on the water and heading clockwise around ireland

Some of you reading this will have known about this blog for a while but I’ve sent out an email to pretty much everyone I know today so one or two more people might be checking this out.

My jaunt around Ireland by sea kayak is up and running. Or down and paddling.

With the first 120 miles down – a rather zig-zagged 120 miles so not that impressive on the map, but still a tenth or so of the total in eight good paddling days – I’m flagging up my intention of making a good attempt to get around the full 1,200 miles of coastline over the summer.


Success in making it the full distance around will depend on moderate to good weather for the coming months. I’m paddling alone and have a fair idea of my abilities which are adequate for this kind of lark with only with the proviso that my safety net is pretty much unlimited time so I can sit out marginal conditions on shore. And if it turns into a relentlessly windy summer with continual poor sea conditions I’ll just be going on a long coastal paddle and abandoning the attempt to get right round.

I’m going clockwise – as everyone does – to take advantage of prevailing south westerly winds, favourable currents and all other free lifts. So – ha! Hubris! – the winds have mainly unexpected northerlies, and north easterlies and not much help at all; the advantages have been that they have been light most of the time so not an actual hinderance either. In fact I’ve had pretty much all good weather only being forced off the water once by wind and wave conditions (and I may have been over-cautious, but that’s the way one is paddling alone).

I left Rineen in Castlehaven, County Cork on Saturday 9th June heading west. As always the whole trip nearly foundered at the packing stage. Too much stuff or too small a kayak. So spent three hours compressing stuff into fore, aft and central compartments, then strapping stuff on deck and just leaving what remained. Not a bad approach to life. Luckily – though I could pretend good planning, rather than luck – even with all this faffing around I was on the water in time to catch the east-west tidal stream and so paddled off with minimum effort through my familiar kayaking waters towards Baltimore.

I paddled in straight lines taking me a few miles offshore on the basis that I might as well save energy by taking shortest route and I’m going to have to do some long off shore paddles along the way so I might as well enjoy them from the start. Going through Flea Sound I surprised two nudists splayed in the sun on Horse Island; then at the Stags rocks I surprised a bunch of seals doing pretty much the same thing.

Arrived in Baltimore in good time and headed over to Sherkin Island. I was going to the RTE Vandeburgh Quartet concert in the Islander hotel but ended up in the Jolly Roger for the tail end of a two day wedding. I was neither invited nor dressed for the occasion but that’s rarely stopped me from joining in fun. Chicken – whom I haven’t seen for years – was on piano. A bit of singing later I finally staggled (what paddlers do after a few wines) a bit further up the coast and landed to camp for the night. This is when I realised that the trip is mainly going to consist of packing and unpacking the same stuff over and over and over and over and over and over….

The next morning I packed everything up again – making some crucial changes. It for instance seemed a smarter idea to have my flares and VHF radio on deck, rather than packed away in the bows behind all my other kit. Equally I didn’t need the tent on deck. This is the kind of stuff that one works out as one goes along. By the third day I’d rationalised packing thereby making more space, clearing the decks pretty much, finding the logical place for everything and speeding up the whole process. Still there is going to be a lot of kit handling and carrying and packing on this trip.

In the light of the above it’s good that these first days were shakedown trips. The 10th I spent kayaking around Baltimore, Sherkin, and Heir Island to research a magazine piece on the islands of Roaringwater Bay. Camped out on East Skeam island, with goats for company, and on the 11th Monday started the trip proper.

A good long run down the bay to Crookhaven. I’m an IMRAY chart junky, now, poring over symbols, coastal features, shoals, rocks and all the other stuff. Above all I’m a tidal diamonds and current arrows obsessive – these show which way the sea is flowing around Ireland at any given time. Time things right and one is carried along at anything up to a knot or more in the direction you want to go in. Get it wrong and you are fighting the same speed, doing twice as much work to go less distance. Get it really wrong and you can get into a race that’s flowing against you far faster than you can paddle. This is good stuff to know and work with. So my timetable is much more a tidetable for the trip.

My other constant are the sea forecasts. I get the first Radio 4 one at 0520, and the next one from RTE at 0600, then various through the day on the VHF marine band from coastal stations and then go to sleep programmed to wake up at 0050 for the last Radio 4 Shipping forecast. The litany of sea areas is both soothing and comic (I always think of Rowan Atkinson reading out the school register in The Secret Policeman’s Ball – ‘Humber, Cromarty, Fiiiiitzroy, Lundy, Dogger, Dogger, Do-GGER?’

Basking shark are in early this year – a sign of good weather as noted previously – so I was pleased to see the two fins ahead of me, the back and tail triangles lazily knifing through the water. Then I realised that they were closer than I’d thought and so the owner of said fins was much smaller than I’d imagined; too small to be a basking shark, I think. I got close enough before the fish dived to catch a glimpse of paleish under belly, whilst the fins were a matt black-blue and about four feet apart. I’d guess it was a medium sized blue shark, and probably some sign of climatic change having it lolling around on the surface.

Chowder and sandwiches in Crookhaven before heading round the promontory to the small beach where last year’s attempt to kayak around Ireland stopped dead. Pretty much at this time of the year we’d been camped out for a few days on the rather miserable beach waiting for wind and rain to die down enough to give a fair shot at getting around Mizen Head. With a forecast for more days of grey and gloom we stored the kayaks and headed back to a roof, hot showers and creature comforts. Twelve hours later I was in intensive care with various tubes running in and out of me, and facing ten days of Nil By Mouth as the medics tried to work out what drugs would work. Kayaking was off the cards for rest of the summer whilst I waited for surgery – finally done in December and a bit more of a knock than I expected, leaving me shuffling around with a walking stick for a few comical weeks. “Whilst you’re in there taking stuff out, have a look around and see if anything else is looking dodgy,” I suggested to the medics come surgery, “and if it is then take it out as well whilst you’ve got things open – the liver, maybe, and possibly the heart.” Anyway, it was all a bit of an upset in the scheme of things, and so this small beach and actually getting around the Mizen loomed large in the success of the second attempt to head off around Ireland.

The Mizen is Ireland’s most southerly point, which for those rounding it poses some sea problems. Basically strong currents heading south west from the Atlantic arrive at the Mizen and can’t decide where to go. That’s water molecules for you – like PD (Lib Dem for non-Irish readers) voters, unsure where they want to go, so given to milling around and getting confused. At the Mizen the water gets really confused first going one way and then the next, so currents and waves and the rest of the wet stuff just slaps into each other. At it’s most excited you get standing waves which instead of rolling nicely along in one direction just shoot straight up into the air. If one’s in a small boat, or a kayak, and on top of one of these one ends up like a ping-pong ball dancing on a spout of water like in fairground shooting galleries.

Early on the morning of the 12th in grey and blustery conditions I went out for a look at the Mizen and to see if it was doable. I kind of thought that it wouldn’t be. It was wet and wavy on the way across Barleycove and the Mizen was looking unpleasantly splashy with big rollers, smaller waves on top of them and a wind that was going up and down. Perhaps bearing in mind that I’d have to go back to the same little beach again, and that maybe my life would become a Groundhog Day of never getting around the Mizen. Perhaps with a rather unprofessional sense of desperation. And perhaps with a more commendable assessment of the conditions and finding them on the edge of what I’d like to be out in generally, I put out of my mind the unknown and kept going, taking each wave as it came. Exhilarating. The kayak bobbed and surfed and rolled and I paddled. I looked up at the lighthouse – the previous year I’d been up there looking down at the sea on a fine summery day and saw a trawler making heavy weather of the sea even then and wondered what it would be like to paddle through it. Well, now I know; a lot of fun.

Getting round the Mizen was a great boost. Maybe that’s the point where the trip felt like it had become and that there was maybe a chance of getting right round Ireland. But to be truthful I was exceptionally lucky with the weather; it may have been cold and grey but the wind stayed breezy rather than worse and the waves were no worse than I’d willingly gone out and played in on many a blustery day. It was the commitment needed to head off around the several miles of headland knowing that turning back would be difficult and there was nowhere to land if the wind got up, or I found conditions more than I could handle. But doing a trip like this is a constant juggling of hard information about weather, ones own abilities, tides and so forth, along with unknowns like what the weather might do in the next hours or what’s around the next headland and then based on that a elating sense of commitment. Commitment, of course, being something that I’m not good at, life providing, as it where, so many opportunities to turn back, change course or land short of ones destination. So it is genuinely elating to make a decision and then know that whatever happens next one has to stick with it. Elating to find that its possible to find the strength and self-faith to keep going, and better to take each moment as it comes and indeed live life to the full in that moment and see the beauty of where one is even if it’s only being slapped in the face by a salty douche of cold water. Right, enough of the soulful, inner-voyage stuff. I was just bloody glad to get around the Mizen with so little trouble and to get so lucky with the weather.

Good planning in my past ensured that I have a god-daughter living on Sheep’s Head. I paddled across the bay and pulled into Caher, a small cove and quay. Tired after my Mizen epiphany and with a sudden rolling back of the clouds and warm sunshine, I quickly unpacked gear, cooked up some food, left a message for Holly saying I was just down the coast from them and then fell asleep on the warm stones. Then – this is the kind of elation-shattering idiocy that takes away any kudos for getting around the Mizen – I woke up to find that I hadn’t pulled up my kayak far enough. It was floating off shore a few hundred yards out and picking up speed towards the horizon on the offshore breeze. Hilariously my first, sleep addled thought was that some idiot had let a kayak get loose, and how pleasing and happy it looked out there, and how stupid they’d feel and how I could paddle out and rescue it. Then the blood-draining realisation. It’s the kind of situation that can go from farce to tragedy quickly; my first thought was to run down the rocks, dive in and swim out and pick it up. There were two flaws with this plan – I probably couldn’t swim fast enough to catch up, and even if I did I would then be hanging on the side of a kayak without a paddle to allow me to roll up and paddle back to shore. Both would have been poor scenarios. I actually ran around the cove a bit cursing until I found a sit-on kayak above the quay – owned by some lads at a nearby farm I was told later, so a BIG THANK you to them, for letting me use it to paddle out and pick up the errant kayak and return to shore with no tragedy.

In a reversal of the usual god-parent/god-daughter relationship Holly, Kate and Alex provided me with a jolly good day out. A hot shower (leaving which required far more will power than rounding the Mizen), food, wine, guitars to play and then a trip to the pub. I realised that being at ‘home’ as it were on this trip round Ireland the expedition feel is going to be – happily – compromised by the comfort of friends rather than the more usual company of strangers. It’s also going to make my trip a bit longer than most other round-Ireland paddlers.

I was going to camp, but – honestly – why bother when there’s a bed on offer. And breakfast. And sandwiches being made for my packed-lunch. Yes, I felt more and more like some schoolboy setting off on an awfully big adventure rather than an adult making a serious trip with media potential and opportunities to learn more about himself. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fueled by cheese sandwiches I rounded Sheeps Head (also visited from the land side on many occasions to stare down from the heights at the waters below) and set a straight course for the end of the Beara Peninsula. This was about 12 miles of open sea crossing but with a good weather forecast, balmy white clouded sky and then sun, lovely big rollers but only a rippling of waves. The difference between rollers and waves are like the difference between hills and rocks; the former are lovely smooth huge humps that sweep under one barely wobbling the kayak but lifting one yards up into the air and then lowering one down the far side. The latter are nasty sharp little buggers that slap the kayak and splash and make everything wobbly. Rollers = benign. Waves = malign. And what’s really nasty is getting waves on rollers. There are the rollers doing their nice gentle slopes thing and then you’ve got waves like a scattering of scree all over them, or breaking on their tops and threatening to send one tumbling down into the abyss and all very nasty. But today was a day of rollers. I saw my first puffin of the trip. The puffin’s expression suggested that s/he had seen her first bright yellow kayak, and wasn’t at all sure what to make of something even more colourful in the nose department than she was. Actually it could have been my nose that vied with hers for colour – despite it not having been ‘sunny’ much over the past days I’d still managed to get sunburnt across nose and cheeks. Coupled with the kind of sea going laziness that turns a man to beardgrowing I was perhaps not looking my best. Even to a puffin.

There were also shearwaters, petrels and gannets – the former two being birds of the offshore that mark those points where I’m several or more miles from the nearest land. Porpoise too popped up on a few occasions; not amusing Flipper types at all, the common harbour porpoise but shy, small, sinuous, sleek, black fellas that pop up to breath and then disappear. They remind me of a black cat bounding through snow drifts.

Weather was blowing up a bit by the time I got to the peninsula and I looked for a landing spot; this is one of the trip constants and dangers. So much of this coast is cliffs with no place to stop for miles that one is constantly heading for the one landing place in long, long stretches of rock, or noting even just possible landing places in case of having to make an emergency stop. I found a stony beach at full high tide (also a good time to get off the water before the flow changed against me) and pulled off and set up camp. And then the sun came out. Luxury. Joy. This was the whole point of the trip. I put everything out to dry, made tea, wandered around the rocks looking for the exact piece of plastic tubing needed to make the joint in my spare paddles (made by sawing up a one-piece paddle on the day I left so they’d fit on the back deck, but without a coherent idea of how I’d turn them back into one piece come the need). I found exactly what was needed amongst tons of plastic, weed, wood and other odds and ends thrown up by the sea on this south west facing beach. And also a small yellow plastic duck of the exact same hue as the kayak and of similar buoyant properties; I’ve cable-tied it to the bow, so I now have a figure-head.

The next day was filthy; wet, cold and windy. I gamely set off into rollers with waves breaking off them to round Crow Head and go through Dursey Sound. Dursey Sound has a bit of a Mizen reputation. This time my mind worked differently under sea challenge. Though quite happy ploughing through the waves when I spied a very small cut in the rocks that seemed to offer shelter and a landing I turned in, rolling great waves into a sudden calm where a small quay, an almost vertical slipway chipped through the rocks and a small lobster boat welcomed me. It was still early in the day but I pulled everything out and sat on the quay in pouring rain and thought it was all pretty miserable. So I decided to stop. I left the kayak loaded with all the stuff up in the ditch and walked off to Allihies, one of Ireland’s nicest little villages (though perhaps this trip will show me many more contenders for the championship). A seven mile hike as it turned out, carrying two dry-bags which are an inconvenient package at the best of times. But worth every foot fall. With a few hours I was in a pub with a huge steak, a pint of Murphys and steaming nicely. The rain continued. I lost enthusiasm for getting back to the kayak and camping out. I had another Murphy’s and gained greater enthusiasm for NOT going back to the kayak and camping out. So moved into the next door hostel; room to myself, a second huge meal, reading the Irish Times and doing the crossword, wandering down to the pub that I hadn’t had a drink in thus far, and generally enjoying my status as an ex-round-Ireland kayakist.

On the 15th June I woke at 0500, got up, listened to the shipping forecast – not bad at all – looked out on a beautiful calm day with views out to the twin pyramids of the Skellig Rocks (gannets and monks and Celtic Golden Age are the rock’s USPs). My resolve had returned, as it needed to just to get me the seven miles back to the kayak now carrying the two dry bags, and a few litres of water and a bag of stores. I lowered the loaded kayak down the slip on lengths of ropes, had a chat with Kevin whose lobster boat it was (who pointed me to a spring of water coming out of a pipe in nearby bank, obviating the need for me carrying several kilos of water seven miles whilst wearing a pair of kayaking sandals). It felt good to be on the sea again – which was a relief. The swell had gone down and the waves were fresh and playful despite a bit of a strong breeze. I came up to Dursey Island as the fame cable car began inching its way across the gap. But the waiting passengers were all staring into the water far below the car station. As I paddled into the sound I first heard then saw a boiling of fish as shoals of sprats (I guess) bubbled up and splattered and splashed across the surface. And in the whorls and eddies of the slack tide current two huge fins slid through the water; my first basking shark of the trip. Indeed the first one I’ve seen for years – the last time was back in the 80s when three came into Oysterhaven Bay and I took out a crash boat to them and dived overboard with a face mask and flippers to swim with them; the experience was awesome just because of their huge size. They are off course the ‘rollers’ of the shark world being plankton feeders and though the second largest fish species in the world totally benign, compared to the toothed sharks that are the malign ‘waves’ of the piscine world. But that size is impressive, that and their slow purposeful swim, like watching an elephant feeding through tall grass.

Another long open sea crossing from Dursey to the Iveragh Peninsula (The Ring of Kerry if you’re American and on a bus tour). This was a double landmark; at some point after several hours of paddling I left County Cork and entered the Kingdom of Kerry, and – secondly - this strange experience of being at sea, far out at sea, in a small piece of Czech roto-moulded plastic paddling slowly foot by foot across miles of water suddenly seemed ‘normal.’ This normalisation of the strange is a special feeling in all long trips. I’ve had it before cycling across the Sahara, walking pilgrims routes and heading off on horses across bits of South America, Morocco, Kyrgyzstan or Australia; one day, hopefully early on, you wake up and just ‘go to work.’ This doesn’t mean that one doesn’t get apprehensive, or bored, or uncomfortable or downright fed-up, scared and miserable all at the same time, but the framework is ‘normal.’ It’s not normal for the boats I meet off-shore; I’ve managed to catch a few by surprise, especially fishing boats that aren’t moving – suddenly shouting ‘Hello’ from the water certainly makes people jump a bit.

Even though this long crossing felt ‘normal’ I was still aware of the distance and could see weather changes happening on shore. I was made apprehensive by my VHF radio that suddenly burst into voice (this always makes ME jump and look around). Here’s how the marine services work. There is Channel 16 which you leave your radio tuned to and this where you can send out a Mayday, or contact the coast guards and other groovy stuff. But to keep the channel open for Maydays only the first alert goes out on Channel 16 before you’re directed to another channel for the actual message or for conversation. My VHF came off ebay and seemed to work fine but was missing channels – and especially all the channels needed for listening to weather reports. Weird or what. But also pretty annoying; there are daily weather reports at fixed times, when a coastguard (they all have lovely reassuring voices) comes on to Channel 16 and says ‘Here is the weather forecast, Cork and Kinsale go to channel 24, Mizen go to channel 26, Valentia go to Channel 4…’ and then goes silent whilst everybody goes to the relative channel where the actual weather forecast is given out. Except I can’t go there as those are all the channels I can’t get.

Worse than irritating is the sudden voice on Channel 16 declaring a ‘small craft warning.’ I off course can’t get to the relevant channel to follow up and find what the SCW is for. I’m several miles from land in any direction and don’t know whether to expect a sudden increase in wind from ahead, behind, or the side; each of these might suggest a differing course of action. I’d be better of not knowing that something was coming up and not knowing what it is. I’d been heading for Bolus Head on a favourable current and had about three hours of paddling still ahead but decided to head to Deenish Island a hour or so away, discretion being the better part of valour and all that. Good decision. The wind strengthened from ahead, waves started kicking up and the last half hour was squally and unpleasant. Plus the island was a joy. A little cove that I pulled up on, some flat, soft grass to erect my tent and just in time to listen to the shipping forecast on the radio and found that I’d done exactly the right thing, before listening to the News Quiz with a nice cup of tea. During RTE’s excellent arts programme I was surprised by the use of a strange sound effect to illustrate a piece on chick lit or some such; a powerful motor whining and humming.

It was a powerful motor whining and humming. Looking out of my tent I saw the antenna of a RIB – the kind that the coastguard use. Which was my first thought – one always hopes that one of the yachts that sees one paddling along in huge swells far out to sea doesn’t get the wrong idea and report one as in trouble. (Conversely, I suppose, one might hope that if one was in trouble far out to sea – having lost both sets of paddles, say, or in the water - that a passing yacht might notice and report one to the coastguard rather than thinking one was having a sea-borne picnic or a swim and would be climbing back in and starting ones engine soon and motoring back to land). Anyway, it wasn’t the coastguard. But a family complete with three sea-dogs. They I assumed were the owners and I was about to get fecked off the island. But a) they weren’t and b) they were a wonderful set of new neighbours who couldn’t think of anything nicer to do on a wet weekend than boat over from Adrigole where they run West Cork Sailing (www.westcorksailing.com) and camp out on a island for a few days with their two sons, Oishin and Rory (or that might be Ruarigh). Turned out – as happens all the time in Ireland – that we were only one degree of separation away from each other, as Niall and I had both worked with Oliver Hart at the Oysterhaven Centre back in Cork at different times. He also suggested the possible problem with my VHF – that it had got set on American channels somehow (hey, maybe that’s why it was cheap on E-bay) and that if I could only find the correct combination of buttons to press it would switch to International (its apparently one of those things where its America and ‘the rest of the world,’ like mobile phone channels and, uh, foreign policy). Well the great thing about kayaking around Ireland is one has lots of time on ones hands and so after much pressing of an infinite combination of buttons it suddenly popped back to international and I can now listen to weather forecasts, and hear trawlermen chatting away to each other and pick up the ‘securite’ announcements such as the ten foot, heavy log that is currently floating far off the West Cork coast).

I was serenaded through the night by petrels coming into their nests – for small birds they make a hell of a lot of noise. The next morning- rested despite the bird song - I set off into smallish waves and a light enough head wind. Still a bit of a stiff paddle to get to Bolus Head and the wind shadow. In close to the cliffs my companions are gulls and fulmars, shags and cormorants. I’m especially fond of fulmars for several reasons; indeed they’ve become something of an inspiration for me on this trip. Firstly they are both friendly and curious; noble virtues in a sea traveller – they glide in for a closer look and I always give them a cheerful ‘morning!’ or ‘Hello!’ Secondly, like me they’re a naturalised incomer to Ireland; for something so at home here its strange to think that the first fulmars only arrived in Ireland in the 1900s. And thirdly they’re pretty little things, though they have one rather amusing ‘fault’ – to get rid of salt they have a constantly dripping nose, and they come close enough for me to see the little sparkling drop of salty snot (it’s actually not much worse than a drop of water, but…) dangling off the end of their beaks (beak? bill? There’s the kind of thing I have the time to think about as I paddle along for hour after hour – when does a bird have a beak and when a bill?).

I got to Valencia Island in the afternoon and ran up the channel (it feels like a river after the sea) to Portmagee, where I hobbled ashore it always taking a few minutes for my legs to straighten out after five hours or so sitting in the same position, changed into shore clothes, pulled the kayak up high above the spring tide highest mark and went shopping. A Saturday Guardian, AND an Irish Times, some food, a spare bottle of wine to be laid down in the ship’s cellar. Then to a pub to eat a mound of lamb chops and chips. Before climbing back into the kayak and in the last hours of sun heading back to the sea and camping on a grassy headland looking out over the Skelligs now to the south west of me rather than the north west they’d been only the night before.

On 17th June I woke to an embarrassment of weather forecasts: two radio channels and the nearby Valentia coastguards. All, though, suggesting slightly different weather for the coming 24 hours making it difficult to plan where to head for. I wanted to get to the Dingle Peninsula but I was looking close on twenty miles of open sea crossing and the most pessimistic of the forecasts didn’t suggest that this was a good day. Equally the one I trusted most made it sound an okay day for a long passage. But, anyway, I was also tired after the previous day and didn’t feel like a long passage, and the muscles that had been cut through in surgery had been nagging the day before and my shoulder was stiff and my legs sore and this that and the other…so I decided to go out and take a look. Got out beyond Valentia Island and took a bearing on Dingle and checked the currents and felt the slight breeze and shrugged my – stiff – shoulders and went for it. At first it was all beer and skittles with shearwaters and gannets keeping me company and the sight of a large small whale popping up ahead (minke? Probably not, but something smaller that wasn’t as small as any of the dolphins), and a few distant yachts. But twenty miles is a long way and something weird happens to the scale of things at sea. For the first hour i pulled away from the coast at a rare old rate, with the Dingle peninsula seemingly getting closer by the minute and the Iveragh dropping behind me. The current seemed to be whisking me along and I was thinking in terms of a late lunch in Dingle town. This is the kind of mad thinking that gets one into trouble because the corollary of such optimism is an equal pessimism when after a couple of hours one realises that land is NOT getting closer, and that its going to take at least a couple of hours to even go back during which time the current can change and the wind blow up and I’ll be swept out to sea and end up in Barbados (that’s the optimism kicking in again, there), or Canada (pessimism, there).

The antidote to this is to just keep paddling along and stop expecting stuff. It’s all a bit bloody zen, if you ask me, but heigh ho, whatever it takes. So, I paddled on for hours with occasional joys to lighten things; shifting my legs the three or four inches to one side or another possible to ease cramps, a tin of mackerel in tomato sauce, a sip of water, another possible whale sighting. Then the weather got a bit grimmer – nothing to worry about, but a bit of a fresh head wind and waves growing to the point where they were splashing over the bow. And I got a bit tireder and began to wonder if I was really fit enough for this kind of lark, because one of the tenets of kayaking is having enough strength and stamina to just keep on paddling at full power for the hours that might be required to pull one through a turned current, or big waves or into a force 5 or 6 wind.

It seemed that I should have taken the least optimistic weather forecast as my working info (which is kind of a smart thing to do in life as well as kayaking), but i was keen to get across to Dingle because there was in all three weather forecasts a threat of bad, non-kayaking weather coming in that night and if I was going to be shorebound for a few days would prefer to be in Dingle with computers (hey! Here I am!), food, pubs, friends, and shelter than camped out on a wind and rain blasted headland. But again that’s not the kind of thinking that should drive kayaking decisions, but in truth it often is.

The joy of it all was that when the mass of land ahead was not getting closer and possibly even receeding and I began to wonder if I’d misread all the information on current directions and times and as I considered that I hadn’t really been paddling hard since the last summer, before surgery, or more accurately hadn’t been paddling at all at all since surgery and actually beginning this trip….the joy of it was that I began speeding up my paddling and found that I could keep going at that level and speed up progress enough to overcome the wind and the current and that within another hour of good strong paddling land was getting closer and I could count the windows in the houses that had only been whitish dots ahead of me for so long. Then I could make out fishing boats in shore. Then the white of a seagull flying against the cliffs. Then individual rocks. And the wind dropped and I stormed into Ventry Harbour.

It’s a great feeling looking back over an expanse of grey sea and seeing a distant smudge of headland and knowing that one’s had the strength of arm to inch ones way over the intervening distance and that one could have gone further too, if necessary. In fact paddling is very like walking in its scale and speed, though one is essentially walking on ones hands. I presume that a few months of this will turn me into the perfect mesomorph. Though so far I’ve got blisters, sunburn and stiff shoulders rather than the perfect physique, so maybe I’m just going to get more blistered, red and stiff.

With more good planning Kate and Aine – friends from Cork - were on the Peninsula and with a car. I bundled kayaking stuff into a kind man’s shed, put the kayak with a bunch of boats on the quay and put the rest into Aine’s car. Within minutes – minutes, can you imagine how distance measured in minutes feels to a man who’s got used to hours as the shortest unit of travel time, and is looking forward to months of hours – we were in Dingle, my stuff was piled into a room at the Rainbow Hostel and we were in town and listening to accordion and guitar tunes in the shop/pub opposite Johnny Foxe’s.

Predictions for today’s weather seem to have been accurate. Windy, cold, grey and rainy. Only the windy is really off putting for paddle frolics, but still its good to take a few days off and catch up on writing (this blog was meant to be a few hundred words of quick bringing up to date – I fear it’s slightly against the nature and immediacy of blogs to write lots, and that very few of those already few who have come to this site will have read this far; if you have, well done, and you’ll have almost first hand experience of the tenacity needed and monotony endured when paddling long stretches of water when the end never seems to get any closer….and the feeling of suddenly seeing the final point and knowing you’ve made it…