This last winter a small group of us decided to have some Christmas paddling fun on two separate paddles in Eryri. One was on Llyn Padarn, and the other Llyn Gwynant. They were a great excuse to get out in our kayaks over the December period.
The first adventure was with four of us on Llyn Padarn. For the longest time we have been seeing other kayakers, kayaking with fairy lights on their boats in December, which looked like wonderful fun, and we wanted to have a go ourselves. So we arranged to meet at the lake one evening, an hour or two before the sun was due to set.
As we all got ready to go onto the water, we took the fun extra step of adding the fiddly lights to our boats. Cerys and I used waterproof fairy lights (thin, sealed, lights) we’d bought online, and our friends not only had fairy lights, but had light up antlers, too. We had to keep to the shallows of the lagoons as the weather was not great, but as the whole point was to kayak in the dark with twinkling lights on, that was just fine.
Once it finally became dark, the twinkling lights looked really pretty. Perhaps next year, we will manage to get more people to come and kayak with us, with fairy lights on. Doing it somewhere like Copenhagen, in their Santa Lucia parade, would be even better.
Our second paddle, was on Llyn Gwynant between Christmas and the New Year. We were hoping to use the campsite there at Gwynant, but it was closed for renovations. We found this out after emailing the owners, however they did kindly offer us an alternative. The laybys there were still able to be used, and while they do belong to the campsite, and usually carry a fee to launch, they agreed to waver the fee, as we were going to be out there with Santa hats, and lights.
On the day, the lights were not very useful, but we had our Santa hats on. Five of us were out kayaking, and we had a great day. The wind was low, and the water was relatively calm. While it is a small lake, it was just nice to still be out kayaking with friends, at such an odd time of year.
We now have a paddlesport group on Facebook, and with hope, we will build this up over the next year, so that we can organise some larger paddles for fun events like this. It’s all done on a peer basis. While we don’t expect it to be massive, in such a rural area, it would be nice to grow it a bit.
Finally kayaking with fairy lights on the boat, though, was a lot of fun.
Emma
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