Rolling on the River*

Wooooo Hoooo. Just learned to roll a kayak**. 'Nuff said.


* Well actually a lake
** Managed it 3 times.

With thanks to Jules, instructor extraordinaire.

Reversing Falls Paddling

It's one adventurous weekend after another at the moment! This weekend just been I caught a ride with Sofie, Julia, John, Chris and Luke to St John, New Brunswick, home of the infamous Reversing Falls. The St John river is tidal, and so when the tide is out, the water flows one way, when the tide comes in, the water flows the other way. Luckily for the paddlers, this increase and decrease in flow cause some nice rapids and standing waves to form, which they can then play in. Watching them (and listening to Julia on the mike and Luke on the way home) provided my entertainment. And highly entertaining it was too!

So here's the river when we first arrived, at 10am. Pretty inocuous. Even I could paddle it, and I wouldn't even mind swimming it. Apart from the slight inconvenience of the paper mill on the opposite bank draining highly acidic water into the river. Nice eh?


30 mins later the sea level is really starting to drop, and the flow is kicking in.


1 hour later and the "Greasy Chicken" is ready to ride!! (Yes, paddlers name their waves as silly names as climbers name their routes)

The paddlers waiting for their turn


Sof, Jules and John looking excited



John contemplating the beautiful view over lunch....

Paro Landing

I was browsing on YouTube the other day and found this short video clip of the view out of the plane window as the Druk Air jet lands in Paro, Bhutan. The journey from Calcutta to Paro is the most impressive flight (in terms of the view) I have ever taken, although I have heard that the flight from Kathmandu to Paro is better as you fly closer to Everest.

Porters Lake and Taylor Head

Porters Lake is only just outside Dartmouth, west of Halifax, but the provincial campsite there has been closed since Hurricane Juan. Newly opened, the campsites have been redesigned to be be "walk in" sites - only 50-100m from the car but seemingly enough to put people off. There were 3 occupied sites on "our" island, out of about 15. We were right on the point, with water on 3 sides. Dawn hung up the hammock, we went for a swim: bliss.



On Sunday we drove to Taylor Head and went for a walk in the fog and rain. Typical Nova Scotian weather! Great walking along the coast and round the point - a park worth the wait. It's been on my list of places to go to for a while.
Thanks guys, a great weekend all round.

How to become a rockhound

(From a mug from Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Nova Scotia)

First, you must have a basic curiosity...
Second, buy yourself a sack of marbles.
Then, every time you pick up a rock, drop a marble.
When you have lost all of your marbles....
You are a Rockhound

What's in a name?

The powers that be at Quiz Galaxy have decided that were my name to be in a dictionary, it owuld be defined as:

Clare Warren --
[noun]:

A brand of soylent green breakfast cereal

What would you be?

PS I just checked and you get a different definition each time. Huh.

Jumping photos

Some of the latest (April to now) goodies for you to enjoy! I think I need to learn a couple more moves - I always seem to jump the same way!!
BTW for those of you who don't know about jumping photos:..... it should, of course, be obvious from the name. But if not, check here.

Felix's Graduation

Felix graduated (sorry, "convocated" in Canada) on Monday. Opportunity to dress up in silly clothes and pull cheesy grins. Enjoy!

5 Islands and the Fundy Coast

The coastline along the northern bay of Fundy is my favourite place in all of Nova Scotia. The 16m tidal range means that the view changes every 15 mins or so, and along with the weather, it means that the same place never looks the same twice. Felix is back for the week, so we decided to save time and head back to our favourite haunts one last time, straight from the airport on Friday evening.
The tides were in our favour: high in the morning and evening and low in the afternoon, meaning that we could explore the shore to our hearts content without having to worry about the rising tide. I took some picture of Advocate Harbour to show what the tidal range means for the fishing industry round here: you go out and come back when the water's there rather than when the fish are there!!
On Saturday we finally made it to Chignecto - Felix has been meaning to get me there for ages and we never seemed to manage to get round to it. A combination of his jetlag and noisy camping neighbours meant that we were up at 6ish, and able to get onto the road by 8. On a Saturday!!
Refugee Cove is the second coastal camping site in Chignecto, about 12km from the car park. We rather ambitiously thought that there and back in a day wouldn't be such a big deal. Ha! Well at the time it didn't seem too bad apart from the blisters and sore knees on the downhills. It was only 24-48 hours later that my calves decided that they really hadn't enjoyed the whole adventure. I'm still (6 days later) having trouble walking down stairs!! Felix of course came out unscathed... Must do more running.


On Sunday after a bit of a more more restful night we drove to the other arm of the Bay of Fundy, to Joggins. In geological terms it's a very famous place, with a large uninterrupted section of Carboniferous rocks. This is where some of the earliest amphibian and reptile fossils have been found, wonderful tree and fern fossils and a couple of other oddities. We ended up limping along the wrong section of coastline for the best bits though - my fault as I hadn't brought the guide with me.....
A wonderful weekend, and for once the weather was fantastic. The best thing about coming back into town was that Halifax had turned green overnight - all the trees were fully leaved. End of May!!!! Crazy.
Felix's pics here.