Thursday 24 May 2012
It is fair to say that tonight's paddle is what I consider to be exactly what I want from kayaking. We know that putting in the miles against the tide and wind is good for our fitness, technique and resilliance, but this evening we paddled out of Lymington from the RNLI slipway and I'm not sure I saw a single wave the whole way. What's more, it was a fantastic evening, it felt like the start of summer.
There was the slightest of breezes near the shore, but there were plenty of yachts in The Solent with their sails brimming with wind and enjoying an pleasent evening on the water.
We headed out into The Solent, steering west from Lymington. Bizarrely we couldn't see the Isle Of Wight, despite it being a lovely evening, because of a weird haze. The Red Funnel Ferry disappeared into a sort of Bermuda-triangle type fog. We can only assume that it got to Yarmouth in one piece, I certainly didn't hear any reports of a ferry disappearing that evening.
We paddled along at a steady pace, through a bit of a weedy area off what appeared to be a nature reserve, and continued for about 45 minutes before turning back.
Our plan is very much to have short paddles of 4-6 miles on a Thursday evening, more of a loosener for our long Sunday paddles, just to help build up fitness and technique. This will be even more important once our sea kayaks arrive because we will only have a short time to get used to them.
As we headed back into Lymington a procession of yachts overtook us at a gentle pace and we had to stay land-side of the buoys to ensure we didn't get in their way.
We landed back at the RNLI and then, I'm afraid to say, spend a very nice 45 minutes having a pint and a bag of crisps at The Mayflower, sat outside in the garden there. Interestingly the lad collecting glasses was the spitting image of Clark Kent, which was fitting given that it was such a "super" evening (oh for pity's sake!!! My apologies to regular readers, it won't happen again).
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