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The Alderney Race – Raz Blanchard

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After island-hopping through all of the Channel Islands last summer, we had one open crossing left…from the island of Alderney back to the French mainland. The distance looked about 7-8 miles on the big chart (it turned out to measure 10 miles exact, point to point) which was not such a big deal, but it did however cross the The Alderney Race (Raz Blanchard to the French), a vast area of very powerful tidal rapids. In fact, apparently it is one of the biggest tidal rapids in the world. All of our pilot books simply warned folk to stay away (in yachts) or to at least pass through quickly following the current and keep going. We were passing through the heart of it, across the current, at Spring tides, in kayaks. Hmm.

We launched early and lined up at Alderney’s eastern tip at one hour before slack water. This meant that we could paddle through the slackest two hours of the tide and hopefully miss the worst of what the Race had to offer. Basically, this worked. The weather was dead calm, meaning that no waves were whipped up. It felt like we were simply cruising across a boating lake, but the GPS said otherwise…in our two hours of ‘slack water’, we were carried several miles north, and then several miles south. When two hours were up, we still had a couple of miles to cover (as noted, we’d underestimated the distance) and they weren’t easy going. The tidal flow was really cranking up now and our objective – the 52m Phare de la Hague lighthouse – began to slip away from us at an alarming rate. We ferry-glided like mad and eventually pulled into an eddy current formed by the extensive reefs around Cap de la Hague, apparently ‘the most stream-lashed headland in the world’ if our IMRAY pilot book was to be believed.

Embarrassing to admit it, but we hadn’t had a clue what awaited us on the French shore…we’d only noticed the rather massive lighthouse when we were halfway across. It turned out that the nearest point of France to Alderney is the wonderful fishing harbour of Goury, surrounded by the reefs which saved us from being washed many miles south. We did know that on the hill behind was CROSS Jobourg, which is effective the regional French Coastguard centre. This fact was of some interest to us, given that crossing from Alderney to France broke pretty much every French law regarding sea kayaking. However, we were not arrested on arrival. No one paid us the slightest bit of notice in fact, leaving us to dance around and whoop exultantly on the quayside. We were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, and frankly, we’re still feeling pretty smug many months later.

It was still early morning. I got lumbered with fetching the car back from Granville, many miles south. Whilst I spent over nine hours walking, hitching, catching three different trains and then driving for hours in freak monsoon-like rains, the girls put a tent up and finished off the last of their wine. I finally made it back to Goury at sunset (see photo above) and we headed off to find a French campsite (the girls seemed to think that having a shower was a big deal). It took us a long while to find said campsite, and not long after we arrived, a bouncer actually kicked us off the site…but that is another story.


Filed under: Channel Islands, France, Islands, Mobile phone photos, Open crossings, Tide races

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