Mersea Island

Days 6 to 8
Thu 10 to Sat 12 May

No movement, winds always high with annoying occasional drops down to 4s. Never lasted more than one hour though.

Learned a lot about my current home, a complete island it is cut off from the rest of Essex at high tide when its causeway is covered. Its Essex's version of Benidorm with caravan parks all over and nearly 600 beach huts. Also apparently has one of the highest concentrations of millionaries in the UK. It's also great for oysters which are grown in beds here.

Got chatting to the island's kite surfers on saturday - hoping for winds to drop but they never did. Looks a great sport - they move pretty fast and jump up to 30ft. Lunatics. A great bunch of lads who kindly took me out to have a few beers at Waldgraves caravan park bar, then let me sleep in their club beach hut. Bliss I have a proper roof and lighting – and I'm a little tipsy ;)

Thanks to all of the surfers that day - sadly I can't remember all their names.

Sunday 13th promises a weather window. Here goes!

Stop, stop, START!

Day 3Mon 07 May

High winds stop paddle, instead of going to burnham I have lunch with my granny. Oh the excitement.

Day 4
Tue 08 May

Sit on clacton beach for three hours, wait for wind to drop from force 6-8. It doesn't. Try retail therapy, buy new tent and sleeping bag. Feel much better.

Day 5
Wed 09 May

Movement!!! Winds force 3-4 westerly (headwind) BUILDING to force 8 in the afternoon. On water at 9am. Heading for West Mersea island Essex. Dst 18km.Takes 2hrs 40min. Feels great to be paddling again. Arrive before midday. Camping at Seaview Caravan Park 15min from town centre. New tent very warm even in high winds. Four pints at the White Hart Inn chatting to Colin the landlord might've helped that though. Tomorrow: predicted strong winds in the morning. Should be calm later on. Hope to make Burnham if winds drop early.

Night night!

The Begining

Day 2
Sun 06 May

Well its started!!

After all the planning I'm finally off, the First day was a nice paddle from Shotley Slipway across to Clacton on Sea a distance of 26km.

I was mean't to cross the start line at Midday but due to a last minute delay (the delivery man only just made it with my new Lendal blades in time, thanks Nick!) and the usual family goodbyes i set of at near 1pm to a nice, if rather small, turnout - still it was great to see so many people who had heard about the event and just come down. Weather was slightly overcast, little swell with NE Force 4 winds.

Going out past Harwich and the Felixstowe docks you get a great view of one of the UKs biggest container port - some real beasts of boats in there. Before heading out into the North Sea for the first time. Being a bank holiday mean't that i had loads of company for the trip down and i set off at a leisurely 7kph cruising on the last of the flood tide and looking at my neighbours. Felt great to be paddling and actually started.

After a bit of chop by Naze Tower headland i headed down past Walton on Naze to Frinton on Sea. By this time it was nearly 5pm (had stopped for a couple of pee breaks!), so i hauled out here and after meeting my folks headed back to the ranch for a nights sleep.

8am Today!

Bit of a change really, early start to catch the first of the flood tide and make a good mileage today - plan was to get to Burnham on Crouch (4okm) or Brightlingsea (20km) as a back up. However forecast showed Force 5-7 SW head winds and by the time i reached Clacton i'd worked out that i wasn't going to make my targets today! Quick mental arguement and i decided that it wasn't a day for open crossings around 2k wide mudflats. This means that i have the rest of the day on the beach - its taken me 2 days to make day 1's targets and no matter how sound the reasoning im not happy!!

Rest of the week shows strong winds and a low sitting over the UK - tomorrow looks right out but im hoping that later in the week Tuesday-Thursday i'll be able to nip round in short hops through force 4-5s.

No pictures as i forgot the camera in my rush to be off - however they'll be some on my website shortly.

Keep your fingers crossed that this low buggers off quickly!!

The eve before

Well here we are, after nearly 8 months of planning and preperation we're now less than 24hrs from starting the exped. And hopefully it will be the last time i see that view of Worcester!!

Its now time for the final kit checks and minor preperation and i have to say that there are thousands of things left to finish off - from printing maps off to arranging press cover.

Slightly more worrying is the fact that the weather forecast for the next week shows a change in fortune from a stable high to a rather interesting low pressure system - Force 5-8 winds predicted around the first 2 weeks of the paddle. This could be a problem - might be a slow start!!!

Anyway time to rush - speak to you all later!!

Dinners, Beer and Boats

Morning all,

Well time is ticking down, with only 3 days to go i have said goodbye to Worcester and moved across to the start line in Suffolk.

Its been a hectic week moving house, prepping kit and most importantly socializing!! Friday 27th April saw the Charity Dinner and Auction at the Whitehouse Hotel in Worcester, where 83 people from across the county turned up to help support the Cystic Fibrosis Trust...............and drink my wine!!

Despite my nevres at having to do a speach the whole event went fantastically and i didn't get too many bread rolls thrown at me!! As the photos show a good time was had by all with Sean the Inflatable Sheep being the most popular Auction prize raising £21 for the charity!!! A few hard core alcoholics moved onto the tiles at 12.30 when all the food was served and i believe Sean was seen amongst them.

Once again thanks to all who have came and in particularly to Charlotte B for bullying people out of their money on the Raffle and Angela/Shelia for saving me in early afternoon from a hell of tying balloons! Overall the event raised over £1000 taking my total to over £3000!!!

So now im in Suffolk, meeting sponsors and doing interviews as well as trying to get out on the water as often as possible. Sadly the weather isn't playing along despite being lovely and sunny has strong Easterly winds, lets hope these calm down by Saturday.

See you on the water!!

Collecting in the Street

A busy 7 days gone by - things are picking up speed and the money is really starting to come in for the charity now!

On the 28th of March we did the first of 3 Charity collections around the county - this time at Kidderminster. This was the first time that i've done this and i'd be lying if i said that i wasn't nervous - was really not sure how this would go down. So on a rather windy day at 10am we set up the boat on its stand and started rattling (well not rattling - against council rules) the tins. Lots of interest and a few puzzled children later (general view - im mad!) and we came away having raised nearly £250 in 5 hrs.

A few days later and we're coming up to the bank holiday, this time its a bit of a road trip down to Devon to see Chris Reed of Chillcheaters down in Brauton. Having convinced Rhianon (girlfriend) to drive we set off to pick up kit and see what Reed could do for the trip. A fantastic day out and every paddlers paradise (so much kit) gave a great insight into what Chillcheaters can do and how they do it - great to see how they can tailor make equipment. A good meal out that evening in Croyden and a nice relax on the beach and we're back to Worcester with a car full of great kit.

That brings us to today, bank holiday Saturday, and the 2nd of the Street Collections in Worcester. A bright lovely day and a few strange looks as i wheeled the Explorer through the town centre saw us set up outside the Guildhall. Working in shifts right through the day we got a great response and several hours later the final count comes to £550!!! Well done Worcester. Winner for the day was Rhianon with her collection bucket (aka flower pot) and a total of £183 in.

Many thanks to all who helped during the collection days especially to Andy from the Phoneworks who pressganged his entire family into collecting in Worcester

Only a Month to go!!!

Hello all,

Its been a bit of a while since i was last on here but things have been crazily busy! So far everything is moving along fantastically and its looking good for starting on May 5th.

So to fill you in whats been happening so far:

Outdoors Show March 18-19th

Many thanks to Nigel and all the lads from Sea Kayaking UK for hosting me at this years NEC outdoors show and providing me with the boat that i'll be using for the expedition (seen pictured behind us). The show was a great success for me thanks to Nigels help and introduction i also brought onboard Reed Chillcheater as my equipment sponsor (thanks to Chris), Lendal to supply my paddles and Kari-Tek have given me one of their fantastic trolleys to help me get to and from the water.

Despite there being fewer retailers at the show it was a great event and attracted alot of good feedback and promises of help on the way round.

Many thanks to all.

Aside from this im now back down on the water almost everyday (despite a Ford Ka driver trying to push my Landrover off the road a few weeks ago - thankfully Discoverys are built thougher than Fords and nobody was seriously hurt).

I finish work in 3 days time and then its full steam ahead on final planning. I am nearly fully stocked with my equipment and all im missing is food now - time to get to Mr Tesco and Sainsburys and buy as many super noodles as i can i think.

Hope alls well and speak to you soon