By Rich Harpham FRGS and Ashley Kenlock
Bio
Richard Harpham, FRGS, is a human powered adventurer, coach and inspirational speaker who has completed over 11,000 miles of expeditions by kayak, canoe, SUP and bike www.richadventure.com
Richard runs the award winning Canoe Trail watersports and adventure business with his wife Ashley. Thanks to BAM Clothing, Paramo, Valley Sea Kayaks, Palm Equipment and SilverBirch Canoes for sharing the dream. www.canoetrail.co.uk
Planning your trips and expeditions
Trips and expeditions are the ‘cherry on top of our world of paddling adventures and fresh air miles. The choices and possibilities become infinite, spanning rivers, open water and coastal destinations. Each location varies further depending on conditions, tides and river levels.
Each trip or expedition is also enhanced by sharing journeys with different friends, practising traditional skills, enjoying campfire delicacies or communing with nature, history and other aspects of our great outdoors. Trips feel very different by chosen craft, kayak, canoe or SUP and the season. Over the years and 11,500 miles of human-powered adventures, I have learnt that planning trips generally ensures you get the best out of them.
Planning Your Trip
Planning your trip can be the epitome of ‘blue-sky thinking’ or at the very least ‘wishful thinking’! Choosing locations, craft, and conditions can provide endless and unbounded possibilities. That is why I love paddling so much. Working out a plan, A to B, a circular trip or something bigger with portages, challenges and even an overnight or two is part of the buzz. As I was completing this article, my paddles have all been local, one or two hours in duration, from canoe to kayak to SUP. March sun meant super cold toes as I prematurely broke out the shorts.
It is essential to consider the group you are paddling with (Covid rules aside) and determine the right distance, pace, technical aspects and conditions to ensure it balances challenge with enjoyment. Think about your access and egress points and potential contingency options in the event of an issue such as swimmer, injury or broken kit. It is also essential to determine the river access and the put-in (don’t forget to register for the River Access Campaign). Allowing time for vehicle shuttles on river trips is another critical consideration to avoid finishing in the dark or stressing out your teammates. No one wants a mutiny of a random keel hauling because you incorrectly guessed the shuttle time!
However, there is nothing better than capturing a majestic sunset or sunrise, so don’t be afraid to include paddling at either end of the day but include it in the plan rather than surprise your crew. As a novice night paddling ninja, you should start on sheltered water to keep the risks low while adapting to your location in the dark. In summary, don’t forget the six or seven ‘P’s of planning to avoid poor performance or worse.
Hazards
As part of the trip planning, it is essential to use a guide book or dear old Google to determine hazards and obstacles. Some information can be found on online forums such as UK Rivers Guide or UK Sea Kayak Guidebook, where you can ask more. Local knowledge of weirs, strainers (submerged tree risks), rapids, tide races and overfalls on the sea, as well as prevailing winds, are all invaluable. As part of this, it can be helpful to ask a local, but we do suggest you ask someone with relevant knowledge.
As you become more experienced, you can make decisions and complete a dynamic risk assessment on the move and employ a more ‘read and run’ tactic, paddling what you see in front of you. Trickier features such as rapids can, of course, must be inspected first from the bank to see the hazards and lines.
The Mind Games
The age-old adage is the body will follow the course of the mindsets. You can help this by building resilience and efficacy by tackling shorter trips to build endurance and pushing comfort zones and limits in a controlled way. You don’t want to find your limit in the middle of a wilderness expedition in simple terms.
Over the years, we have discovered limits such as paddling through the night, distance and duration between breaks, and environmental conditions, including Force 6-7 or surfing in five-foot waves fully laden. The building blocks or foundations for these are learnt through training. Simple tricks can be used to calm anxiety, such as visualisation, rehearsal, peer group support, or even knowing when to hunker down.
Feeding the Machine
Feeding or refuelling the machine is critical for achieving goals and plans. Over the years and many long-distance endurance races (125 miles Devizes to Westminster twice and 444 miles Yukon River Quest) and more significant expeditions, I have learnt what works for me to feed the machine and maintain energy levels. Some of my favourites include malt loaf, bananas, chocolate bars, wraps filled with all manner of things, sweets and more besides. One winning team on the Yukon 1000 race allegedly powered themselves with Haribo sweets for the duration, which, although successful potentially, may have led to early-onset diabetes.
Building on this is the very British art of the picnic. We have become Jedi masters of picnics, preparing all manner of delights and selecting Stanley flasks, MSR stoves and campfires, all of which get a lot of use. As foodies, camp cooking is also part of our paddling ritual, never a chore and something we embrace. For customers joining our expeditions, Best of Scotland, moving water trips and wilderness journeys in the Yukon and Ontario, creating happiness through our food is our passion. From preparing the game to conjuring up hash browns with perfect poached egg, chicken and chorizo stews to baking brownies, we love it. It is part of the bonding experience and is something to look forward to at the end of a long days paddle.
Some trips with more demanding schedules involve a mix of expedition foods like Adventure Nutrition to reduce kit weight. When close to resupply locations, we bulk these lightweight rations with fresh veg to boost vitamin intake. A pillbox with fresh spices, fruit teas, campfire coffee, an excellent single malt and decent cocoa all put the icing on the cake.
Water, Water Everywhere
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Colebridge 1834 just about covers this requirement as a paddler. Water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink! Obviously, a lack of water affects performance and well-being. Simple solutions include a hydration pack, MSR bladder packs and gauging the amount you may need.
On bigger trips, we filter water using gravity bags with ceramic filters and generally allocate the roles to different team members. Racing is a different priority, and in that instance, we carry water bottles in holsters with a taped elongated straw to reduce lost time drinking and rehydrating.
How Short is Your Toothbrush?
Kit admin is a skill worth developing in your paddling repertoire. It can be the difference between comfort or tears from packing the right bits to not leaving it behind on a riverbank or drying it after use. We have a robust first aid kit with a wide range of supplies and a DS (Deep Sh*t) grab bag with a useful repair kit, torches, fire lighting kit and a leatherman.
As professional adventurers, we are lucky to have a wide range of clothing and kit; strangely, the more we paddle, the luckier we become. We can choose from shorts, rashies and cags to waterproof tops through to full dry suits. Work out your clothing layers for warmth, comfort, and temperature changes, as being comfortable is vital.
The four D’s of navigation
Mapping out your journey or trip in advance, identifying points of interest, hazards, an equally important is the schedule or itinerary. Understanding a plan that includes time to explore, coach, eat lunch and manage the group’s welfare is essential in the long run. Then, snatching success from the jaws of failure or vice versa comes from navigation, knowing where you are, and adapting plans. The four D’s is something we share on our Duke of Edinburgh canoe programmes with young people.
Distance – measure the distance and compare that to estimated times and paddling speeds.
Duration – calculate an average paddling speed allowing for the group, weather conditions, tides, fatigue, lunch and even daylight hours.
Direction – navigation is pretty critical as a skill to remove your route’s zigs and zags, particularly with crossings, open water, and, of course, in fog.
Description – use natural features, landmarks and points of interest to track your progress. This also allows you to adapt your plans if needs be.
Technology to the rescue
Whilst I don’t process a tech brain like some of my peers, I have found a raft of useful phone apps and websites to assist with trip planning. Most of them have been used day to day, and some tested in emergencies, all passing with flying colours. They can be categorised into location, weather, paddling conditions and communications. Some of the apps I can recommend include:
Windfinder
A fantastic and accurate two-hour interval forecast which is particularly accurate for wind speed and direction as it was developed for kite surfing and other sports. The clue is in the name!
UK Weather App
Forecasts weather in terms of rain and cloud cover using satellite maps.
River App
The River App is excellent for monitoring river levels. You can set the review period between hours, weeks and a more extended period to establish averages and whether a river is in spate to help plan your trip.
Magic Seaweed
Although designed for surfers, this can provide excellent information on swell, wave height, and general sea state for sea kayak trips around the UK.
Absolute Tides
A great app showing tidal information, speeds and heights, as well as some tidal flows and forecast information.
Ordnance Survey (OS)Locate
OS Locate is brilliant for accurate grid reference and direction from your smartphone.
OS Maps
I am reluctant to encourage people away from paper maps. We believe they remain the most useful format and tool for trip planning and navigation, but having OS Maps with their subscription service is useful. Imagine access to the UK’s OS maps for £23.99. Bargain.
What Three Words
Our first foray into this app was calling out the fire service for a power cable arcing onto trees in a forest whilst mountain biking. We provided a six figure grid reference, and they asked for What Three Words!
Postcode Finder
A useful app mainly for getting to your paddling destination, put-in’s and get-outs and ensuring a smooth shuttle for rivers or A to B journeys.
Other Technology
For my more significant expeditions, sea kayak journeys and crossings, I also use a range of other equipment and technology to provide emergency contact in a rescue incident. These include an EPIRB (Emergency Positioning International Rescue Beacon), which pings a signal to Falmouth Coastguard, VHF radio’s for which you need a licence, sat phones, and the Garmin In-Reach system, which includes mapping, GPS, messaging and an SOS system. They all have pros and cons, but I can confirm I have tested them through the harshest of conditions and environments. For typical rivers, coastal corridor and open water, you should generally have some mobile phone coverage.
Dynamic Risk Assessment
As part of your trip planning process, people generally consider the hazards and environment they are facing. This may include weirs, rock gardens and trees on rivers, tides, tide races, overfalls, and prevailing wind on the sea and open water. Getting into the habit of completing a dynamic risk assessment is a potential lifesaver. Although we all do it every day of our lives, assessing the likelihood (probability) multiplied by the severity (impact) to determine if something is too risky, we need to try and adopt a process for trips and expeditions to provide rigour and protection (it is also a great life skill).
As part of this, we consider three core elements, the people, the environment and the task or activity. We have broken that down further as below:
Environment
Weather conditions, river levels.
Task or activity
Nature of paddling challenge, location and journey considerations.
People
Experience levels, injuries or lack of mobility, young paddlers, group level.
On the trail
It is essential to manage the group dynamics from paddlers who get distracted by river features or who simply are falling off the planned pace on the journey. Having communications and paddling protocol agreed upon before the group separates or faces an incident is critical. As a nominated leader (even informally), we tend to use an acronym called CLAP.
Communications – on the move, visual, verbal and effective.
Line of sight – agree on boundaries, position the group, so it remains together.
Avoidance – follow lines and a course to avoid hazards and obstacles.
Position of most use – anticipate hazards, issues and be in the best location…as if by magic.
As things unfold, the wind picks up, wavelets increase to white caps or river features and flow seem pushy, it is crucial to know where your limits are. When we sea kayaked the Inside Passage, 1,000 miles from Vancouver to Alaska, we paddled all conditions up to a Force 6, and our longest paddle was 62 miles through the night. Conversely, we met less experienced paddlers who got off the water once they saw any waves on the surface, which kept them in their safety zone.
Group dynamics can definitely play a part in the enjoyment and achieving of your goals. As part of this, we have found understanding people’s expectations and needs is important. From basic admin such as toilet breaks to monitoring energy levels, it can all derail your plans. One of our simple tricks to manage group well-being is to ask people how they feel out of 10. Changes in scores are a great indicator and can lead us to change plans before people are pushed too far. The team’s other important aspect is identifying roles, from safety to vehicle shuttles through to other tasks, head chef, water provider, ‘King of Faff’ and firelighter. We threw in ‘King of Faff’ to help you identify potential culprits in your group who might hinder your pace or timekeeping.
Make A Plan and Explore our Watery World
As lockdown ends and we can travel further afield, it’s time to explore our UK waters and see the Great of Great Britain. Hopefully, this article will empower you to plan some iconic trips, maybe paddling a coastal location, heading to historical places to find that living history feeling or connecting with nature. Set goals and keep challenging yourself to improve skills, endurance, fitness, or just to put a smile across your face. To quote Marcel Proust, “The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but having new eyes.”
