Sometimes, it seems as if kayaking is a window on another dimension, as if it allows a casual disregard for the usual inexorable passing of time in our carefully-measured world. Moving along Ravenglass estuary at a rate of knots with the incoming tide, we should have been only too aware of time's passing, measured as it was by a whopping six foot range between high and low tide. Instead, we entered a small eddy in the time-space continuum. All around us, land changed to water in a matter of moments, but somehow internal clocks changed little, and if anything, slowed.
Herons flocked to feed in the minutes of low water. Odd, bill-hook silhouettes of curlews screamed off in our wake. The kayaks lodged onto gritty banks and we zig-zagged from one flank to the other as the ducks did overhead. In the hissing of rushes we got out on a sand bank only to find that it disappeared beneath incoming water in seconds.
The tide changed, and we returned to Ravenglass. The estuary now full, it was as if we were paddling in an entirely different place. Somehow, we had glimpsed another world, where time had relaxed its incessant grip on reality. For a time at least, it was a wonderful place to be.
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