Island of Saints: Ynys Enlli (Bardsey), July 2013

This trip comes with a health warning: it was undoubtedly irresponsible to take it on. Bardsey Island is a kind of Mecca of Celtic Christianity, a burial ground for countless Saints. It's also now a Mecca for British kayakers although a burial ground for countless older boats. Only a few miles from the mainland of the Llyn Peninsula it's wrapped around by some of the cruellest and most complex tidal currents in Britain. Some might say that to attempt this in an inflatable kayak with no real skills is a recipe for disaster, and they'd be right: there were several points on this trip when we were almost carried out to sea, surrounded by a swell that occasionally towered over us and frequently dragged us in unpredictable directions (even on what was a carefully chosen, very flat day overall).
     We did manage to keep control, however, and this stunning island, with its diverse fauna and spectacular views was well worth the risk. We set off early from a cove near Aberdaron, having carefully timed the trip to make sure - as far as is possible - that our circumnavigation would always be helped rather than hindered by the tides. (We just had to hope our guesses at how long each leg of the trip would take were accurate.)  
     (I should note that there are a few factors that make this trip slightly less mad than it sounds: Llinos grew up near here and knows these seas well, including through her time sailing in the Welsh national squad. We'd both been out on this water in the boat of a local fisherman. I did painstaking research into what we could expect at each stage of the journey, and put some work into making sure my strength was at its best for the trip too - we didn't take so ridiculous a venture lightly - nor should anyone else).   
     These pictures look back across the sound, showing the head of the Llyn peninsula and the complexity of the currents, along with a few puffins in the foreground (the island on the right is one of the Gwylans).

There's some great literature about Bardsey. Brenda Chamberlain's poetic journal Tide Race is a wonderful evocation of life and environment here, while Christine Evans' poetry is also well worth a read, particularly Island of Dark Horses: she's a poet who easily bears comparison with the better-known bard of the western seaboard, Gillian Clarke. Robert Macfarlane begins Wild Places with a trip to Bardsey; Macfarlane, however, had spent no longer here than I have. Predictably enough, despite Macfarlane's current vogue, the literature by people like Chamberlain and Evans - who have spent year after year braving the island's elements - is far, far richer and more interesting.

The north east end of the island was the best for wildlife. There were black guillemots, whimbrel and turnstones as well as lots of seals. Bardsey is very unusual in having whimbrel that both winter and breed - they do so in Shetland, but not many other places in the UK. They're subtly different from curlews in the shape of their beaks and in the pale eye stripe seen below. Here's an entry from the Bardsey Lighthouse Journal with a brief explanation.

The pic below is one of my favourite photos I've taken, partly because of the texture of the distinctive rock (can't work out what rock it is - the geology of this area is fiendishly complex) and partly because of the way the whimbrel's colours harmonise with those of the other rocks behind):
We then headed down the north side of the island, making a brief stop at the beach by the island's flat middle, where a family of shellducks with small chicks were feeding. As we approached the chicks dived, so we only got a photo of an adult before moving swiftly on:

Setting out again, we paddled past the lighthouse.

The nearer we got to the far corner of the island the bigger the swell became, until we hit a tidal seam where the sea was really quite violent. At one point in this swell, paddling forward, I looked away from the shore for just a couple of seconds before glancing back and finding that we hadn't moved forward at all, but had drifted a huge distance from the shore. Several of the waves, towering over us, were breaking: if one of these had caught us we might well have been overturned. Fortunately, we made it through and headed round the west coast, coming into the sheltered bay on the other side where several seals were soaking up some sun in dead calm waters. 

After a little sun ourselves, we headed back to the mainland - the crossing itself was nothing compared to that tidal seam at the west end of the island. This was a superb trip that tested us and our tiny vessel to the limits; like so many risks, it was well worth taking.   

Bardsey is a spectacular island, but the fact that the Trust and those who work there look so negatively on people unobtrusively and harmlessly spending the night on its coastline is a throwback to more authoritarian times. I can understand why they consider the policy necessary, but to me it seems out of keeping with Bardsey's history, myth and meanings. The number of people who make it out here is small and self-selecting and it's highly unlikely that any would operate anything other than a leave-no-trace philosophy. That said, the Bardsey authorities do a good line in social life blogging and a truly spectacular line in wildlife blogs. 

Ynys Badraig: St Patrick's Isle, July 2013

This was a fairweather trip to the most northerly point of Wales: a small island north of Anglesey. It was another venture that required careful timing: the east/west tides are too strong to paddle against (at least without discomfort) so we had to make sure we were always moving with them. The island is home to hundreds of guillemots and lots of seals, and the waters around it are patrolled by porpoises, gannets and shearwaters.   
     We paddled out from Cemaes Bay past three very playful kestrels (one a chick)...

...and made straight out to sea. The trip out was like being on some kind of vast highway - gannets, shearwaters and guillemots passing back and forth along the same line in large numbers. I've not often seen shearwaters at such close quarters, and the noises they make are a constant accompaniment to camping on many coastal cliffs so it was interesting to see them pass close by the boat:

Much of the island is swathed in enormous amounts of guano, making it look like a marble slab in the sea. There are guillemots everywhere, some of them showing off that strange golden inner-beak they and razorbills share.

We travelled up the west side of the island, past tidal rocks populated by seals. 

Then we paddled down the other side, towards the face with the most guillemots. This cliff was really spectacular: thousands of guillemots, including chicks huddling against the rock, while others flew in and out with food. 

 At this point we spotted a small pod of porpoises, including a calf. We followed them, at a good distance, back round the island then past the seals and out to sea a little way. They were very difficult to photograph but we did manage one or two. 

From here we passed once more round the island then headed east towards a different part of the mainland. Keeping the right line was quite difficult in the strong currents, especially because we kept having to stop for photos

but we eventually made it into a cove which houses a spectacular second-world-war brick works that merited exploring. 

Unfortunately, I then overinflated the boat for the return trip and we limped back with a puncture. There were more porpoises along this stretch but we didn't have chance to stop much to watch them. At this point we decided it was time to buy a solid boat, especially because I had some prize money to spend. Taking the advice we'd originally got before getting hold of the ZPro as a 'test boat', we went for a Perception Prodigy Tandem: faster, easier to handle and able to take much messier waters...

Puffin Extravaganza: Gwylan Islands, June 2013

This summer we took the boat out to sea as many times as we possibly could, testing its limits and ours on some of the longer trips. At the end of the summer, having assured ourselves that this kayaking business had legs, we bought a real kayak to extend those limits a bit. We'd certainly recommend these remarkably inexpensive Z-Pro inflatables though - ours was just borrowed, but we travelled reasonably long distances at sea in a variety of conditions and it always served us well.

     The Gwylan (meaning Seagull) Islands, close to Aberdaron, were a kayaking revelation: like a tiny Welsh Handa Island, but without other visitors. It takes less than an hour to paddle out, leaving lots of time to explore. 
     The starting point is the picturesque village of Aberdaron, which was home to one of my favourite poets, R.S. Thomas (a true successor to Basil Bunting and David Jones as Britain's regional poetic grump). Parking in the National Trust car park it's only a couple of hundred yards to the sea.
     On the way out from Aberdaron there were the usual attractive sandwich terns on buoys and a local fisherman was picking up lobsterpots with Welsh pop music, still stuck in 1970, blaring.

Beneath the surface were a very attractive array of jelly fish, featuring most of the best-known breeds that populate British waters (the swim to the islands would be quite appealing if not for them). The odd gannet patrolled the sound between the coast and the islands but at this point there wasn't much birdlife. Looking back to Aberdaron:

     We still didn't really know what to expect. We'd heard there might be puffins, but had no real info beyond that. Before long we could see the odd tiny dot in the sky around the island, showing that there were birds there, but until we arrived we weren't prepared for the huge number. By the time we were nearing the islands we were surrounded by puffins, razorbills, fulmars, guillemots, black backs and shags both on the sea and whizzing by in the air. 

The islands themselves were, end to end, riddled with nests, meaning that the only place to get out of the boat without causing distress to birds was on the long trailing edge on the north side of the larger island which is completely submerged at high tide so unsuitable for nesting. We stood here for some time watching razorbills and puffins zoom by, often with beaks full of sand eels.

 We found out later that there are (at last count) over 700 pairs of puffins on these tiny islands. We then travelled round and round the islands, in figures of eights and full circles...

 ...looking through their natural arches, playing with the tidal flow between them, and finding that different parts of the islands were colonised by different birds. 

The puffins on rocky outcrops were remarkably curious, moving closer to the kayak rather than away from it as we approached.

This picture, where the scale of the puffin can be seen relative to seaweed, is a reminder of just how tiny they are:

Seals patrol the complex coastlines of the islands but these ones were not so friendly as the Tanera Mor & Oldany colonies, never taking an interest in the kayak (even when we ate our mid-morning salmon). From here it was also possible to see the fabled Bardsey (through the clouds of birds):

It didn't look too ambitious a paddle and we resolved to get there before the summer was through...

     The puffins on the water seemed just as unperturbed by the boat as the ones on the rocks.

When we were drifting rather than paddling they were quite happy to swim right by. In fact, it was sometimes difficult to make sure they weren't bumped on the head by paddles.

After spending most of the morning at the islands we set off...

...paddling against the tide to Porth Ysgo on the mainland to meet the mother-in-law on the beach for lunch. She had her first go in the kayak and was apparently far more accomplished than the father-in-law a few days later. 
     We spent the early afternoon snorkelling around Porth Ysgo's rock formations where there were lots of colourful fish and some very large, very impressive, spider crabs (a feast of a creature that, like so much great seafood, has simply not caught on in Britain).

     On the way back along the coast we ventured into a deep cave. Very strange and eerie noises were coming from the recesses of this - grunting and wailing - it turned out to be full of seals, who were soon swimming around under the boat while others still on the rocks continued to make ghostly sounds. Quite extraordinary.

     A couple of days later I headed back to the islands on my own in the evening. This was a great time of day because the puffin chicks were venturing out of their burrows, while the adults were whizzing back and forth across the tops of the islands. They fly much faster than you might expect (far quicker, for instance, than razorbills) so it takes quite some patience to capture them in flight.

I arrived back in Aberdaron just as it got dark and headed for fish and chips (or rather crab and chips) at a wonderful little shop, a chippy that's far more than a chippy, in the village. Then the drive back to bham...