ron-t kayaking blog
09 June 2015 ............ North Stack
A beautiful day with a light wind from the east or the north, pretty much Neaps, and I launched from Porth Daffarch a wee bit before high tide.
Porth Daffarch was quite busy, with lots of groups doing stuff like playing in toy kayaks, raft building, coasteering, and a few small fishing boats - but no other sea kayaks, and once I was away from Porth Daffarch I had the sea to myself.
Straight through the middle race at Penrhyn Mawr on the later stages of the flood tide, then straight through under the bridge at South Stack, where it was now an ebb tide.
And out to North Stack, where there wasn`t too much evidence of a tidal current, except coming round the outside of the island, where there was a rather nice user-friendly race - so that was a good bit of fun. A couple of hundred metres to the north there was a much bigger race which I stayed away from.
The most obvious feature of North Stack is the huge Parliament Cave, or Parliament House Cave, depending on which book you read.
There is an impressive rock wall along one side as you head in - Yosemites, eat your heart out !
Parliament Cave provides a good place for a pit stop, and whilst you are there, you have a smashing view back across Gogarth Bay to South Stack. I couldn`t decide which of these two pictures I liked the best - the first one provides the best view of Gogarth Bay and South Stack -
but the longer focus view of South Stack in this one has a sort of magic about it.
I had plenty of time, so I went for a wander around Parliament Cave, and I found a narrow passageway that leads right through North Stack, and comes out in another cave around on the north side of North Stack.
The passageway is about a metre wide, so not a problem to walk through - this is looking northish after walking through it until I was about to get wet feet.
Once I was back in my boat, I headed round North Stack to see if I could find the other end of the passageway - and in the process, I found two caves I didn`t know about - I have seen before the two caves to the south of North Stack, but I haven`t ever seen these ones before.
The first one is not too far round from Parliament Cave, and it has two entrances - here it is from the outside - the bigger entrance is fairly obvious in this picture, the other entrance is to the left of the buttress.
And here it is from the inside -
From the narrow entrance, you get a good view across to South Stack -
Well inside the cave I found another passageway - it was flooded, and I tried to go through it, but it was just too narrow, so had to gingerly back out again - but I could just see daylight reflected off the walls of the passageway away inside, so it obviously went somewhere.
Back out into the sunshine, and I headed further around North Stack, and right round to the north east of North Stack I found this next cave -
Now inside this cave was quite interesting - it split into three - to the left there was a sub cave, but I couldn`t see anything at all in it, it was just too dark, even though I sat there for several minutes - so I don`t know what it is like.
Straight on is the passageway that leads through to Parliament Cave.
And to the right is the very narrow passageway that I couldn`t get my boat through, that leads through to the last cave.
I had no idea that North Stack has so many passageways through it.
Time to head back round North Stack again, past Parliament Cave, and not too far before you come to the cave with the window -
This cave goes along way in - I reversed quite far in here -
After the window cave it is only a short hop to the next cave - this is a bit of an odd one - it is in two very distinct bits - the outer bit is very high, and has two entrances, with a high flying buttress in between them.
Here it is from the outside, looking in through one of the entrances -
Here it is from the inside, with the flying buttress right down the middle of the picture -
The other bit of this cave is the quite long much lower inner cave - I am well inside it here, looking out - and spot the seal.
That is the end of the caves around North Stack, it is an amazing place - but it isn`t the end of the story.
I am afraid I can`t remember which cave it was, I am a bit in cave overload, but I can certainly remember the incident.
I had been deep into a cave, and was reversing back out, and off to my right, there was another sort of wider passageway, but it was pitch black in it, so I have no idea how deep it is.
But as I was sitting there trying to get used to the darkness - this thing came swimming towards me - I presume it was a seal, although it didn`t look like a seal - all I could see was this rather flattish evil looking and very aggressive face with huge whiskers and glowing eyes that was coming straight at me and it was very obvious that I was not welcome.
There I was in the dark in a completely alien environment in a wobbly boat about to be attacked by a huge beast of a thing - I left - in a hurry !
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