High tide was soon after midday and the shape of the beach at St Bees means that you can surf at anytime except for the two hours either side of high water. Therefore we got up early and were on the water before 9:30. The wind was offshore and the strong winds of the past few days had left an excellent swell behind. The waves were clean and at times excitingly big. My boat does not surf very well and whilst I tried to persuade it to go the way I wanted it to it threw me in a couple of times. I was pleased that I rolled back up on both occasions.

The highlight of the trip was getting to test our new waterproof camera, a Panasonic FT2. So far it seems to work very well, the images below are sharp, vivid and best of all were taken in the sea. There were several reasons we went for this camera, it has very good image stabilisation, a 28mm wide lens, shoots HD video and all the reviews report good image quality. One note is that you have to be very careful keeping the seals clean to make sure it stays waterproof. We bought the camera ready for our trip to France next month where we intend to do quite a lot of kayaking as well as climbing and beaching,

Penny on a wave

Me trying to catch a wave