Calm Sea Kayaking

The start of this week it was wet and wild. Up to Force 9 on the coast (extremely strong) and lots of rain. The rivers rose and I got out on the Ogwen twice, Conwy, Nantgwryd, Dwyfor, Glaslyn. At times there was lots and lots of water.

This weekend though all change. No wind, blue skies and warm. Fortunately I was working on a Sea Kayak course for PYB. The aim of the weekend was fun and ideally do a bit of wildlife spotting.

Day 1 we headed to Rhoscolyn. Played in the tidal flows around the beacon, through the arches, stared up at the blow hole, into the cave, saw a seal, watched a Chough (bird with red beak and legs) and a rather large jellyfish.

Day 2 South Stack. Yesterday may of been very good but today was a little bit better. Past some cliffs, through the race at Penrhyn Mawr, past a few caves, rock hopping towards South Stack, under the bridge, felt many Razorbills and Guilemots fly past, spotted a lone Puffin then just before the relatively boring paddle across Abrahams Bosom got to follow a pod of 10 (possibly more) Dolphins.

Everyone is happy.

Coasteering and Sea Level Traversing

Over the weekend we had two groups in, both having fun coasteering on Anglesey and sea level traversing. These activities are excellent ways to involve a varied group in something fun and adventurous.

The coasteering is all about getting wet, with jumps, caves, waves and currents as you journey along the coastline.

Sea level traversing uses ropes to create cliplines focusing on climbing up and down the cliffs and zip lines to take you across the zawns.

There was a fair swell over the weekend which limited the amount of coasteering that could be done. We picked sheltered zawns to play in, but even these had the odd sizeable wave coming through. The sea level traversing was extra exciting with large crashing waves beneath our feet.

The rivers are up.

After all the dry and sunny weather it seemed unlikely that I would be on the rivers at the end of the week.

Some localised rain brought up the Llugwy, Lledr and Conwy today, with all of them at a good medium level. We ran the lower Llugwy then the Conwy this afternoon just to stretch the arms.

As the general saturation levels are currently quite low they seemed to be dropping reasonably quickly so would probably need a bit of a top-up to be paddleable tomorrow.