Back in 2023 I did what all men do at the age of 26, and bought myself a kayak off of Facebook Marketplace. I’d never kayaked before, but I’d been inspired by this book, Rewild Yourself by Simon Barnes, that mentioned that if you got yourself a kayak, you could feel like a swan. And what 26 year old home-slice doesn’t want to feel like a swan?
So, I strapped this hunk of plastic to the top of my car and went up to the lake district on a solo camping weekend. On the trip, I got stuck in mud in the middle of nowhere, burnt out my clutch, and had to get the car towed back down to Nottingham, making it the most expensive holiday I’ve ever had.
But, as part of that trip, I did get to go out on Windermere and kayak across some of it. Thing is, I had travelled a long way that day and had put a tent up alone for the first time, so I was absolutely spent by the time I got on the water, meaning I only travelled across half of it, to one of the islands, then went around and came back.
So, when it came to writing ✓ Project Bucket List, of course I was going to include kayaking across Windermere. As a birthday treat in October 2024, my partner, Kymberley booked us a weekend up at the lakes in this beautiful little Airbnb on Windermere, where we made both pasta and a habit of gasping every 5 minutes at the scenery. Look, here she is stood by the car, doesn’t she look stylish?
Honestly, if you’ve not been to the Lake District in the UK, it’s gorgeous, it feels like a combination between the great outdoors of the US and the cute quaint little villages of the English countryside. I’d move there in a heartbeat if I could figure out a way to do it and still keep the lifestyle I have now going on! (and afford it, fuck me! 8-bedroom mansions are expensive up there!)
So anyway, we go down to this private little dock the Airbnb had access to and get all ready to hop in the kayak. Now, a note about this kayak. It’s a kayak built specifically for an adult and a small child. All the brochures show a parent with a small child, and I looked at that and thought, yeah, sure, Kymberley is a short human – two adults will definitely fit on this. What I failed to take into account is that 1 – Kymberley is not a child, and 2 – I am a very large human, and take up approximately 1.5 humans worth of weight per standard human (too much chocolate).
Now I don’t know if you’re better at math than me, but that doesn’t add up to a situation where the kayak was going to float.
We immediately started sinking into the water.
We hopped out and decided to rent another kayak for the day so that we could both go across Windermere, so we phoned up a local place, Brockwhole on Windermere, who asked us if we wanted to rent a kayak, a row boat, or a speed boat.
Did they just say speed boat?
Turns out it’s WAY less tiring on your arms when there’s an engine pushing you along. And by speed, it did mean about 10 miles an hour. We were flying through the waves, it felt like that scene from the Boat that Rocked where they move the ship and the Dambusters March plays.
We managed to go all the way down to Windermere, and get this, I don’t know if you’ve ever been out on water on a vessel before, but everybody waves. I’m not kidding, everybody. It doesn’t matter whether it’s some posh bloke in a blazer with a mimosa or some weathered looking seaman with a red woolly hat, everybody gives you a little nod and a wave. You’re PART OF THE CLUB!
We did a couple of loops and both had goes manning the wheel, and considering it was only 40 minutes, we got pretty far and got to see some beautiful sights, and of course I snuck the drone out and got a few snazzy shots of us doing doughnuts. (A note for other drone pilots when you’re on a tiny boat, it’s near impossible to land because of the drift, I had to grab it out of the air, I made a really dumb decision, don’t do it!)
There’s a brilliant sense the first few times you go out on water of freedom, like you’re going where most people don’t get to go. As weird as this sounds, you get the same feeling when you noclip through something on a videogame and end up on the roofs of a town, suddenly you have access to this whole new area where humanity hasn’t built on it yet, there’s no paths, there’s no concrete, there’s no structures – you just have this new sense of freedom to be able to go where you want to go, even if you do have to avoid the little red buoys because the nice man who gave you the boat said not to. It’s still feels like freedom!
I guess, this is the first time I realised that ✓ Project Bucket List items are less about the item itself, and more about what they represent. Kayaking feels great, but what I really cared about what the sense of freedom and finality of having actually crossed that big ole’ lake.
So even though I didn’t technically kayak across Windermere, I definitely ticked it off the list, I’d accomplished what I wanted to!