New Year’s Eve, 2011 – an open invite from John Willacy arrived a few days before to take part in a social paddle (no racing allowed) as a finale to the year’s Menai Challenge. An early (0900 at Gallows) start to arrange the shuttle, and once everyone had arrived (20 paddlers in total!) we headed off to Foel leaving some cars behind. I had the pleasure of the company of Jim Krawiecki and John Bunyan in the car and we started chatting about various things, especially about the fancy dress.
JB had brought along a monkey mask, and on arriving at Foel discovered that Pete Baars had brought along his infamous chicken suit, John Willacy had a penguin suit, and a few others had made token fancy dress efforts in the form of silly hats and masks.
Once on the water (it’s amazing how long this process takes the more people there are involved in the event!) we made our way first towards Y Felinheli and once alongside the village, we all rafted up so that JW could pass around a dry bag full of chocolates! A very welcome surprise and because of the tide, we still managed in excess of 5km/h even as an unpowered raft.
We broke off once we rounded the corner and discussions began (started by Aled Williams, of course) about who was interested in doing the ‘advanced’ loop (an extra loop of the bridges). About 6 or 7 volunteered to take part including me, and once the group was formed, we left the rest of the paddlers to enter the Swellies. My pace grew considerably, reaching a maximum of 17.7km/h in the tide between the bridges.
A reasonably tricky break out under the suspension bridge was good fun and now it was time to paddle against the tide back towards the Britannia Bridge. This isn’t as difficult as it seems at first; a number of eddies form in this part of the strait and it is possible to make fairly good progress towards the Britannia eddy hopping.
There are a couple of difficult spots where one has to break into the main flow and attempt to ferry glide into another eddy; my speed on the day rarely got above 4km/h doing this, however these ferry glides are infrequent (thankfully) and the most difficult of which on the day’s tide was between Ynys Gored Goch (the island with the house on) and a large eddy just short of the bridge. Once round the pillar, we got back on the tide and rode it towards the suspension bridge again.
Once past the suspension bridge, we quickly caught up with the rest of the group where we settled back into a ‘bimble’ pace passing the town of Menai Bridge, Bangor Pier, the Gazelle and on to the last stretch to Gallows. An interesting patch of following sea between the pier and Beaumaris provided some entertainment in the form of surfing practice to arrive at Gallows 2 hours and 20 minutes after departing Foel.
The process of getting 20 kayaks loaded up and people packed into cars was another sight to behold, before departing for a stop-over at the Anglesey Arms for a drink for more chatting and socialising. I think enough of us hassled JW to force him to organise the Menai Challenge again for 2012, as it has been very popular. A quick trip back to Foel after farewells to collect the remainder of the cars ended the day. With 19.6km paddled, I headed home to begin preparing for the evening’s festivities.
Photos courtesy of John Willacy and Jimski
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