Sporty trips and wee adventures
May 17th, 2004
It dawned on me the other day that, what with one thing or another, I haven’t been out of central Scotland for about nine months! This is very unlike me, and I’m really hyped to escape up north for a while soon. The real trouble is that I only really go somewhere to do some sport there. I quickly learned that I don’t enjoy holidays, no matter how nice a place is, unless I’m doing something I’m into and now that I’m starting to do more active stuff, I can’t wait to get away again.
While walking to work this morning I reminisced about some past trips that I’ve been on and realised that the best ones have all been climbing trips. It’s a bit of a cliche, but there really was a lot more to these trips than just the climbing. I used to hitch and bivvi a lot around the country for climbing and every trip up north felt like a wee adventure. Sleeping under boats on the beach, under fish crates at the harbour or getting lifts from eccentric old boys in shonky cars was good fun. No, it was better than that – it was absolutely wicked.
When my final exam at uni was over, my coursemates all went out on the piss. I went for a quick pint then headed to bed so that I could get up and go hitching and climbing in the north-west with Alastair for ten days. It was one of the best trips I’ve been on – the weather was great, we had a great laugh, saw some lovely sunsets and even got some trad climbing done.
Since getting into kiting I’ve also been on plenty of trips and they have been great fun, but none of them have captured that adventurous feel of some of the climbing missions. Of course one big difference is that you can’t very easily hitch-hike with four kites and two boards (although I did manage to hitch the four miles to the beach every day in Fuerteventura – very lucky), but there’s more to it than that. With kiting it seems too easy to get sucked into just going to the same beaches every week, just because you know there’s wind and it’s the safe option. Once I’m back into kiting I’m going to focus on getting away from that – find new spots to rides, both on water and land, and recapture some adventure in these things.
May 17th, 2004 at 07:47 PM
wow, that post really made me think about kiting and how we do just get sucked into the same beach because we know it will be a good session… but thats all it is, a good session. The really memorable sessions have got to be the first ones at new places, meeting new people and watching different the different styles of doing the same tricks!
May 18th, 2004 at 11:54 PM
Glad it got you thinking :)
I was going to go into a full-on post about the future of kiteATB (well, my kiteATBing at least) but thought it best to save that for another post once I’ve got my head fully round it.
May 22nd, 2004 at 08:59 AM
Still thinking about kiting? Trips are wicked, even if the weather’s shit and you get nothing don. Proposal: If you’re up for a trip a wee bit different, just fire out to the Shamali Plains(Shamali Plain = Plain of Winds). Oh, and don’t forget your lovely new MTB… Brendan.