I was late getting out with a kayak this year - and very late adding the trip to this blog.
Saturday April 16th. at 10:00 am and Embalse de Negratin was glassy calm with barely a breath of wind. It was an ideal morning for an open water crossing from Playa de Freila to re-acquaint myself with the 'badlands' side of the reservoir. The last time I did this was early in May 2017. On reaching the other side I turned left and followed the shore towards the dam - much the same route as nearly five years ago. However, as always, the shoreline looked totally different because the water level was much lower than that last visit. When I got within sight of the dam I crossed back to the Playa de Freila side and meandered back, hugging the shoreline, to my starting point. One of the highlights of this trip was coming across a terrapin which appeared to be as curious about me as I was about it. On the few occasions I've seen terrapins on the shoreline of the reservoir they've 'plopped' into the water long before I get near them, never to reveal themselves again. This little fella did 'plop' into the water but couldn't resist, it seemed, bobbing back up at intervals to see if I was still around.
I didn't expect the little terrapin to surface again quite so close to me.
A few photographs of the 'badlands' area:
On this trip I used my Gumotex Halibut kayak. Time on the water was just short of 5 hrs. and total distance paddled was 10 kilometres.
