Canoeing Adventure

I am a keen canoeist and have had many amazing adventures in a canoe.

I will tell you about just one of them from my younger days.

I remember I was on holiday in pembrokeshire with my sister, who is also a keen canoeist and we had made the trip across the ramsey sound, (a stretch of water between the pembrokeshire coast and ramsey island) to canoe at a place called 'the bitches'

This place is a unique and amazing place with some fantastic whitewater, which is formed by a tidal race. The tide between ramsey island and the mainland is very fast and powerful and the whitewater is caused by the fast flowing water flowing over some shallow rocks just off of ramsey island, which creates standing waves which you can surf!

I remember we paddled across to 'the bitches' with a group of other experienced canoeists and had a wonderful time surfing the standing waves and freestyle canoeing on the whitewater.

We stayed there for a good few hours really enjoying ourselves before we realised that the group of canoeists that we had paddled across this dangerous stretch of water with had already left and canoed back to the mainland! we hadn't noticed because we were too busy having such fun!

Another thing was that it was getting towards evening time and in a little over an hour it would be dark!

There were only us two, half a mile out to sea and we had to make the journey back by ourselves or spend the night on the island, which would have been tough as we didn't have any dry clothes or food with us.

We headed back across to the mainland together which was a difficult trip to make on our own, we were used to going with a group of experienced canoeists, who could help each other out if anyone got into difficulty. Why the group had left without us I don't know.

I remember as we were canoeing back at one point I was sucked down by the current into a mini whirlpool!

These whirlpools form on the eddylines and can pull a canoe underwater! Thankfully after spinning round a couple of times the whirlpool spat me out and I managed to paddle away from the danger.

After this we were past the worst of the crossing, we just had to paddle the last bit to the mainland at St Justinian's. We were tired and exhausted from our effort but then to our amazement we saw some dolphins swimming beside us! It was as if they had seen us and were guiding us safely to shore.

Dolphins are intelligent creatures and there are many tales of how they have helped people who have been in difficulty at sea.

They swam with us until we were almost back to the mainland and then swam off into the ocean.

We were so glad we made it back safely, with the help of the dolphins, though it was a difficult journey back it was certianly a memorable adventure I shall never forget!

My own article

Pictures courtesy of pixabay