After Gordon Browns course on Skye and the Berwickshire Canoe Club pool sessions in Kelso and Ollie Jay’s adventure around Lindisfarne – I was desperate for more opportunities and found the Berwick Kayak Club based in Eyemouth.
With Ali learning to drive this was a good chance for both of us to go along to the training sessions in the Eyemouth Army Cadet Centre, with Ali driving and a great excuse to eat fish and chips. The cadet centre gave Bob a chance to lecture us on techniques and navigation (which was a great reminder as I was doing Day Skipper navigation at the time), to roll around on a swiss ball holding a broom and to watch canoeing videos in the red light of the heat lamps (not too sure what they thought we were doing with our women kayakers as the red lights went out there was the oohs and aaahs of the exercising.
The fun really started with Bob’s river trips – first from Norham down the Tweed to East Ord, where we were waltzing down the river in small kayaks until Bob pointed out that we can lower our skegs. Kim flew over us that day and took a piccie at 2,000 feet showing how invisible we were on the river in blue boats and even me with my bright yellow dry suit was hidden under my blue tilly hat. We had swans taking off over us and overall a wonderful time on the river. On stopping for lunch I almost ended up going down the fast water part but frantic thrashing of the paddle and being hauled in by the others saved the day. I had of course also forgotten to bring any lunch – Ali was getting used to the chaos that is a day out with Mike.
Moving on it was over the weir time – first Coldstream where we launched down the river bank under the water and bobbed up – that was when someone noticed that I was heading down the river with the back of my dry suit wide open – the ladies in an open canoe helpfully zipped me up. The weir saw Lizzie overturn and float down the river, Ali was next over the weir followed by a franticly thrashing of paddles the Yellow M was over and still upright. A gentle paddle downstream and then it was Milne Graden weir where everyone managed to get over fine and I got stuck on it, Bob came under and pulled me over his boat – we were a water circus act. Paddling down towards Norham we saw the damage caused by floods with trees jammed up against an island from them being swept down from the Till. At Norham Bridge a Kingfisher flew in front of us.
A trip down the Till from Ford bridge (which I almost hit) to Etal (where I almost went over the weir backwards) on a gorgeous day was delightful in an open canoe – over the weir at Heatherslaw and we were all still upright to punting down the river with a 6 foot kevlar pole in my bright yellow dry suit waving to the tourists on the Heatherslaw Railway. going over the weirs standing up balancing was fun and the while canoe experience was a lot of fun and relaxing although ard work with the wind pushing me sideways into trees. Flood damage could be seen with a hay bale up a tree.
My sailing meant I missed a lot of the other outings – however I made the rescue training in Eyemouth Harbour – where Ali found out his wetsuit didn’t really protect him from the cold. The doc was practising his low brace which failed and he ended up having to be rescued by our close knit team of trainees.
Berwick pool session with Ollie saw Helen from the river trips practicing rolling. She was allocated to rescue me as I went over and waited and waited – and had to bale out. Helen was a whitewater gal and wasn’t used to a sea kayaking and found herself stuck in the corner with its longer tail, desperately trying to turn it to rescue me. That was a good session although the pool didn’t turn on the wave machine which would have been fun in a kayak.
Finally my Feathercraft K1 arrived – a folding kayak from Canada via the Knoydart dealer in Cumbria. The low pound made it more painful than if I had just gone for it a year ago but hey Sybil, my crystal ball, didn’t point this out. Kim assembled it for me as I was busy with a project and noting all the problems in assembly. She was exhausted after 2 hours but had a complete kayak built – which we then had to disassemble as we were taking it up to Assynt that afternoon. The story continues there…
