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lsland Experiences

Paddling around the islands

Paddle_pic200px.jpgIn a summer of changeable weather Jasper Winn launched from West Cork in a sea kayak to head clockwise around Ireland's thousand mile coastline. Three and a half months later, despite being - happily - delayed for weeks by high winds, he completed the circumnavigation. His book, Paddle; A long way around Ireland, is enlivened by stops – and strandings – on offshore islands, by music sessions in remote pubs and by sharing the big brawling seas of the Atlantic coast with Ireland's marine safari park of huge wildlife including dolphins, seals, basking sharks and minke whales. In these readings from Paddle, Jasper takes the listener from island to island along the south and west coasts.

Connemara/Galway Islands' Podcast

Reading from Paddle, Jasper reaches the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway. Famed for the spectacular bulk of Dún Aonghusa fort and the self-sufficient life that was filmed in 1934 as Man of Aran, Jasper's sea-level view of Inishmore's coast carries him back in time. And then beyond time, to reach an even remoter island known only through myth.

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Cork Islands Podcast

Coming at the very start of Jasper's thousand mile paddle around the Irish coastline, this reading from Paddle carries the listener along the West Cork coast into Roaringwater Bay. There amongst 'Carbery's Hundred Isles' lies Sherkin Island and Jasper has barely landed before he's caught up in a local wedding in the Jolly Roger pub. Though damp and bedraggled after the day's paddle he's none-the-less welcomed in and is soon singing along with the piano-playing Chicken.

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Featured Audio

Mayo Islands' Podcast

Jasper reads from Paddle, describing kayaking out to Inishturk, at nine miles off-shore one of Ireland's remotest island communities. He arrives in Inishturk's hidden harbour in the late summer dusk, to find the night's dance in the village hall has still to start, leaving him time to cook up local delicacies for a late supper, and brew up his own-recipe Jameson's Stew.

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Kerry Islands' Podcast

In this extract from Paddle, Jasper's voyage takes him past the Skellig Islands, with their bleak monastery ruins and teeming colony of gannets, and from there westwards through the notorious sound that separates the Blasket Islands from the mainland. Camped out on a tiny islet, looking across at An Blascaod Mór, brings to his mind the island's culture of storytelling and the resulting books, such as Peig, The Islandman and Twenty Years A-Growing, that made great literature of traditional off-shore life.

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How to listen


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