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In 1924 the neutral waters of the Philipines led to the establishment of Manilla as a major re-supply port for the navies of the Great Powers. The merchant ship, in which I had departed Portsmouth as cabin boy one fine spring morning, docked, with the urchins crying out to wash our socks, on a smouldering afternoon in late November. Little did I suspect later that day I would experience my first (but by no means last) International Canoe Marathon victory and be put on a course that would see me claim Gold in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Some hours after the ship moored alongside Manilla’s fetid harbour I found myself in the arms of a 45 year old mother of 8 who comforted lonely sailors to make ends meet in the back room of the Admiral Huffing. No sooner had I hoisted the jolly roger than the sound of fighting broke out from the bar next door.
I listened as a French naval officer called a German, ‘a gibbering turnip biter with panty liners for lips’ (just like a frenchman to say that). The offended German immediately called upon the Frenchman to prove his virility by, of all things, challenging him to race one of the native canoes around the harbour (an idiot notion but there’s no figuring the Teutonic mind). An American called them both ‘hem sniffing bicycle wearers’ (smart stuff from the USA) and threw his hat into the ring. Our first lieutenant, Bunty Hargreaves, who was drinking fortified gin at the bar called them all ‘$%&*s’ and said that his cabin boy would make then all look like ‘£&%$ers’. His hand reached through my window and grabbed me from my wittling, thrusting me into the bear pit of international hatred.
The next day, Bunty took steps to make sure of English victory.
Three matloes approached the German as he buffed his racing dunga. No sooner had Hans clicked his heels than he received a swift boot to the knackers yard and a broken bottle across his face. One of the tars dropped a half breize block straight through the canoe’s hull and, just to be sure, the poor fellow was tied to his pointy helmet and dropped off the jetty. Sad, but that is how the British learnt to deal with Germans in those dark inter-war years.
The Frenchman was easier to deal with. Our tallest, hairiest, foullest fellow simply ran at him and shouted, “Twat!” full in his face, then made as if to punch him. The surrender monkey scooted off up the beach and headed for the jungle just as fast as I’ve ever seen a man run away. This was as neat a indication of the French performance in the war to come as we could hope for.
Our American friend was a cinch. We invited him back to the Admiral Huffing and bought him two pints of Mild. Before he knew what had happened, he was legless drunk, soiled himself mightily fore and aft and fell down as if dead. Hopeless.
The race was on and just me, Francis the cabin boy representing England, on the starting line. The course was set from the quay, around the point, over to the nudist beach and back, a total of over 0.5 miles, a task I accomplished in 8 hours and 57 minutes, setting a record that stands to this day.
I’m having a very enjoyable set-too with the anglers… here
I wrote this article for Paddles in August 2006:
KayakTaiwan – The Expedition of 2006
Whilst listening to the talks at last year’s ‘Adventure Paddlers Weekend’ on Dartmoor, it struck me that I might have missed a trick. As a an experienced white water paddler, possessing at least some innate imagination, common sense and problem solving ability, there didn’t seem to be any reason why I couldn’t achieve something along the same lines as the glamorous speaker line-up of 2005.
I’ve, literally, just returned from the steep, jungle-cloaked mountains of the tropical island of Taiwan. Together, with a group of three first-class Brits, Greg Nicks, Tim Trew and Pete Cornes, I ran some astonishing rivers, including some first descents and, we like to think, left a legacy of friendship, white water and river safety skills with the local paddling community.
In the space available here, I’ll give a general flavour of the cultural and kayaking opportunities present by Taiwan, which as a paddling destination merits further investigation. Though it might not make for highly entertaining reading, in the latter part of the feature I will go through how we planned the expedition, in the hope that it will be of interest to next year’s explorers.
Taiwan
We stepped out of Taipei’s airport at 10.00 pm and were nearly knocked flat. The temperature was in the high thirties Celsius and the humidity at 100%. Bear, a Taiwanese kayaker (Bear is his nickname) and Aron, a Canadian contact, were there to meet us and drive us away into the fetid night and onwards to the market vendors of barbecued MSG enhanced squid and chicken offal.
Rivers
Bear’s canoe club, Club 222, hosted us on the Nan Sheh River the next day. The river is approximately the same length and difficulty as the Upper Mawdach in North Wales. However, if Taipei were London, the river would be located, roughly, just outside the M25. It’s a 45 minute drive from the city centre. Amongst the other key contrasts to British rivers, the temperature remained in the high thirties, the water was warm and the level at optimal without having to belt it down with rain.
The local paddlers run rivers in a very different style to a typical western boating mission. They stop at every opportunity for a break, light snack and a chat. The river took all day to complete with the club, whereas later in the trip we ran it in 50 minutes. It’s very different but not wrong, so ‘whilst in Rome’, we sampled some delightful pickled eggs, crispy seaweed and swam in the river in a futile attempt to cool down.
Our second river was the Tai-Gong, just a few hours out of Taipei. The river reminded us of New Zealand’s West Coast runs, with alternating boulder and bedrock rapids – all a little bit chossy, to keep us on high alert. During the four hour, grade IV-V run, we started to appreciate the implications of what we had seen on the maps back home and how any sort of mishap would be rewarded harshly. We were continuously astonished by the physical presence of Taiwan. The river environment in the interior is pristine and remote, offering spectacular and steep mountains, incredibly deep canyons and unsullied jungle scenery.
On the Tai-Gong, the road looped far away from the river and we were separated from any sort of help by, often, vertical sided canyon walls, climbing thousands of meters each side into nowhere and clad in impenetrable jungle. In the event of an accident, climbing out would have been impossible with boats and highly challenging without.
It was a real pleasure to paddle the Tai-Gong with two Taiwanese paddlers, Bear and James Soong. The different skills that we bought to the trip complemented each other. The Taiwanese had useful local and language knowledge while they appreciated our tight-knit paddling style.
When we reached the take-out, the East-West culture clash hit us as we were invited into the back-room of a local bar and made to sing Karaoke with a couple of heavy-drinking construction workers! Our virtuoso performances of ‘I left my heart in San Francisco’ left our new-found friends agog while their crooning of Taiwanese pop classics whiled away the wait for our shuttle truck. That is, until they got so drunk that they collapsed and had to be propped up and taken away on the back of a scooter.
Tropical Storm Bilos
We had to hot foot it to safety after the Tai-Gong as a typhoon was heading straight for Taiwan. A typhoon is generally considered ‘bad news’ by the Taiwanese, rivers can rise by as much as 20 meters and whole mountainsides collapse, taking away roads, villages and people’s lives.
It turned out that as the weather system approached Taiwan’s east coast it moderated to a mere tropical storm, still quite a spectacle. We made the best of our enforced hiding by eating as many curious pieces of offal and fish giblets as we could find. There was much to choose from. It transpired that there is nothing the Taiwanese could cook that Team Taiwan could not eat – though we weren’t especially keen on the chicken gonads, flying fox (a.k.a. rat) and stinky tofu.
Water not very clear
After the storm passed we attempted to explore rivers further south on the island. Apart from one or two very high volume runs, we struggled to find rivers that weren’t high velocity liquid mud and completely unrunnable. We drove round looking at the rivers that we had identified on our maps in England, hoping to save time by finding all the access points so that we could return after the rivers dropped off. Typhoon Kaemi had other plans, as it transpired. We drove and looked, and drove and looked, eventually circumnavigating the island to again reach the Tai-Gong River. It was high but not too high
First Descent Bagged at Last
We carried/hauled/lowered the boats 500 meters vertically downwards into the Upper Tai-Gong canyon. When we eventually reached the bottom we appreciated why no one had attempted the river previously – the put in was extremely hard work. However, the river turned out to be great, mainly class III/IV with one long class V. Even though the river was relatively easy, there’s always that first descent tension, ‘What is round the next corner and can I escape if it’s heinous?’
We passed on into the middle Tai-Gong – previously run on the trip but now with twice as much water. Altogether we ran 15km, mostly at IV+ with a few Vs for extra interest – most definitely a world class run.
Heinous
The crux river of our expedition was to come just before Typhoon Kaemi smashed into Southern and Central Taiwan. The Nan-Ao Pei River, previously unrun, required us to carry our boats 8 kilometers along a hunting trail, gaining 700 metres of altitude, before descending 100 meters through unstable landslide shale and tropical jungle, all in 36 degrees heat with 100% humidity.
The first day on the river was mainly class IV/V, in a series of canyons. Bear, our Taiwanese friend, struggled a little bit and took some swims, wrapping his boat and losing his paddles in the process – thankfully no damage to Bear himself though.
The second day was mainly class V/VI, in boxed canyons. Regrettably, Bear was still struggling with the class of difficulty. Three hours after setting out, he swum again, snapping the only split paddles and was compelled to walk out of the river. There were no marked access points, paths or roads, anywhere near him and with a Typhoon approaching we were worried for his safety (as was he, no doubt).
Over the course of the next six hours the river team undertook a lot of portaging and a fair amount of hard class V – sometimes of the uninspectable unportageable variety. We had a couple of serious scares along the way but made it out, battered and exhausted but in once piece, having run 32 kilometers of V in 16 hours of boating
We were delighted to hear that Bear, with the motivation of an incoming typhoon spurring him on, made it to the road almost exactly at nightfall, called in on his mobile and was picked up.
By unanimous agreement, this river was by far the most sketchy (sieves & sumps everywhere), remote and altogether heinous river any of us has ever run.
The End
We ran a couple more rivers after the Nan-Ao Pei, without incident, and made it safely back to the UK. Due to the two violent weather systems that swept the country during our stay, the trip was forced to react and change but even so we managed to get on the river for 10 days of the 21. As an exploratory trip, “outside the guide-book”, we think that figure is entirely what could be expected.
We learnt that Taiwan offers an abundance of world-class white water, both single and multi-day, with a level of difficulty to match everyone’s requirements. However, it is not quite ready to become a ‘holiday’ paddling destination, as the level of information available is currently poor. We hope that the river notes we will soon publish will build a bridgehead and help the next adventurers to expand the knowledge base. In addition, we have exhorted Club 222 to write up the information that resides within their membership and publish the knowledge in both Mandarin and English.
Planning
Destination
Since that evening in the bar at the Dart Country Park, I was on the look out for a destination. To make the time and cost of an exploratory trip worthwhile, it needed to have previously escaped the attention of the paddling world and not because, to be honest, it would not be much cop.
Whilst ‘Googling’ for pictures of waterfalls, I chanced upon a picture of a waterfall in Taiwan’s Taroko Gorge embedded in the website of the Taroko National Park. A few clicks later and a light bulb switched on above my head.
Google, and other Internet tools, were to play a significant role in the planning and execution of the entire expedition.
The next step was Google Earth, a truly amazing application that lets the user zoom around the planet viewing seamless 3D aerial images of the planet. We were able to fly along Taiwan’s river valley and up over its mountains. It all looked good.
After Google Earth came Google searching. I found out as much as I could about Taiwan’s geography, geology, climate, politics and paddling. The latter of which seemed barely to exist. Eventually, I found a canoe club in Taipei, one of only three clubs on the island – an island the twice the size of Wales. I contacted the club via its message board (all of which was in Chinese writing – a challenge and no mistake) and was soon communicating in English with its members.
Club 222 passed me some digital photos that they had taken on their recent river trips and advised me of the appropriate time of year to visit. Eventually, I was put in touch with a native English speaker, resident in Taipei, a Canadian and former paddler called Aron. I was able to have lengthy conversations with Aron through another Internet tool called Skype. Skype allowed me to talk to Aron for nothing, for as long as I wanted; that’s right, nothing, free, gratis.
The Tea
Next I spoke with the British kayakers who I knew would have the right combination of kayaking skill and a relaxed approach to personal hygiene, sleeping in ditches and the types of discomfort that would have most people running for the airport screaming. Parasite attack and bottom trouble seem quite normal at the upper-end of kayak expeditioning. The ability to make a joke of those things is an important asset.
Target Rivers
With a good team in place we bought plane tickets and a complete set of 1:50,000 topographical maps of Taiwan’s highlands. All of the maps were written in Chinese but were nonetheless, invaluable sources of information.
We spent a day reading the maps, identifying rivers that looked like they would be of the right size by catchment area, locating potential access point, have the right overall gradient to have runnable white water and, most eye-straining of all, looking for individual sections of river that might prove to be far too steep.
I’ve never looked at a map more closely than I did in the lead up to and in Taiwan. It turned out to be of crucial importance and time very well spent. With the type of river we thought we would find, long rapids ironing out the gradient, rather than big drops condensing it into one spot, we thought between 25 and 40 meters/kilometre would be about a good gradient to aim for. It turned out that our educated guess was about right.
Class III was approximately 15-20 meters/kilometre, Class III/IV was 20-25 meters/kilometre, Class IV was 25-35, 35-45 meter/kilometer tended to be Class V and anything above 45 meters/kilometre was Class Crazy. Through making an incorrect assumption we managed to drop into an 80 meter/kilometre box canyon, which was fairly exciting.
The Plan
After conducting all the research we were able to come up with a coherent plan, something that if people asked we could sum up in just a couple of sentences:
After arriving in Taipei in the North, we will first descend the world famous Taroko gorge, then move further south, exploring river drainage systems, until we reach Yushan At, the highest mountain in South East Asia. Once at Yushan we will run the rivers draining its flanks, all of which appear to be serious multi-day undertakings.
As it turned out, the two weather systems that swept the island whilst we there, meant that the rivers in central and southern part of the island were out of contention for our entire stay; completely unrunnable. However, because we had a plan, even though it was forced to change quite considerably, it was easier to stay focussed on achieving the underlying goals of the trip.
Sponsorship
We were very grateful to receive backing from the BCU’s Expedition Committee and equipment from several kayaking manufacturers; Palm Equipment, Dagger Europe, Liquid Logic, IR Werner and Pyranha. We also received camping equipment from Zigg and Alpkit. However, we did not acquire any significant commercial backing, i.e. cash.
There is no doubt that paddle sport and this kind of expedition does have commercial value. Many organisations market themselves with outdoor imagery. However, companies all have a budgetary cycle and if you approach them at the wrong time or too late, as we did, it is much harder for them to invest in your project.
To give yourself the best chance of acquiring sponsorship put together a proposal of what potential sponsors will get, number of article placements, news reports, dedicated photography, and how much it will cost them. Aim to approach them with your proposal at least a year in advance.
Leaving Taiwan
We would like to thank Club 222, the Adventure Club and the people of Taiwan for their support. A happier and kinder bunch of enthusiasts it would be hard to find.
We would also like to thank our sponsors, whose products, quite simply, make this type of trip not only possible but as safe and comfortable as it is possible to be: Dagger Europe, Palm Equipment, Liquid Logic, IR, Werner, Pyranha, Alpkit, Ziggg. Thanks also to the BCU’s expedition committee for having faith in our idea and our abilities.
Later this year our river notes will be available on www.kayaktaiwan.net. As time goes by we hope that the notes will be form the first edition of an eventually comprehensive guide to the rivers of Taiwan.
I understand what server/storage virtualisation does, I just don’t get how it does it.
Text of an article written for Paddles Magazine (British) in February 2007:
Where What How?
Hartland Quay lies midway between Barnstaple and Bude on the North Devon coast. The stretch of coast described here is relatively remote and for that reason perhaps does not see as many paddle strokes as other areas, such as the Exmoor coast and Salcombe. This is a crying shame as it contains some of the best British coastal scenery anywhere, a magnificent lighthouse in a classic headland position, one of the finest examples of a West Country fishing village and more tea shops and pubs than one could shake a touring paddle at.
The route described is not overly long and ought to be done with a helping hand from the tide. Fortunately, though the tide is likely to be moving at quite a pace, it has no discernable effect on the surface of the water around Hartland Point or the rest of the trip. Altogether, as long as the weather and surf have been checked out as appropriate in advance, many people will be able to enjoy a relaxing trip and get seriously stuck into the ice cream opportunities along the way.
Hartland Quay to Buck’s Mills (11 miles)
Hartland Quay, at the end of a winding lane descending the cliff, has a variety of inns and tea emporiums to while away the time whilst the shuttle is being run. There is a pay and display public car park near the water that can get very busy in the height of the holiday season. Good access to the rocky foreshore is available via an ancient slipway beside one of the pubs.
Once on the water, you’re immediately into classic UK sea kayaking; clear blue water, artistically positioned cliffs and rocky reefs. The scenery reaches jaw dropping proportions with the rounding of Hartland Point. The lighthouse on Hartland Point was built in 1874 to make safe the approaches to the Bristol Channel, or so they say. For my money, it’s rival purpose was to demonstrate the incredible ingenuity, endeavour and aesthetic sensibility of Victorian Britain. As an enduring monument to those times and as an embellishment to an already stunning coastline, it takes some beating.
The coast continues in some style until it relaxes, slightly, in the curve of Clovelly Bay and the entrance to Clovelly harbour. Tea and cake aficionados take note, you’ve reached the epicentre of your sport. We arrived at mid-tide and dragged our boats up the pebbles, onto a slipway, and stashed them well above high water mark of the significant tidal range.
Clovelly has been inhabited since at least the Stone Age. However, the picture postcard perfection that we know today owes most of its existence to the early 18th Century herring industry. To a great extent, it seems Clovelly finished its development in the same century; antique, unspoiled and idyllic sum the place up. The path from the harbour is cobbled and steep, so much so that the locals use barrows to take their goods to the cars parked over the top of the hill. Immaculately kept stone cottages, covered in flowers, line the streets, with architectural oddities in every nook.
It wasn’t until some months after this trip that I learnt there is an entrance fee of £4.75 (adults) to the village. There is no ticket booth by the harbour so we weren’t to know and certainly weren’t asked (or enquired).
At some point, the time will come to follow the path back to the harbour and re-float your kayak on the blue waters of the North Devon coast. Just a few miles further East is the fortified entrance to a path that runs steeply up a cleft in the cliff, signalling your arrival at Buck’s Mills.
This is the only slightly inconvenient part of the trip, for loafers such as me anyway. It’s quite a stiff climb, vertically perhaps 100 feet, to the road. Some may balk at this climb, however, there is no road access between Buck’s Mills and the next town eastwards, Westward Ho! (the Victorians invented the town’s name, replete with exclamation mark, apparently). This extension almost doubles the length of the trip and takes in coastline of less dramatic interest than the classic Hartland Quay to Buck’s Mills section described above.
Tides & Surf
Understanding the local tide flows is not rocket science. As the tide comes in, it flows from West to East (the Atlantic to Bristol) and as it goes out, it flows from East to West (back to the Atlantic). We set out from Hartland Quay at low tide to catch a shove from the tide towards Buck’s Mills. There’s nothing wrong with reversing the course, starting at high tide from Buck’s Mills – in fact, that might be better given the climb from the beach. Tide times for North Devon are obtainable from the BBC website up to seven days in advance, or, if your planning isn’t up to ‘days in advance’, most surf shops and beach lifeguard stations on the North Devon coast have local tide time displayed on chalk boards outside.
The North Devon coastline is justly famous for its surf. The coastline on this trip is mainly craggy and exposed, with few exits points. It’s best to check the surf forecast before setting out, www.a1surf.com and www.magicseaweed.com are popular surf forecast sites.
More Useful Websites
http://www.trinityhouse.co.uk/interactive/gallery/hartland_point.html
James Farquharson
I wrote this article for a British kayaking magazine on a sea kayaking trip I took to Sardinia in November 2006. Someone on a message board just mentioned that they were thinking of going so I thought I might as well make the text available online:
Most people, at some stage, go through the trauma of changing jobs. Some only take the weekend to recover their composure before plunging in to the next 9.00 – 5.00. Others take a few more days to potter, drink tea and tend to the garden. In true kayak style, James Farquharson (I wrote my own intro), threw caution to the wind, organised a week’s unpaid leave, booked the first available cheap flight to somewhere nice and carved out an adventure, seizing the day in Sardinia.
Bearing in mind that my job swap took place in mid-November, certain of Ryanair’s destinations were immediately eliminated. I’m sure Gdansk is very pretty in the Summer but a Baltic fishing port making a frostbitten transition between autumn and winter didn’t appeal. I needed somewhere warm, somewhere cheap and somewhere to go kayaking. November isn’t the most reliable season for white water in Europe so sea kayaking stepped up to the plate and the Med’ was the obvious destination.
A quick scan through the very cheapest of the Mediterranean flights led me to the island of Sardinia, which, until that point I knew next to nothing about and, to be frank, struggled to find on the map. A little Googling later and certain important facts were revealed. Sardinia’s weather in autumn was likely to be bluebird sunny with temperatures in the 20s. The north east corner of the island boasts an intriguingly crenelated coastline and an archipelago of many smaller islands, beginning just a few kilometres offshore and leading into the Strait of Bonifacio between Sardinia and Corsica. Finally, I discovered the wonder that is Location Sardinia with its rental fleet of modern and highly serviceable sea kayaks.
Location Sardinia is run by an English couple, Mike and Judith, who have lived on the island, in a state of some bliss, for twenty years. Location Sardinia can arrange for airport pickups, first and last night accommodation as well as providing all the kayak-related equipment one needs for multi-day sea kayaking. Kayaks can be rented for independent trips or, if required, coaching and guiding can be provided. Mike is ex Royal Marines and great fun. Judith is lovely and perfectly happy to cook up first-rate local specialities for hungry kayakers.
With no one able to come with me on holiday at such short notice (or maybe it’s just because I smell bad), Mike dropped me off at the put in, the Spiaggia de Juncu, for what turned out to be a 6 day solo trip covering the justly famous Costa Smeralda and the Maddalena archipelago. You will probably have already noticed that there aren’t many pictures of people sea kayaking in this article and now you know why: it’s hard to take pictures of yourself sea kayaking!
The first day was simply beautiful (note: everyday was beautiful so I will try not to mention it again). The Costa Smeralda is formed of an orangey-pink granite that seems to have bubbled out of the ground in molten form and solidified into giant globules, kept warm by the sun but weathered by time. The water is clear to great depths, turning the submerged rock a gradually deeper shade of blue. Many of Italy’s super-rich, Silvio Berlusconi, for example, own large stretches of the coast so I spent much of the first day alternatively gauping at rock formations and fabulous millionaire villas. Towards the end of the day I turned offshore and headed to the uninhabited east coast of the Island of Caprera.
I camped on a beach that I just managed to find before it got dark. I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day and had no prospect of company. Luckily I had a doorstep sized book on Chinese history to read by candlelight.
The next day dawned sunny and warm, again (hurrah!). Bouyed with success, and with sun on my back, I decided to enact my secret, not least to say daring, plan to paddle the 11 km wide Strait of Bonifacio to Corsica. This would entail paddling to the most remote island in the Maddelenas, Razzoli, and sleeping the night there before heading to Corsica the next morning.
The first half of the plan worked exceedingly well. The second half ended in a worried sprint back to the mainland some days later.
Half way through the night the wind in the Strait picked up to a force 8. This is the sort of wind that not many people volunteer to go sea kayaking in, certainly not me at any rate. As I peered out from behind the protective pink shed that would be my home for the next two days I could see that leaving the island was a total no hoper. I wandered to one of the end of the island, a five minute walk, to find it just as windy so wandered back. I liked to think of this walk, one I repeated many times, as like a jungle cat pacing up and down a cage biding his time to escape, rather than as a buffoon stuck on an island through his own idiocy.
I read my book.
A day and half later, the wind dropped. All thoughts of Corsica cast aside I made my bid for freedom. As soon as I made it to the inside of the islands the wind dropped to nothing and the heavy, choppy seas disappeared to a mirror, the bluebird recommenced singing and all was well with the world. I think I remember being taught about this type of Mediterranean weather and its, largely negative, effects on Phoenician merchant ships in history at school. However, “you live and learn”.
Two more idyllic days of blue sky, clear water sea kayaking, the slightly worrying weather business on Razzoli forgotten, followed. I had only spoken to one person in six days, and that was more like sign language; walking into a harbourside café and asking for a ‘café’ hardly qualifies as talking. To celebrate I went snorkelling and spoke with the fishes in bubble language.
Regretably, my more adventurous than I had planned adventure came to an end. Mike picked me up from the take out and took me back to casa Location Sardinia for a very welcome bit of home cooking and bed rest.
Now that I am at my new place of work I can look back at my unexpected week off and know that, as much as I could, I seized the day. I hope to visit Sardinia again, though next time with the wife; she loves talking.
Things to know before leaving:
Location Sardinia can be found at www.locationsardinia.com
The Lonely Planet guide to Sardinia, most recent edition published in 2006, is handy to have.
If I were free to pick a time of year to go I would choose late spring or late summer/early autumn. I don’t like being too hot and the camping beaches would probably get a bit crowded in the summer.
Ryanair flights land at Alghero. The airport is just over 100 km from Location Sardinia’s base in Olbia, at the start of the Costa Smeralda. If you haven’t arranged to be picked up, buses to Sassari (35 km) leave from outside the airport. From Sassari either catch another bus or the train (the two stations are very close to one another) to Olbia. The full journey, one way, cost less than €10.
The Med has no tides worth speaking about, which makes navigation and beaching for the night much simpler than the UK’s waters, but as is clear in the text, the sea can be whipped into a chop quite quickly by the wind, especially amongst the outer islands. The inshore passages are like a millpond even when its windy, making for very simple, but rewarding, sea kayaking.
James Farquharson
