235km, 5 and a half days and 5 tired heads later we had successfully kayaked Ireland’s longest river – from its source in Dowra to the sea in Limerick.

Getting the opportunity to kayak Ireland’s longest river was an incredible experience. Our team was made up of 5 kayakers. Some of us had never even met before. The trip was all arranged online with the common goal of completing this trip.

It was so exciting to be packing our bags and loading the kayaks onto the trailer for this expedition. Nerves, excitement and joy were just some of the emotions I was experiencing. You see, I had only started kayaking a year before this trip, I was the youngest, only female and least experienced. Unfortunately I received a lot of nasty comments with people betting I wouldn’t complete the journey, some even said I would back out before I even started! This began to feed my own thoughts. I suddenly started to think ‘235km is quite a long distance’, ‘I don’t know if I can do this’ ‘what if I can’t complete this challenge’’what if I can’t keep up’. My head was freaking out! I was stressed, anxious and nervous. I was so scared but deep down I knew I didn’t want to give up.

“I had only started kayaking a year before this trip, I was the youngest, only female and least experienced.”

I decided to voice my concerns to the lead in the group who said, ‘Anaїs, it’s not a race. We are doing this as a team and will go as slow as the slowest kayaker and we don’t mind. The idea of this trip is to do it as part of a team and if you back out we don’t have our team mate. We all believe you are capable of this challenge and anyone saying otherwise is jealous and are too chicken to do it themselves’.

To train for the expedition we did roughly 20km a week in our boats to improve on our overall fitness and endurance. We tried to meet up with at least 1 member of the group to make it more fun and enjoyable. I was also extremely active from running whitewater, to surf kayaking, to freestyle, so I guess I spent more time training than I realised at the time.

With the support of my team we began our trip. We paddled in sea kayaks ranging between 15ft to 17.5ft in length. We brought everything we needed for the trip in our boats and we were headed on our way. Around 50kg was the combined weight of my boat and gear, which included camping equipment, cooking utensils, food and water.

Our average distance we covered per day was 40km with the longest day being 54km, which lead to some very tired and hungry heads.

To make everything more affordable and manageable, we all put money into a bag which we used to purchase food as a group. We took it in turns to cook and clean with many stories being shared. We did treat ourselves to dinner out on one occasion and we did paddle past the smell of fresh fish and chips being cooked and couldn’t resist a quick stop to feed our mouths.

Camping was a difficult part of the trip, having to pitch our tents every evening, but it was really nice to have our own space to rest in the evenings!

I would do anything to be back on a trip like this and I hope to do some longer, more exciting trips in the future!

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