Gap Year Experiences

Board-Riding

Wednesday 6 February 2008

Monday saw us take on our first day of boardriding. First stop was Kite-surfing (pictures coming soon!). While Maddy started her windsurfing programme, the rest of the group hit the beach to meet up with our kiting instructors. A bit of safety and theory first and then the exciting part of the day. By the end of the session, everyone was harnessed in and had the basics of flying the incredibly powerful 4m training kites. With this sport, its all about getting the basics right at the beginning. From speaking to the instructors afterwards, it seems like the whole group was listening well and are more than ready to move on to the next session, where we'll be doing some body dragging in the water...thats where the fun really begins!

Tuesday we moved down the coast, to the beautiful Llandudno beach. The weather was perfect but the water was freezing, with Annie running from the water within a minute of being in it, shouting out that she couldn't feel her feet. Everything went really well though. The star of the day was definitely Genna, who looked like she'd been surfing for years, I'm sure over the next 3 months she's going to become a really impressive surfer!

Today, we were hoping to get some more kiting done, but unfortunately the strong south-easterly wind has destroyed those plans so we will be driving out to the Winelands for a day on some beautiful vineyards sampling their wares. As George says:
"if in doubt, drink"

Vince