Tuesday 25 March 2008

Two days in a row!!! 25/03/2008

Two half decent paddles in a row, things are looking up! Started out at Porthsele and headed out to Careg-gafeiliog, a small rocky outcrop at the entrance to Ramsey Sound.


Careg-gafeiliog can be a good place to play about in a bit of rough water and surf the waves in and around the rocky channels. You can often get quite large overfalls forming on a flood tide.

As the tide was starting to ebb and the wind was still quite a strong NW I paddled a course for North Bishop knowing that the tide would then take me down to Gwahan, another small rocky outcrop.

View looking back from Gwahan to St Davids' Head


With the ebb tide and wind behind me I paddled into Bae Ogof-hen, which roughly translated means old/grand cave bay. This bay is situated at the North end of Ramsey Island, there are numerous caves to explore including one which goes the whole of the way through the headland. Unfortunately, there was too much swell to do any cave explorations today.

Then followed the Eastern side of the island, which was sheltered from the wind, down to the Bitches. These are a notorious line of jagged rock that jut out Eastward into the Sound.

On my way down I encountered one of my most favourite birds, the Fulmar. This bird is more commonly seen gliding low over the sea with wing tips almost touching the water, flapping it's wings only when losing height.

On route to the Bitches there is a small bay with a cave going through to the opposite bay, today the tide was too low for me to paddle through.

Entering the cave pointing south


Exiting the cave heading north

On arriving at the Bitches, the ebb tide was already flowing quite strong, and with it being a 6.7m tide even though it looked very inviting I decided not to proceed further as I knew that the tide was ever increasing and this would make my paddle back through near impossible. Paddled along the length of the Bitches and just took a couple of photos:-




Using the North flowing counter-eddy I paddled back up the East side of the Island until I reached Trwyn Ogof Hen where I met the South flowing ebb tide and then ferry glided approximately 3/4 of a mile across to St John's point. I used Whitesand's bay as a transit with St John's point, the beach quickly disappeared as I hit the fast flowing current. Adjusting my ferry glide angle and paddling a bit harder the beach slowly began to appear as I approached St John's point.

On this round trip I only covered 6.5miles but it was good to get back across to the Island and down to the Bitches again. Back to work tomorrow unfortunately, but not to worry back here in two days time!

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