Last week, the first copies of The Frayed
Atlantic Edge arrived in the post & the book actually became real. I’m
totally in awe of what the people at Harper Collins have done to turn my words & photos into something far more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.
It's a magical reminder of a dizzying year among cetaceans - whether hundred-strong pods of dolphins, or single whales, sometimes a little too close for comfort...
...& among rare birds: overflown by long-tailed skuas...
...& paddling among sparrow-sized little auks...
...a year with dozens of nights in my little waterproof sleeping bag, on beaches, cliffs & mountains...
...& waking up to find myself just another of the dozing ocean animals:
...but because
this summer is something of a life crossroads, this feels like the moment to
post a very different blog than usual - writing about more personal things than
in any past piece & reflecting on the context the book came out of. In
particular, this is a post about the end of a relationship & the prospect of stepping
into the next stage of life separately from the person I’ve done almost
everything with for the last twenty years.
The book
is dedicated to Llinos...
...& there are several ways in which it couldn’t
possibly have existed without her influence. One is that she’s an exceptional
kayaker, whose fearless example has got me round countless ocean-ravaged headlands I
wouldn’t otherwise have had courage for. Another is that I would never have
become attuned to the infinitely rich literatures, histories & politics of
Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Shaetlan & Cornish – which are so big a part of the
book - without her. She’s a first-language Welsh speaker, brought up
on the Llyn Peninsula coast, with a fierce sense of the politics of language & culture.
That's why the wording of the dedication is as it is (for those viewing on small screens, 'For Llinos, who taught me to love big seas and small languages').
The two of us met at secondary school & got together the year before our A levels.
This is us at that time, on our first trip to Scotland:
For
several years we did lots of mountain trips together, carrying tents or bivvy
bags through the Highlands & Islands and wandering through the Alps. At that point, both
of us were intending to be professional musicians (Llinos is now
bassoonist with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, as well as a frequent guest
principal with the Royal Opera House, while I abandoned professional
music for history & writing). We managed to go to the same
university, then somehow even to get jobs in the same city - which, as a musician & a university lecturer, isn’t always straightforward.
Then, in
2009, Llinos was involved in a life-changing car accident. She was in intensive
care for several days, in hospital for six weeks, & in a wheelchair for
several months afterwards. The long-term impact was that she can’t walk for more than a
few minutes a day, so the mountains were suddenly closed off to us.
That was
the first time we ever considered kayaking. We bought a little inflatable boat…
We found beautiful places to spend time where we could launch onto the sea from the door each morning:
And we quickly realised that we were
deeply, deeply in love with this small-boats-at-sea lark: we upgraded to
sea kayaks, surf kayaks & other properly ocean-worthy vessels.
This
being Llinos’ main outdoors pursuit, & a uniquely versatile way to travel &
adventure without using legs, she quickly became an aficionado not just of gentle
seas but of exactly the kind of conditions that cast terror into the hearts of
many kayakers. Over the years I’ve ended up with countless pictures of her
plunging joyously through horrendous conditions:
Now,
kayaking is a huge part of her life: she’s part of the Team GB Paralympic
squad, training several times a week. Here she is in the national championships:
Little
would either of us have guessed, when we picked up that first inflatable kayak, that
a few years later Llinos would be a Paralympic kayaker & I’d be forming a
large chunk of my life & career around long-distance ocean kayak trips like this one:
Naturally
enough, when it came to doing the journey marked on this map, Llinos joined me for
some stretches. We had a particularly glorious few days kayaking the coast of
County Mayo, with a voyage out to the Stags of Broadhaven (a set of spectacular sea rocks
several kilometres offshore) which has stuck in my memory as the most inspiring rough-sea kayak I’ve ever done: eight hours immersed in spray, battling with a savage, beautiful sea. This was taken, leaning from the edge of the cliff, looking down from a
Stag at Llinos on the water…
...all day, seals surged up to us out of seafoam. In the cold ferocity of the gale it felt miraculous that this was a natural habitat of warm-blooded creatures, and it was strange and wonderful to realise how different their perspective on this everyday maelstrom must be...
The next photo is Llinos cruising some of the steep & unpredictable swell: to me this is a far
scarier picture than any of those in surf above – one look at it just brings back how demanding the
task of keeping balance on these particular waves was. They're many metres high: in viewing this picture, imagine the watery abyss between these two visible crests. Then imagine plunging, like a skier, down the slopes, before clawing your way back up the mountain of water building rapidly in front of you. And think of the waves of different scales crossing and clashing: ski slopes shifting in every dimension and only the thinnest shell of carbon fibre to separate you from their writhing...
And we
sat out Christmas during the trip on the Coigach & Assynt coastlines, kayak plans
thwarted by storms, & Christmas dinner blowing across the beach:
While all this was going on, however, we were each gradually realising that our visions of the future, and our plans for our ideal lives, weren't as compatible as we'd once thought, and that neither of us would necessarily be happy in the future the other wanted. So, around a year ago, we came to terms with the idea that, while staying the best of friends - and kayaking partners - we'd need to pursue separate futures. We're still full of respect for each other's choices, and committed to not losing what allows us to work so well together on the water: the strangely similar attitude to the idea that moments of oceanic wonder are worth almost any degree of hardship, and that the battle with a turbulent sea is, in and of itself, a thing of extraordinary beauty.
All this
means that The Frayed Atlantic Edge -
with its dedication to Llinos, & her immense
influence on its perspective – stands as a monument to what was the richest & most wonderful of relationships. It’s a strange feeling to
be going into the next stage of life uncoupled from a partnership that has defined our identities since we were teenagers. But for both of us
the future feels like an adventure…
