So, the India trip is done and dusted.  We are all knackered, Tim has Giardia.  No one died.  It was without a doubt the best trip I’ve ever been on.  I’d call that a success, right?  I will get round to a write-up and chucking up a bunch of pics and stories, give me a few days.  For now, a single image from the Zanskar (one of Robs).

In the canyon

This time tomorrow we will probably be nearing Milton Keynes on our trek to the Alps, and probably preying the levels will have fallen by the time we get there… woo!

Pic stolen from Adam Do-you-molo.

What follows is Rob’s article on sea kayaking in Scotland in March… nutter. – Ed.

Easter weekend with nowt to do, spawned a last minute road trip to the Mull of Kintyre for 2 days surfing and some half arsed sea kayaking to camp on an island. I thought it might be a chance to experiment in carrying kit within boats and my flat mate Weener just wanted an excuse to buy an axe. Like a GCSE science report, here’s what I learnt from the experiment?

Surfing in Scotland in March is fookin cold, buy a hood and Gloves before you go. Luckily there is a surf shop in Campletown.

Filling the kettle the night before makes for a much more enjoyable morning brew.

Two Rollmatts and a 20litre dry bag won’t fit inside a solo, but act as an annoying mini sail on the back that blows you off course.

Being caught in a snow storm in the middle of a crossing is only funny when you have hold of another boat.

Storms will pass….

Even after downing a can of Iron Brew, a yoghurt will suppress a heavily forced belch.

Check the top bar for an image of Rob and Weener’s crossing – nice. -Ed.

What with the total lack of recent rain and a desire to paddle regardless, last weekend was an opportunity to head for the North East coast, and the sea caves at Flamborough Head.

Paddling into the bay at North Approach

Sea kayaking – gnarly

A short (beer-lengthed) stop in a cove next, surrounded by nesting birds, including puffins!

Small waiters

And still time for ice-creams and sunbathing at Brid. What better way to spend a Sunday!

All pictures property of Tim Stevenson.

A few weeks back, I carelessly let my boat slip down a rather steep incline onto some rather hard, sharp rocks. This caused a rather unfortunate “hull breach”:

Sizing up the split

Having recently read a very useful “how to” on welding boats, I figured I had better have a bash, as the thought of paddling the Tsarap / Zanskar self-supported in my Crazy88 made me feel a little queezy!

A quick trip down to B&Q and we had the tools we needed – Chisel, Stanley knfe, sandpaper, heavy-duty gloves and, most importantly, a blowtorch. We were slightly bemused by the advice on the torch regarding its potential use as a barbeque lighter…

The first job was to construct the necessary welding tool:

Rather pleased at our new “device”

This was a simple enough task involving chicken wire and an old spoon, and is in no way impinging on the copyright of Mr Wilf *nudge nudge wink wink*.

Having not thought ahead enough to get plastic welding strips, the first job was to cut some slivers of plastic from the cockpit rim to use to fill in the split. We then gave the hull around the split a good clean.

The hull began at a chilly 15 degrees…

Using Paul’s handy infrared thermometer we realised that welding outside on a fairly chilly April afternoon may have its pitfalls. Anyhow, after a long time with a hairdryer we were ready to begin.

The fun begins

And then it rained

Jobs a good’un

Note to self: check the weather forecast before welding boats.

All photos (apart from the last one) property of Paul Wilkinson.

I’ve joined up to this blogging malarkey now to keep a tight reign over the young Mr Jackson. I’ve started revising my web 2.0 speak, so I should be ‘lol’-ing and ‘!!!1!’ -ing in no time. For now I’ll stick to our plans, with an overview for now.

As usual, with any river I plan to do, there’s one person who’s been there first. Mark’s guide has been brilliantly useful in getting our heads around what we’ll need to do to get there and come back in one piece. As long as we can follow it….

We’ve had a good few team meetings (mostly in the Eldon) and come up with what might be a foolproof plan, although Ste might be a good enough fool to test it.

So, we fly out on the Thursday to Delhi, courtesy of Virgin Atlantic who are more than happy to take our kayaks since BA refused to take them anymore, and then an overnight stop in Delhi to await a 5/6am ish flight into Leh, at 3500m from sea level. We’ll have a couple of days to rest and become acclimatised to try and avoid HAPE / HACE, though Rob will probably suffer from HAFE.

After last minute preps and some acclimatisation runs on local rivers we’ll head up into the Mountains towards the get in for the Tsarap Chu. This river runs into the Zanskar, and although slightly less committing has the bigger rapids.

After a few days on the Tsarap we should reach Padum, which marks the start of the Zanskar. The Tsarap and the Doda rivers meet here to combine into the Zanskar, which heads off into the famous gorge. A few days on here and we’ll reach the Indus river, which marks our get out and back into Leh.

Sounds simple eh? What could go wrong….

How to start a first blog post? Well, a picture speaks a thousand words and all that. Admittedly, the one above is not mine (it belongs to either Dan, Ben, Hugh or Tom from Cambridge Uni Canoe Club, sorry for the image theft guys…) but it represents everything I both eagerly and apprehensively anticipate about our upcoming India expedition. 16 days, 3,000 metres of altitude and doubtless many mini-adventures await us… but that’s a way off yet.

What I plan to do over the next few months is blog on our planning and build-up to the trip in August. Maybe this blog will be used in future years as an example of how to, or how not to, plan a small-scale paddling expedition. Mainly it will be an excuse for me to wack up a few pictures and tall tales. We shall see.

Owen