Pembrokeshire, Wales: Newport Bay

Pembrokeshire is one of my favourite parts of the UK for kayaking. It has a very dramatic coastline with plenty of interesting features, from tide races to rock gardens, caves, stacks, arches, and wildlife, and its shape, jutting out into the Atlantic, means it’s very much a place of two halves – when the one side is calm, the other side tends to be rough. This makes it an excellent destination for paddlers who want to take their pick of conditions, whether you’re wanting a chilled out day or something more exciting.

I head there every couple of months, as my favourite coach, Ian from Sea Kayak Academy, is based out there. Ian had a major hand in helping me become the paddler I am today, and we’ve become friends over the past few years. We’re both also ambassadors for Segla Gear paddles, and on this occasion one of the reasons I headed over was to shoot some promo stuff for their new line of paddles. Ian and I headed down to Solva, where swell from recent stormy conditions was creating some very dynamic conditions very close to shore, making it convenient for shooting. We paddled out into some rather lumpy stuff, before I landed and started focusing on getting footage. Some shots from the shoot are below.

The following day, a paddler I actually know was arriving with her husband for a few days of training, and I stuck around to tag along. We decided to paddle out of Cwm-Yr-Eglwys, one of my favourite areas along the northern Pembrokeshire coastline, as it has a lot of cool stuff, from the tide race that runs around Dinas Head to the rock gardens around Ynys Dol-Rhedyn. It’s an amazing place to work on your skills and indeed it’s a location where I learned a lot myself when I first started coming to Pembrokeshire to train with Ian.

There was still some long period swell around but this would only really create energetic conditions around rocks and other obstacles, so the day was mostly quite relaxed, with just a few dynamic moments here and there, when particularly large sets would occasionally roll in and make things a bit spicy, but very manageable. This was perfect for the paddlers who were still learning to be comfortable in these sorts of conditions.

We had an absolutely wonderful day, just enjoying being out on the sea and playing around. The unusually nice weather for this time of the year brought sunny spells and I took the opportunity to shoot bits and pieces throughout the day to put a video together. It’s a real love letter to this particular area, and while there isn’t really a cohesive journey, I put it together as more of a showcase of this location than any kind of story. Enjoy!