My first time in a sea kayak

course
anglesey
sea
Published

June 9, 2018

After years of thinking I’d quite like to try that sea kayaking thing, I decided to I book an Intromediate sea kayaking course with Sea Kayaking Anglesey. At the time it was run by Phil Clegg but I had Stu Leslie as my guide.

I was late to the briefing as I got very lost around Anglesey Outdoors but Stuart was very chill, especially as there were only two of us booked onto the course.

Stuart taught us all the basics (going straight, turning etc) as well as the local legends (the Scooby Doo house). I didn’t have very good control of the boat and was definitely the weaker of the two students.

I didn’t have any accommodation booked that evening (my campervan had a last minute emergency) so I had optimistically brought my bivvy bag, planning to sleep out somewhere. Stuart suggested his favourite spot, Ynys y Fyddlin on the North West coast of Anglesey. It was a beautiful, quiet remote spot and I was treated to a lovely sunset. However, I was woken in the middle of the night by very loud rave music. Disoriented, I stood up and looked around to see if it could possibly coming from Holyhead. Surely that was too far away!

The next morning, after watching a seal eat his breakfast, I drove back down towards Holyhead and spotted hundreds of tents a few miles away. It turns out there was an electro music festival happening (Gottwood). The wind direction must have changed in the night. When I told Stu, he was mortified. I still had a lovely evening.