At this point, I’ve had a little go at stand-up paddleboarding – and to be honest, discovered that I can’t stand up. Both times have been on Poole Park Lake, which is fairly salty, linked to the harbour on the other side of the railway line, fairly small and pretty shallow. I suspect it’s not as shallow as Poole Harbour itself – the average depth, if I remember rightly, is 48cm. Bearing in mind that the main channel for heavy shipping, cross-Channel ferries etc, is 6m deep (regularly dredged!), that means that a lot of the harbour is barely a wash of water over the mud, especially around the edges. So going to Roadford Lake was a bit of a psychological shock.
Roadford Lake is a reservoir. The internet says it’s about 40m deep but I seem to remember a chart up on the wall at reception monitoring the amount of water in there and I think it was about 90m deep that day. I don’t like deep water. I swam once in a five-metre swimming pool and that was definitely a quick dart out and back and then stay in the shallow end, thank you. A paddleboard is a particularly vulnerable craft. At least in a kayak you’re sitting in an actual boat – and looking back, the deepest I’ve ever kayaked in probably Christchurch Harbour, which is much the same pattern as Poole Harbour, sprawly and overall shallow. I’m fairly well convinced that Studland Bay all the way out to Old Harry is shallow enough to stand up in, and having capsized on the other side, I know from experience that I can put my feet on the floor. But here I am on 90m of water, an unbelievable depth, with nothing between me and the abyss but a floating plank.
I was actually on my way to go glamping just on the other side of the Devon/Cornwall border but I’d camped a couple of times just down the road from Roadford, so I knew of its existence. I planned to spend a nice weekend at the beach, eating ice cream and getting angry over my inability to heat my wood-fired hot tub but before I got there, I wanted to spend an hour or so paddling around the lake.
It was a sunny day for October and pretty warm. I changed in the car park – lingering COVID restrictions meant the changing rooms were closed – collected the buoyancy aid, paddleboard and paddle I’d hired and set out onto the lake. Yep, still can’t stand up. I still find I’m extremely resistant to any chance of falling in the water and knowing the unimaginable depths beneath, I wasn’t taking any chances here. But that’s ok. You can still have lots of fun sitting on the board, kneeling on the board and just taking some time out in the sun. I like to sit sideways, like I’m a lady sitting sidesaddle on a horse, with my feet trailing in the water. My feet aren’t going to fall in and they’re not going to drag the rest of me down by accident.
Having an hour to yourself on a SUP on a big reservoir is very different to having an hour to yourself on a SUP. On Poole Park Lake, I felt like the staff and passers-by were keeping an eagle eye on me. Roadford Lake is so much bigger. There are limits to where you can paddle but it still feels a lot more open, a lot wilder, a lot more of an adventure and a lot more solo. I didn’t have to worry about anyone watching me being ridiculous or taking selfies or trying and failing to do even the simplest yoga poses on my board. Even on solid ground my yoga limits are very low and on the board, the best I could manage was lying down. But that was fun, to lie there on my very thin fragile board over 90m of water, with the sun shining down on me.
I did paddle back to the shore towards the end of my time, to use the pontoons to try and stand up. It’s shallow enough here that I’m not completely terrified of falling in. Still didn’t succeed. I’ve got lots of videos of me wobbling, trying to figure out how to arrange my legs and then crashing back down before I’ve even got a quarter of the way up.
The weekend in Cornwall was good. I spent some time in my hot tub – on Friday night it was too cold and on Saturday afternoon it was too hot. I went to Port Isaac and had ice cream and set fire to the toast trying to cook it under the grill and I suspect it took the entire weekend for my wetsuit to dry.
Bumblebee Paddles 