Kayaking

Stockholm city is made up of many islands and these islands carry on out to make up Stockholm’s archipelago. The archipelago is where lots of people who live in Stockholm city have their summer house. It is also a wonderful place to go kayaking around and last Sunday that is exactly what I did with my host dad and host sister.

Early on Sunday morning I was woken quite suddenly by a huge roll of thunder and all I thought was that this is not a good way to start off a day out kayaking. But the thunder and lighting and buckets of rain all went away so we set out to go kayaking at 8 in the morning!

When we got on the water it was lovely and sunny, shorts and t-shirt weather, so we set off to go visit a few islands and have a generally nice sunny day. As we got to the first island we all heard a distant roll of thunder. It was distant so it didn’t really bother us and it was still warm and sunny so all was well and we walked around this island which was really nice and cute apart from the dead birds there. As we were getting back into our kayaks is when I fell out of mine. I was so close to being in when the kayak flipped me out! It was all fine, I was a bit wet but that is ok! Late on I was told that there were eels in the place where I fell out, which was positive!

After getting the water out of my kayak and I was back in it without re-tipping out, we set of to the next island to stop and have lunch. It was while having our lunch that the thunder started coming closer and the sky was becoming very dramatic. But we were like it is fine, so we went for a walk around this island which again was nice apart from the dead birds!

By the time we got back in our kayaks the thunder was really close and we could see lightening so we cut our trip short and headed back to the car. About half way back to the car it started bucketing down with rain and the thunder was right on top of us. So we paddled back and we paddled back fast!

As soon as we got to shore we got out of our kayaks and carried then, full of stuff, up to the car. When we were carrying the first kayak up there was a huge bolt of lightning right above us followed about 30 seconds after by a big loud roll of thunder. We all jumped and I am surprised I did not drop the kayak it was so loud.

As we walked down to get the next kayak it started hailing along with the thunder and lighting and we almost ran the kayak back to the car! We unloaded the kayaks as the hail got bigger and bigger in size until we had to hide under a tree to get away from it as it hurt too much to be out in it. We got the kayaks up on the car, tided them down and went and got into dry clothes, then hoped in the car and drove home!

I must say that I do prefer kayaking in the sunshine, I can now tick kayaking in a thunder and lightning storm off the bucket list!