Two years later. Lidl had inflatable kayaks and I bought one. I was actually on my way to North Devon at the time. Now, maybe an inflatable kayak wasn’t a great idea but I’d been out twice by then and I’ve been seeing the local news all my life. I knew that there were certain safety precautions I needed to take. Number one was to not even think about floating this thing on the beaches of North Devon. They’re not necessarily bad places to kayak but I’d never done and knew nothing about them. No, I was going to go to Studland when I got home. It’s very sheltered and it’s very shallow. I’d go on a calm day and if the worst came to the worst, I would just flop out, stand up and walk back to shore.
But it had been more than two years since my last trip. What if I was remembering it wrong? What if there were details I just didn’t know? Ok, best thing to do was book a trip in a real kayak with a real instructor and try out my bit of sea with a fresh mind. So that’s what I did. I went off with the same company on the same trip as the previous two. This time I was keeping more of an eye on things. I noted and liked the wetsuit – a wetsuit would definitely give me more buoyancy if I ended up in the water. Get a wetsuit. Get this wetsuit. Get a buoyancy aid, of course! Don’t even think about setting off in an inflatable boat on the actual sea without a buoyancy aid! Have someone on shore keeping an eye on me.
Studland was as shallow as I remembered and it was calm. I’d been expecting calm and yet, if I look back, I don’t think either of my previous trips had actually had beautiful still waters. They’d both been breezy chilly miserable days. This one was blue sky! My partner today was the father of a daughter about my age and although he had trouble with the kayak’s seat back, he was a good paddler – and to my surprise, so was I. Of course, we were still struggling with the fact that there’s enough nature going on to knock you off course, so we utterly failed at kayaking in a straight line and we “tacked all the way to Old Harry”.
Today was low tide. That meant getting through the gap in Old Harry would be bad for the bottoms of the kayaks and it was choppy on the other side. What’s new? But we didn’t go through. We landed on Old Harry, had a little geology lesson and little lesson in seabirds and marine conservation zones, spied oystercatchers and egrets and gulls but didn’t see any of the local seahorses. And then it was time to go back. My partner and I raced his daughter and her partner – again, with no one actually saying we were racing. Something had shifted in the tide or the wind and we had no trouble with the steering. I think today was the day when I finally got kayaking. Some part of me knew it was in there but it took a third attempt out on the water to actually find it. I guess part of it was that for the first time, I wasn’t put in water that was too scary for my skill and confidence levels. Now I knew enough to have a go in the inflatable kayak.
Bumblebee Paddles 