I’ll tell you about the camp and the overall experience next time but for now, let’s do the watersports activities at my weekend on Exmoor last weekend. Girlguiding SWE do an annual event there, where you get to try out six watersports plus you get a range of shore activities including climbing, archery and geocaching.… More Wet & Wild at Wimbleball: A Watersports Weekend
I planned to write a post in July about how I’m a kayaking instructor, guys! and that post is still coming, I (more or less) promise – but it won’t be this summer. You might have heard my kayaking story a few times. I’ve done a few half-day sit-on-tops tours on the open sea, I graduated… More My 2022 kayaking and wild swimming plans
Over the years, many people have bemoaned the lack of adult Brownie badges. One in four women in the UK have been involved in Girlguiding at some point in their lives and anyone who’s ever earned a badge as a Brownie or a Guide feels, however deep down in their soul it is, that it’s… More I did my Rebel Water Sports badge!
I’ve tried to write this before and after the third draft, I realised I was coming at it from the wrong angle. It’s not about me spending the summer paddling, it’s about personal development and learning new skills, and in particular for people in and around travel and adventure! I’ve upped my paddle skills this… More Personal development and learning new skills, for travellers & adventurers
On Friday I went out for my long-awaited night navigation by sea kayak, which is the mysterious thing I had to practice sea kayaking for in September. The October weather smiled down on us. The run of wind and rain and grey skies vanished literally just for the evening and we set out onto a glassy… More Serenity, sunset and shooting stars: night navigation by sea kayak
I’ve been kayaking before. I’ve been kayaking on the sea before – in fact, I’ve only ever been kayaking on the sea. But this post is about learning to kayak on a closed cockpit sea kayak with a spraydeck. The reason is there’s a thing I wanted to do but it’s only available to groups… More Learning to paddle a sea kayak
If you haven’t read Monday’s post on how I fared with my Discover Award, go and read that now. Then come back here and see how the Explore Award went. I said last time that Antz wanted me to do a bow rescue, to hang upside down under a closed cockpit kayak and that I… More … and then I got my Explore Award!
I’ve done a little bit of kayaking before and while I’m not overburdened with talent at it, I’d decided kayaking suits me far better than sailing did. So much so that I decided back in 2017 to get my One Star Award. I got as far as booking it and then the group that actually… More I went kayaking and got my Discover Award!
Last June, on my way to my camping weekend in north Devon, I bought an inflatable kayak from the the magical middle aisle at Lidl. I didn’t try it out in Devon; I have enough sense to recognise that water wild and fierce enough for surfing isn’t going to be good for inflatable kayaking and… More Stay At Home Storytelling: how to set out to sea in an inflatable kayak
If you’ve read my posts about my previous kayaking adventures, you may have noticed I have something of a love-hate relationship with the sport. I liiiike it… but I’m not very good at it and I don’t like the sea. Why not use rivers and lakes for your early kayaking experiments instead of leaping straight… More I went sea kayaking and I didn’t capsize