A New Decade 01/01/2010

After a rather late night seeing in the New Year, it was all too soon to don the fancy dress and make our way back down the beach for the now traditional New Year's Day swim. For a video of the proceedings click here.

It makes you realise how cold the sea is this time of year and that you wouldn't last long especially with fancy dress on.

After a quick coffee, myself and Martyn, who arrived late last night, after a mammoth drive of 5 plus hours, set out on our first paddle of the year. The weather could have been mistaken for a summer's day just a bit colder but on the horizon it was looking a bit ominous.

As we prepared to paddle off the wind started to pick up, a rainbow appeared and we felt the first few spots of rain or was it snow.

If it was rain it soon turned to snow and the wind picked up even more, what we thought would be a nice easy paddle was turning into a bit of a slog and we had only been on the water for about 10 minutes or so, I hope this wasn't going to be the shape of things to come for the rest of the year.

We made it over to the shelter of the cliffs by Porth Melgan, well out of the wind at least but it was still snowing quite hard.

The storm soon passed down through Ramsey Sound and the island began to reappear, although the snow did continue for a short while.

With the snow finally stopping and the sky starting to clear there was a light covering of snow on Ramsey Island and Cairn Llidi and above Whitesands.

We paddled around St David's Head for a few hundred yards but the ebbing tide against us was surprisingly strong so we cut our losses and turned around and decided to let the tide take us down to Gwahan and to Ramsey.

Progress was a lot quicker with the tide in our favour and we were soon at Gwahan passing a couple of Porpoises heading in the other direction but as usual as a camera appeared they disappeared.

As we crossed Ramsey Sound we could see the snowstorm passing over Skomer Island and The Bitches silouhetted menacingly in the distance.

Arriving at St Justinian we first thought the St David's Lifeboat Garside was moored up but getting closer it was the relief boat Lord Saltoun also a Tyne class boat. Lord Saltoun was originally stationed at Longhope in the Orkneys until she was replaced by a Tamar class boat.

Whilst we were looking at Lord Saltoun there were 2 loud claps of thunder and looking northward the sky had turned ominously black again and another storm was on its way. Sure enough as we started to paddle back to Porthsele the wind picked up and it started to snow again.

After another hard paddle we made it back with the weather getting worse. During this paddle we sampled nearly all the types of weather that we will get during the rest of the year, still it made it quite an eventful paddle and a great way to start a new decade.

I would like to thank Sian, Alan and everyone who made it another special New Year, especially the odd couple in those morphsuits you know who you are........