Toured Out
This week is the last date of the ‘If You Fall…’ tour I’ve been doing – ending in Caernarfon. Touring some of Britain’s arts centres and theatres has been a great way to see family and friends around the country (a special hello to Luisa and Joel who I sadly haven’t managed to see), but I’ve definitely had enough of the UK’s trains, planes, motorways and dodgy hotels. It’s been very rewarding hearing from people who’ve got something from listening to my tales, though it’s pretty strange talking about yourself for a few hours at a time. By the way, on the topic of latest adventures, the BBC Scotland programme about Andy Kirkpatrick and I sea kayaking in Patagonia is on air the evening of Sunday 24th May…at least that’s when its scheduled for just now. Not sure if it will be on BBC i-player or make English TV yet.
Back to the tour, the things I’ve enjoyed about it have been re-connecting with old friends, meeting some lovely and inspiring people, getting nice emails from people, and seeing some hidden corners (and cafes) of Britain.
Not so good things? Dull hotel rooms, lumpy mattresses (there’s nothing like your own bed hey), listening to a Sat Nav for hours each day, and the pre-show nerves. Oh and there was being ill and losing my voice in Poole and London, then having to cancel Kinlochewe. Serious stamina is needed by those bands that go on year long tours.
So after trying to squeeze in some training on the back alleys behind theatres, its back home now, and training as much as my little arms will let me, for the first hand-bike race of the summer series – June 7th in Lancaster. Better get off to the gym…
— May 04, 2009 06:42 PM
Quality not quantity
Tired out after my first time at touring theatres, we decided to head west for a day out. It was only two months since we sea kayaked through Patagonian seas, but two months off the water felt like a lifetime. The weeble that I am (with no muscles that work below the chest) felt very wobbly as I nosed my way out of the jetty in Laide - a west coast Scottish village, its sands gleaming in the rare sun. Within the first kilometre, my back support had slipped down and I watched Andy, the not-so-long-ago novice kayaker, skilfully powering his way into the distance.
We reached a rocky point, and I was surprised how fast we were covering ground. But rounding the corner, a series of headlands fingered into the horizon, telling me I’m got it all wrong. I’d been forcing the coastline to fit the map. We’d only done 5 km, so there was still a long long way to go.
“Andy, I think we should turn round”
“What for? Let’s carry on”
I should have insisted, persuaded him otherwise, pointed out we’d be there at sunset, if we were lucky. But it was windy, and I was too tired to debate. So we paddled on.
Tendonitis from the Patagonian paddling adventure kicked back in, and my wrist creaked with each stroke into the wind.
At the next headland,
“Andy, can you put me on tow?” I needed to ease my wrist.
At the next headland.
“We’ve only done 10km? Still 25 to go?”
On we went, eager for the kilometres, straight-lining from point to point, no time to explore and enjoy. The sun sank low. We paddled faster, chasing the headlands before dusk ate them up.
Lured by the day’s bright sun, it had been easy to forget it was still March, the air still raw with winter, the water icy cold, that darkness came fast.
In Loch Ewe, we paddled exhausted in darkness, towards shore-side silhouettes, eager for a place to land…too tired to appreciate the stillness of evening, too numbed from straight-lining the day. It had been a long day out.
The best parts of being out adventuring are exploring, noticing, enjoying good friends, and having good times. Quality not quantity…sometimes its good to turn around.
— April 07, 2009 10:04 PM
Promo vid
Here’s a little promo for my tour which starts next week.
Karen Darke - El Cap Memories from andrew on Vimeo.
— February 17, 2009 02:51 PM
Patagonia Pics
Patagoina pics can be seen at my Flickr site…Back from the wilds of Patagonia to the much colder wilds of Scotland. Minus twenty this week…haven’t seen anyone paddling. Looking back, we can’t quite believe we managed to get to the San Rafael glacier in Patagonia (see previous posts), given injuries and our short ‘window of opportunity’. The effort and intensity involved shows in our lack of good pics! There are a few though - see http://www.flickr.com/karendarke and here are a few to give you the idea.
— February 12, 2009 06:46 PM
Surviving the ‘Eater of Men’...
It squeezed us dry of every last drop of energy, and then demanded more. Patagonia, that distant magical place with towering spires for mountains and roller coaster seas, where someone told me “there’s nothing much doing with the tides from what I remember”, ate us up. It lived up to its name as ‘The Eater of Men’ (and women to be pc), and supplied a string of tough stuff, none of it helped by Andy hurting his back a few hours before starting. He crawled into the kayak high on drugs but still in pain, with a posture worse than Quasimodo. We would be two cripples in the wilderness, neither able to walk. It seemed a crazy plan to ‘set forth’, a hard juggle of our good sense with our commitment to make a film.
Andy being a big wall climber is well used to pain and thrives on things being as hard and grim as possible, so he was determined to try for at least one day in a kayak. I’ve a history of ex-boyfriends with bad backs, paranoid about my part in that, and though desperate for him not to make it worse, was no force to his stubbornness (which the Triple Echo film crew were thankful for). So in an already keen wind, we began – how hard could 5 days get? – our journey through tide-tortured waters. Fourty km a day, not much for some, but a lot for two wobblies who hadn’t sat in a kayak for five months, took us through tidal races, island narrows, white water rapids, and winds that built from nought to ‘too scary’ in no time at all. Any comfort we’d taken in our adventure being safe, given the proximity of the film crew on their boat, the ‘Natuiluca’, disappeared on day one, when they lost us, our white double kayak just a speck amongst the expanses of breaking waves. We felt vulnerable, all too aware that under ‘non-filming’ circumstances we would never come to such a remote man-eating place without other kayakers, believing some safety in numbers.
We were initially disappointed at our original month of paddling being shrunk to only 5 days by the filming schedule, and reticent about how realistic or challenging the journey would be…but we were quickly counting the days of effort that still lay ahead. Each night, I dragged myself through barnacles and crabs towards bivvy spots that might keep us safe from the unpredictable tide, and Andy crawled around, chopping small logs to roll the kayak up the beach. In sympathy, and seeing Andy doubled in pain, the camera crew occasionally carried a bag up the beach to help our slow process of making camp.
Why? Because there was a shrinking glacier to reach, carving into the sea in the Laguna San Rafael. Because neither of us can say no to adventure. Because now we’ve survived being swallowed up in the ‘Gulf of Elephants’ and its 20km open water maelstrom, and been swept by ten knot tides to a icebergs bluer than any colour swatch blue could be, life feels sweeter for a little while. It took a lot, but it was all worth it, and the Pisco Sour in our Santiago airport hotel right now tastes better than ever.
The verdict on Andy’s back….strained ligaments in his sacro-iliac joint, 6 to 12 weeks to recover. It might even drag Andy away from his Apple gadgetry, to the gym. And if anyone reading this fancies a paddling adventure in Patagonia, we’ve a great contact there with kayaks and kit and keen to help anyone get out there.
Thanks to Triple Echo and their fantastic film crew, the Nautiluca and their fantastic boat crew, and Patagonian Logistics, there will be a documentary about this, on BBC Scotland in March (I think thats when it is…). Happy paddling! (pictures to follow soon…)
P.S. Our Palm gear was superb – kept us dry, and was durable to those barnacles, and the best cut buoyancy aids we’ve ever worn.
— February 02, 2009 11:19 PM
Happy New Year
It’s 55 degrees hotter here in Australia than at home in Scotland. Going outside is like stepping into an oven, and going training on the bike means being wrung dry of every last drop of fluid. Even at 8am this morning, I was cycling through the sprinklers in the park to cool down. Had the good fortune last week of meeting an Aussie handbiking champion – he holds so many world records I lost track, both for biking and weight lifting. He looked like a condom stuffed full of walnuts, and left me for crumbs as he sprinted off up the hills. Him in his lycra, bare chest and tattoos, me in my pink crocs, baggy shirt and beach wear! It made me think I’ve a long way to go before I’m anywhere near racing speed, but he told me his secrets, and I’ve since adopted a training programme more like his. Less is more, and quality not quantity, which is a relief given the hours of time training has been taking up…more time to sit in the shade, play with nephews and eat ice cream! And at the end of the week, Patagonia beckons…what a great start to 2009. Happy New Year, and hope you have a good one.
— January 15, 2009 10:22 AM
Cycle Crazy
Since attempting to cycle up Ben Nevis in August, (I was raising funds for a community health / water project in Tanzania), the “One Off” mountain bike has been based at Glenmore Lodge National Outdoor Centre, awaiting anyone with a disability who fancies an off-road adventure. If you’re interested, check out http://www.spanglefish.com/wheelhigh We’ve also got a second bike, part-funded by Walking on Wheels and a Sport Scotland lottery grant due to arrive in February. This will be a “Greenspeed” off-road bike Check out http://www.greenspeed.com.au
Since then, and after being on ‘bed rest’ (see my “handcranking” blog) I’ve been training, with the aim of doing a racing season next year and seeing how I get on. The new bike is great, and has knocked nearly an hour off a 30 mile circuit I do! So now I’m all for that saying “a poor workman blames his tools”. Errol Marklein, a German guru and champion himself at handcycling, kindly phoned me up to give me some help and advice. He was just leaving for a month of training in Gran Canaria - probably the best advice he could have given me, to escape from the sub-zero icy fingers of the north. So for now, its two hours a day on the bike, usually with at least four pairs of trousers, and my eyes are smarting from all the salt that gets flicked into them from the roads. That amongst fighting colds and injuries, I’m not feeling like an aspiring Paralympina, but I’m heading down under to visit my brother and nephews in January, on the way to Patagonia, so a month of healing sunshine should hopefully be lined up.
— December 05, 2008 01:53 PM
Patagonian New Year
Plans to sea kayak to the San Rafael glacier in Patagonia are finally coming together, though right now the film crew have flights booked and we don’t. The production company Triple Echo will be working with Andy Kirkpatrick and I to make a documentary for BBC. We’re not quite sure what to expect, and filming time is squeezed to only 8 days. We’re hoping it will still feel real and exciting despite a two-strong film crew chugging around in a wee boat, but from what we hear of the fearsome Patagonia winds and jungle-bashing landings, there’ll be plenty to distract us from the cameras, hopefully whales, birdlife, carving glaciers, icebergs and plenty more.
— November 27, 2008 12:50 AM
Hand cranking
The Stockholm Archipelago is a mass of small islands like freckles in the Baltic Sea, tide-less and timeless. We imagined calm water, paddling up to beach-side ice-cream stalls and colourful wooden waterfronts, miles of sunshine…a holiday not an expedition. A country that can produce Abba, Ikea, saunas and attractive blonde people, and offer a perfect kayaking destination seemed an ideal opportunity for low-octane adventure, just what I needed to recover from a scary kayaking experience at Cape Wrath earlier in the summer. We left Stockholm in the “worst summer storm for 20 years” and so we fought the winds and waves of the Baltic for a few weeks. It was lots of fun, but a trip that put me on my tummy for a month.
When you’re paraplegic, you have to be really careful about pressure sores. I can’t feel anything below armpit level, so just like you might have a gel saddle on your bike, I have something similar wherever I sit. If you don’t, your backside can get so bad that I know people who’ve spent over a year lying on their stomach, with maggots in their backsides to eat the dead tissue. Anyhow, I was lucky, saw a bruise and a lump, and kept off my bum for a month with a giant wing-mirror contraption to ‘inspect’.
Being grounded was hard work, and at the same time, the new hand-bike, partly sponsored by Berghaus, arrived. I resisted bar a 20 minute trial ride, but now up and about again, I’ve got an extra month of energy to burn, and have been hand-biking the streets of Scotland ever since. Inspired by the Beijing Olympics and the new go-faster bike, I’ve started a ‘serious’ training programme, which this week even involved a 3 hour ride starting at 6am (when I discovered it’s still very dark), with plans to do some racing next season, just to see if maybe I’ve got what it takes to make the 2012 UK team. Who says 36 is too old? It would be good to look back in ten years time and not think “I wish I’d tried that” so this winter (and the next 4 years?) is all about trying.
The miles of hand-cranking will get interrupted in January though for a few weeks kayaking in Patagonia – the plan to paddle into the fast-receding Laguna San Rafael region. In true Bear Grylls style, it won’t ever be as treacherous as it might look as we’ll have a BBC film crew chugging along in a safety boat. Andy K will no doubt be sweating and panting hard, faking a near-death experience for the cameras.
— November 09, 2008 04:54 PM
Wheel High
The last time I got to the top of a Scottish hill, since being paralysed, was on a hen weekend – in the back of one of these all-terrain quad bike type machines. It ploughed through water and heather, with me in the back bouncing around on a double mattress. We drank blue cocktails on the top, in thick cloud, and it was all very effortless.
So hand-biking to the top of Ben Nevis seemed the next obvious step when I discovered the “One Off”, a hand-bike mountain bike, which goes places I’ve never been able to go before (or not for a long time). Buoyed by the opportunities it seemed to offer, I picked the top of Britain’s highest mountain as the obvious place to take it, and decided to use the challenge to raise money for a rainwater collection system in a Tanzanian village I have some connections with.
I planned it for June, but due to injury and long-lasting snow, I decided to delay until late July. So finally began the long-climb, along with Andy and his kids, Ella and Ewen, and their granddad, Pete Kirkpatrick. A motley crew. Within the first hour, and at the first serious obstacles – boulders in the middle of the path, we picked up Ricardo, a helpful Spaniard, who got fired up about my climb up the mountain and ended up spending the day with us. As a psychiatrist he seemed a good guy to have around.
The first few hours were a mixture of hard pedalling and challenging route finding, often on grass and turf to avoid the rocky obstacles. But the path was more challenging for the bike than I had ever expected – steep rocky steps, like something I imagine in Macchu Picchu, and I couldn’t pedal without extra help to get the wheels over giant drainage ditches, and boulders.
If you’ve ever seen “Beyond Boundaries” – the BBC TV series about teams of disabled people going on adventure journeys. The wheelchair users in the programme are often being dragged and pulled around by the other participants, like they’re “luggage”. I like to be able to push myself, and not feel like a sack of potatoes getting heaved along, so, part-way up the mountain, when the balance tipped from pedalling to being pushed and pulled, I realised that it wasn’t what I’d wanted. Andy, his dad, and his kids, hadn’t signed up to drag me up Ben Nevis, and I didn’t want to get up it that way. If the path and the bike weren’t compatible, then I would have to forget the summit – for now at least.
Through hard work, grit and grind, we made it to the “Halfway Lochan’.. We spent a great night there in the rain and clag, camped by the loch. The next day, a retreat by the way we came would have been even more epic than the ascent, and we found a route out, where I could pedal largely unaided, through heather, mud and turf, to fantastic views of the valley, and the North Face of Ben Nevis. The cloud swirled, the sun lit up the rocks, and it was magical.
So, I didn’t get the joy of the summit, but I got the joy of a great team, the spirit of the mountains, and a sense of accomplishment. And raised £1500. So, for anyone else considering Ben Nevis, the path isn’t wheelchair accessible unless you have a team of Marines, or similar, and feeling like a sack of ‘tatties’!
The ONE-OFF handbike mountain bike has been funded by a SportScotland lottery grant, and will be available for anyone who cares to try it, to hire from Glenmore Lodge Outdoor Centre near Aviemore, Scotland. Full details are at http://www.spanglefish.com/wheelhigh
