a plastic bidon of cheap french wine. Oh yes.

Because this is an oldies canoe club trip, not the usual imperial college uni group, we won’t be doing the usual cheapo slumming on a campsite. No no. We have a chalet booked. Very posh.

I ordered myself a new camera. I had to, because last weekend my nice little Casio Exilim became very broken (dropped!) I decided it would be too unimaginative to order another ordinary compact camera, so I pondered SLRs (But they’re too big for carrying everywhere, and I like to carry my camera everywhere), and I pondered a camera-phone (but I don’t want a contract, so they’re quite expensive. Second-hand on ebay could be a good option, but I need to spend more time researching).  Instead I’ve gone for a waterproof camera. Fairly ordinary compact, and not as beautiful as the Exilim, but great for kayaking! At least I hope it is waterproof. Some of the user reviews are saying that it broke as soon as they tried it underwater. I haven’t taken delivery of the camera yet. Picking it up a few hours before I set off on holiday this evening. So this is another thing I’m stressing about this week.

Never mind.  Deep breaths….  Sunshine, mountains, beers and BBQs…   mmmm

[This was originally a top level harrywood.co.uk website section, written approximately 2007. Moved to the blog archive]

Whitewater kayaking is a big hobby of mine. I have been kayaking fairly regularly for the past five years. This is thanks to the good people at Imperial College Canoe Club who lent me the necessary equipment, taught me the necessary skills, drove me to the necessary rivers, and fed me the necessary beer/chilli fuel. It always impresses me that this group of people can collectively organise the club and the trips, coping with complex logistics and unforseen circumstances, maintaining a culture of sensible attitudes towards whitewater saftey, and at the same time have a whole lot of fun.

I’ve also been whitewater kayaking with Kanu Club Limmat while I was working in Switzlerland. I went along to the local club in Baden, not really knowing what to expect. Happily I met a friendly bunch of Swiss kayakers. They were older than me, with big moustaches and families and such things. I had a lot of fun with them though. We did some hardcore alpine whitewater on a couple of weekend trips, and what’s more, it turned out the local river Limmat had some interesting playspots, including a wave which can get very big. I took a trashing on it, during my final run, and returned to London in shame.