It’s been a pretty busy time in my little world… 2 weeks since my last little update and I’ve barely stopped.
My Desk — My office and secretary.
Monday to Friday I was working at Biblins Youth Camp for Mendip Outdoor Pursuits, taking groups of kids down through Monmouth and on to Redbrook in canoes and kayaks. All good fun on and off the water. I got to play with my new tarp as well for some proper open boating action. There was even some circus action…
Phil breathing fire.
Friday was a bit boring as my co-paddler Elena buggered off to a bit of a do that was going on at a local farm…
Sunday found me at the Glastonbury festival soaking up the atmosphere (and the cider) and kicking back to some superb tunes. The highlight was almost certainly giving it some glowstick loving to Groove Armada. Top stuff.
Cider Bus — 11am raver
Sun going down on the other stage
Tuesday and I was right back at on it with some more paddling on the river Yeo, again for Mendip OP and a bit of biking up on the Mendips with the gang from Palm/Dagger.
The rest of the week was taken with more freelance work before a trip to the big city of Bristol for light refreshment, a celebration of Hazel’s 21st, Elena’s 19th and my love of alcohol. Hangovers aplenty we set sail for North Devon in foul weather expecting the surf to be crap. It was messy, but out back was hayoooodge. Big air, big screams (from some of us), big beatings and big fun!! I stuck some of the biggest (luckiest) blunts I’ve ever accidently bounced into, and managed to tuck up and not get too beaten. The waves and wind were a bit much for some though, with a helicopter rescue of some surfers from the rocks at the Northern end. Say what you want, the conditions were brutal.
Huddled in the pissing rain in a leaky tent for the night we discussed plans for what to do with all the water. Sadly these had to based around only having playboats as the extra 200 miles needed to collect some creek boats were a few too many! Myself, Chris “Performance Kayaks” Georgiou and Elena had a couple of cracking runs down the Dart loop. It’s been years since I set out just to paddle the loop, and this is a shame. In low water its a load of crap, but with good levels it is superb, lots of fun waves to play on, and a few superb kickers to kickflop off. I’ve finally got my head round launching these moves, I’m now working on landing them!
The non-stop fun continues tomorrow with more freelancing and with luck good levels on the river Lyn.
Big “woop woop” to everyone who has ammused me in the last couple of weeks. Only two weeks until I set off for India… Patrick sends these words… CLICK
