On a warm Friday afternoon, 7 CKC club members travelled down to the New Forest for a weekend of kayaking around, across and along the Solent. Those arriving early got to walk through the New Forest for a pub meal, seeing wild horses along the way.
The later arrivals, after overcoming the usual Friday evening traffic jams and road closures, were treated to white port with tonic and kiwi cordial (from Mary), after the tents had been setup. The campsite was a huge flat field with very rule-bound staff and we got an earful when they found out Ingo was not going to arrive until 10:15pm. The campsite completely shuts down at 8pm and the gates are locked. It looked like Ingo was going to be sleeping in his car! Luckily he was able to get to the site before 10pm and was allowed in, although his car wasn’t and he had to carry his tent and kit across the campsite. Throughout the weekend the locking of the gates at 8pm meant that we had to devise our plans to be back before then, which was quite restrictive. For future trips we all agreed that we would try a different campsite.
Once everyone had arrived, we had our normal planning meeting to discuss plans for the next day. The wind looked to be quite strong, but not all weather apps were in agreement. We agreed on having two groups: one to Lepe and one to the Needles.
Saturday
Everyone was up early and we are quickly on our way to the respective launch sites. After the usual safety briefing on the beach we are off to the Needles, with no sign of the strong winds. We’re soon crossing the Lymington channel with a nice tidal push towards Hurst Castle.
Crossing to Fort Victoria, several yachts and motorboats and even one ship had to be navigated around to get safely to the other Isle of Wight. Once we were through the gap between Fort Albert and Hurst Castle the wind started to pick and everyone coped with these conditions. The Needles were in sight and that kept us focused.
We headed to the cliffs near Alum to get some shelter, then in no time we are through the gap in the Needles. On the other side the huge cliffs of Scratchells Bay are an impressive sight.
We headed for the shingle beach. As it was approaching low water, it’s not too difficult to land although with a bit of wind coming over the cliff then down onto us. To our surprise it started to rain, so we cut short our lunch and got back on the water.
Once again we passed through the Needles and then back to the colourful cliffs of Alum Bay before following the coast closely back to Fort Albert.
The wind dropped a lot and we got a nice tidal assist all the way back to Fort Albert with occasional bumpy water when coming through the gap to the Solent.
Before we know it we were back at the launch point, excited to have completed a Solent crossing – a first for three of the group.
Sunday
The day started to get very warm early in the day, meaning that we were all up early. As we poked our noses out of tents, it was a surprise to see a lot of deer at the end of the campsite. Liza said that she woke up at 3 am and they were all around the campsite in between the tents.
The wind forecast had increased overnight so we decided not to paddle on the second day. Instead we drove to Brockenhurst and did a walk across a common and in the woodland, bordered by a campsite called Hollands, which looks significantly better than our one. We saw some horses and cows (but unfortunately not on beaches).
There was a lovely vignette where a foal was lying asleep on the ground then woke up and realised that it’s mother had walked off. The matriarch of the group can hear the foal neighing and went into the woods and found its mother, then chased her back to her foal, who was very happy.
