Night navigation of the Great Orme - a mid-winter kayaking tale

A Night Out

What would New Year's Eve mean to most people - maybe staying in to watch James Bond on telly? What about a night out on New Year's Eve - maybe a dinner party at a friend's or a long session in a pub till way past midnight? Sounds about normal for most, I guess.

On 31 December 1985, I knew groups of mates who had a different take on a Night Out. A few would be camping on the summit of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), or kipping in the mountain hut on Foel Grach in the Carneddau. There were, indeed, a few who were camping for the weekend down an old copper mine on the Great Orme.

So, as Christmas came and went in 1985, I found myself with a couple of mates back home in Llandudno, in North Wales with an eye on the weather forecast wondering what we might do for fun. With the forecast for clear skies,  low temperatures, no rain and slight breeze from the east, we entertained the idea of getting out on the water for a bit of kayaking.

Getting ready

We'd arrived at my parents' house in Llandudno just after Boxing Day as we'd travelled up from Plymouth, where I was living and working at the time. On our way up, we'd called in at the National Watersports Centre of the Tryweryn and had a couple of runs down the river. It was cold, as was to be expected, but in those days we paddled rivers and sura way of decompressing.fed around the coasts of Devon and Cornwall more or less twelve months of the year. With the proper kit, we found we could continue our sport through most of the winter weather.

For the NYE paddle,  it would be a relatively easy in navigation. Gogarth (Great Orme's Head) is the huge limestone headland that juts out into Conwy Bay along the north Wales coast. To its west is a beach appropriately called West Shore; to the east is the beach closer to the town centre which we know as North Shore simply because it faces north. The midnight paddle would take us from West Shore around the headland to the North Shore. Navigation could not be simpler - we just had to keep the rocks on the right hand side and we'd get there.