Saturday, January 12, 2008

Sea Kayaking Desktop Calendar December 2008


Soft winter sun on Ayrshire's remote and lonely Atlantic coast.

If you would like to download the December desktop, it is available in sizes of 1920x1200, 1280x1024, 1024x768 and 800x600.

For best results, do not use the photos from this blogger site but visit the Scottish Sea Kayaking Photo Gallery and click on the size of your desk top. Most visitors to this site use 1280x1024 or 1024x768. You can check your desktop size by right clicking anywhere on it then left click properties then left click settings.

Well that brings the 2008 calendar to a close. This year, six of the photos were taken in my home waters; the Firth of Clyde. The 2005 calendar had one Clyde photo, the 2006 had one and the 2007 none. I have made a concious effort to do my bit for the environment by consuming less energy in getting to sea kayaking trips :o). Sometimes it is easy to overlook what is close to home, today we paddled over 30 km from a launch site less than 1 hour's drive from Glasgow. We visited 3 islands and saw a huge bulk carrier's coal cargo being unloaded, two nuclear powered stations (one decommissioning, a wind farm, an oil fired power station (mothballed), snowy mountains, eider duck, two ancient castles, a tide race, a Fleet Auxiliary vessel and finally a Vanguard class nuclear submarine returning to its base from a World cruise!

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like just another 'ho-hum' paddle to me. I can see you wanting to fly out to distant paddling venues where you can see flying saucers, kayaking Martians and other really exciting stuff... ;-)

    I wonder what the protocal is for passing submarines? How interesting to see one of these monsters of the deep pass by so close. Do you suppose they were aware of your presence?

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  2. Hello Michael, the guy on the conning tower had his glasses on us and the accompanying Navy RIB headed our way for a bit but must have assessed that we were no risk as he headed back on course before he got to us. Channel 16 was of course silent. Further up the Firth, the RIB did go right up to inspect a heavy looking launch. The military police launch was also waiting for the sub just north of us.

    Nice to be so insignificant!

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