St Davids: Seals, Waves, Bishops and Sea sickness

 
Me and Dinny, after much deliberating in the weeks running up to this trip, decided to do the classic sea paddle, the “Bishops and Clerks.” Reading the guidebook it shows you a pretty red line, which way to go and a few comments along the lines of “a committing paddle“, “if the sea looks bumpy when you can [...]

St Davids – cake report

Maybe someone will post a paddling report or a weather report or a surf report. This is the cake report from Helen, Laura, Chris, Leo and Anna. We listened to the Welsh National Orchestra practice some nice music in the Cathedral. Then we ate this:

It is chocolate and walnut brownie from “The Refectory.” It is very hard to choose between this [...]

Washburn

Ade, Dan and I had two very pleasant runs down the Washburn yesterday, what a lovely May evening. We bumped into the uni contigent long enough for them to witness my technical “drop-paddles-while-in-an-eddie-and-then-get-wet-scrambling-for-the-bank.” Not a swim. Oh no. The rest of the trip was uneventful, cos I followed Dan’s perfect lines. Cheers Ade for mending [...]

Porto: The search for tea

Me and Cath went to Portugal second city Porto the home of Port wine.
After catching the Ryanair from Liverpool which landed 50 mins ahead of schedule due to strong tail-wind then taking a taxi from the airport to our accommodation we realised there are bigger nutters out there than me 

Nelly the elephant packed her trunk

Oh dear, Ressuscie-Annie is looking a bit peaky. Has she had a terrible accident with a marker pen? Goodness, she’s not responding to our questions, even when we flick her ear in an irritating way…..

After all the usual checks (see whole article), we start CPR at 30 compressions then 2 breaths.
Handy Hint of the day: 30 [...]

Saints

 
Saint David: patron saint of Wales. Saint Justinian: lived on Ramsay Island. Saint Eusoria: saint of nice weather. There is no saint of “The Bitches.” St Walburga: saint of “dogs, rabies and hydrophobia.” St Isidore of Seville: saint of surfing…the internet. There is no patron saint of “White Stuff” or “Fatface,” but San Juan Bosco is the patron saint of [...]

Look-in-to-my-eyes, in to my eyes, don’t look around my eyes..

Sue and me went on a BCU whitewater course at the weekend, at Canolfan Tryweryn. The course was run by Tom Parker and Paul Targett. Definitely recommend it.  We learned many things and swam a lot.
One thing they mentioned which I’d never thought about, was the importance of eye contact and body language when you are giving instructions [...]

Claire’s London Marathon

Pics of Claire and Ade running this year’s London Marathon, April. Claire ran for the charity “Young minds,” (donate via justgiving).

Claire:  
“I had a great day on sunday despite the heat
and am pleased to say I managed to run the
whole way round (however slowly at times!)
and finished in 4 hours 52.
I really appreciate all your sponsorship
and I know [...]

Shiney New Kit and Having Sue for Dinner

Well for those that dont know, I’ve had finals recently, and after taking half of them, a break from revison was in order. So I went window shoping in a kayak shop. (Looking back I feel a bit silly now, I should have gone to a glass shop for windows). So me and Joe (some of you [...]

Babushka book review

Buy it at Amazon 
‘Barbed Wire & Babushkas’ by Paul Grogan. Two English kayakers set off to run the Amur river of Siberia, source to sea. Thats over 4000km of mosquitos, forests and surreal bureaucratic barriers - the Amur is a sensitive China-Russia border. It can only really be paddled by people who are able to talk themselves out of various “AK47″ situations and [...]

Anglesey Weekend – Sun, Sea and Seals

(27th-29th April) 
After loading and unloading Penny’s car for only the sixth time we finally managed to pack all the paraphernalia required for a top weekend in Anglesey. With me comfortably lodged between a windsurf sail and a paddle we were off! First, through the Wirral’s “ring of steel” to follow the route of the North wales visual telegraph, across one of [...]

Focus on First Aid

Upcoming aquatic first aid course is at Liverpool University Guild training room, Monday 14th and Monday 21st May,  7pm-9pm. Usually we just tag along to local club FOA’s courses, but those are often in the outskirts, which is difficult for the students in terms of transport. For that reason, this one has been organised in the Guild.
 There may be one [...]