Tuesday 18 October – Cathedral Cove by sea!

So today we had booked onto a Kayak trip to paddle round to Cathedral cove, the other option would have been to walk but where is the fun in that? We had to checkin at 8.45 so it was a bit of an early start but it is another lovely sunny day so the signs are good. We met on the beach as requested and signed the standard disclaimer stating that whatever happens it’s our fault then went through the briefing on how to get into (and out of) the kayak, at this stage it seemed like the hardest thing to do was going to be getting into the kayak skirt but we eventually managed it and it was time for us to leave. Chris was in the back with the rudder and I was at the front supposedly marking time but unfortunately all that was proved was 30 years after we first tried to share a drag lift, we are no more coordinated as a couple! All the same it was fantastic fun, if a little wet, we saw a penguin chasing fish through the water- they were actually jumping out trying to escape from him. Then we paddled into a cave before landing on Cathedral cove beach. Unfortunately the landing wasn’t particularly coordinated on my part and I managed to end up in the water which is freezing – but no harm was done and The sun was out so I soon dried out. We went for a little wander around the cove and walked part way through the arch, but the tide was in so we didn’t go all the way through. It was then time to meet up with our guide again as he had been brewing hot chocolate while we had been exploring so we had that (complete with frothy milk) and cookies before getting back Into the kayaks to return. Unfortunately the wind had picked up so it was pretty hard going, we had to aim for one of the larger rocks which seemed to be completely the wrong way to be going but all became clear when we got round the far side of it as there was a hole in the rock for us to paddle through, this was fantastic as we were paddling into wind and the waves felt quite large as we shot out the other side. As the wind was still quite strong we rafted up and tried to sail, but as with any attempt to use the wind for power as soon as we got the sail up the wind dropped! We had a few attempts but finally gave up and just paddled back. The landing was a lot more controlled this time, mostly because Andy was there to catch us! It was great and we will definitely think about doing it again. As it was still really nice we sat on the beach and had our picnic lunch before heading round to Hot Water Beach which is where you can dig in the sand and the hole fills up with hot water, this is amazing we had borrowed a couple of spades and dug our hole, in places really hot in fact we had to dig a channel to the sea to cool it down. We played around there for a while then went back to the car, we were going to head off up to the lookout points on Shakespeare’s point but I was shattered after the rowing so we went back to the apartment for a relax as we have to pack tonight because we are moving on tomorrow.