River Medway Canoe Trip - Part 2. Tidal Island Wild Camp. U-Boat Wrecks. Burntwick Island.

[Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning folks i had a good night's sleep um nice and warm nice and comfortable uh we were obviously up early this morning we had to be to to get off donna island before the before the tide dropped too much so that we couldn't get off it's all it's all mud banks and trying to wade through that is well it's dangerous so uh yeah we packed away pretty quickly had had time for a cup of coffee this morning that's about it um but you know we did make our breakfast last night so uh we can stop wherever we want really and have that it's just a cold breakfast so that's fine to get off the island because the tide was already going out we had to find a um a place where it was kind of rocky enough underfoot and the only place we could find was between these old sunken barges which are up on the on the beach there at darn it and yeah there was a kind of like a almost like a canyon between two of them um and we were able to launch there which was fine it's absolutely gorgeous out here this morning the the river is like a mill pond we've got the the uh outgoing tide to help us along and uh we're off to find some submarines just on the left here and right across the river from darna is the king's north power station and jetty so annoyingly i broke my sunglasses yesterday they were in my pocket while i was carrying my my barrel up to the fort and the barrel bounced against my leg and and snap them right on the bridge just here so there's nothing i can do about it nothing i can do to fix them so uh i'm gonna spend the day squinting because of all the glare off the water but at least my hat should give me you know a bit of protection from the sun keep the sun out of my eyes but it's just the glare that comes off the water that's the issue but never mind i'm not complaining it's sunny that's for sure [Music] [Music] [Music] ahead of us is the old bee's nest jetty obviously no longer in use there's great sections of it missing and the rest of it is just rusting away and slowly returning to nature but just before we get to that jetty there's a channel on the left-hand side called bee's nest creek so we're gonna try our luck up there see if we can get close enough to these subs to be able to see them the wind has picked up considerably since we left darn at fort and uh it's creating these wind waves out in the water they're not big waves or anything but they um you know they're very close together with waves so they just kind of constantly slap against the hull of the boat well we've just paddled up venus creek to a bit of the old jetty that sticks out into the creek here i think we might be able to to get out this is just by a kind of raised bit of land um above the high high water mark and the the subs are actually or one of the subs the better of the three the more well preserved is behind this island so i think our only option here is to have a little look and see if we can get out there's a great big concrete block just behind me you can see that over there somewhere and attached to it is this stonking great big chain which we've just paddled along and we might be able to use that to help us get up the beach there and onto that high ground i'm gonna i'm gonna have a little go and see whether it's possible uh i suspect that you know it's just thick mud where we're at where we actually are there's there's sort of like a few stones and bits in it but it's not like where we launched this morning is it no it looks like mud yeah it looks like that to me too i don't make changes like this anymore [Music] that is a serious bit of iron work right there we've only got to walk a short way on the chain and then the mud is kind of firm enough to walk on you don't think too much into it [Music] well over there in the distance you might just be able to make out some rusting bits of metal that is actually one of the u-boats i'm going to see if i can pick a way across to get a bit closer to that sub and get some footage i don't like my chances because this is just a maze of muddy you know little channels and stuff and some of the mud is really deep but i'm going to have a go and see what i can see [Music] well there it is lying over there just behind that bit of raised land there um but between me and that is this load of mud here and i'm not going to try and walk through that so there were three of these this one is ub 22 and then ub 76 and ub 93 lie over there by that jetty that we can't get to um they were captured after the first world war and had their engines stripped out and they were being sold for scrap and as they were being towed off the tether snapped and they uh drifted up onto the up onto the mud here and they've been here ever since this one is really well preserved um there's quite a lot of it left because it's sort of high enough out of the mud the other two are not in such good condition [Music] but um yeah it's a real shame that that tied us out i would really like to have gone over and had a good look [Music] as we've got some time to kill before the tide comes back in and we can get off this bit of land we're gonna have some more to eat i know we've only just had brunch um yeah i've got uh vegetarian pasta with beans and tomato sauce [Music] and i've got beans and sausages [Music] god wow [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so that was a real slog across there um and i'm a bit concerned because um i left andy behind and he's a long way he's a long way back out there he's still got a long way to go he's just a dot i'm gonna give it um i'm gonna give it five minutes see if he gets noticed noticeably any closer and if not i'm gonna paddle back out there and and paddle with him back in but that was hard work paddling against the tide [Applause] show off how you doing buddy slowly hard work in it i only realized how slow i was going as i was going past that boys oh well done mate there's a little beach over there can you see it you know where you're on yeah well we're both safely across and we're actually on the westernmost tip of burntwork island where we're going to be staying tonight but um we're not going to be able to get onto the island not without clambering up mud so we're just going to wait for a little while yeah wait for the minute and then have a paddle around have a paddle round once the tie comes up a bit sounds a plan take take a moment for a little break [Music] [Music] [Music] i've landed here at the spot where we're going to be spreading the night here on berkwick island where we stopped on that little beach earlier on that was right at the other end of the island and we had to paddle down around south around a big sort of headland and then back up fighting against the wind so it did take us quite a bit of time to get here um you could probably just see andy out there making his way in um this little rocky shoreline that i've pulled up on is absolutely strewn with old rubbish it must have been used as a tip at one point i think but old bottles of broken crockery cups and plates and bits and bobs strewn everywhere yeah and the hulk of an old boat or ship [Music] sat here on the uh on the rocky shore rotting away and the remnants of the old jetty [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] so so [Music] i've got my shelter set up for tonight i'm using my canoe as a wind break and i've just put a tarp up the back of the canoe just to extend that wind break over the top a bit um we're not forecast for any rain so it's not for rain it's literally just just to keep the wind off give us somewhere but we can tuck out of the wind because that wind is cold although it's sunny and the sun has some warmth to it the wind is just cutting right through it and um you know when i stopped paddling i had to put my warm my warm coat and my woolly hat on because i was cold so uh that's my setup um i've got the baby bag and everything else just as last night and that should be just a job we can sit there with the wind off us tonight maybe have a fire in this area down in front andy has got his one tiger's tent that he used in the fort last night but um he's actually been able to peg it out today because there's something to peg it to rather than just being concrete so uh that should be just the job i just think that'll hold up pretty well to the wind when it being a dome shape and then we've just put the other canoe between andy's tent and the and the tarp shelter just to cut the wind off from that area there so that should do the job nicely [Applause] huh i thought i'd fill you in on a bit of the history of burntwork island just based on what i've managed to find out myself um this place this island has been used for centuries it's thought that it was used by smugglers hundreds of years ago and you can kind of see why really it's a it's an isolated spot out in the river um you know nowadays there's all this industry going on there's container container ships and ports and um you know power stations and all the rest of it of course none of that was here um hundreds of years ago so it would have been an ideal place to hide yourself away that's for sure um there was a garrison built here just before the turn of the 20th century 1899 i think 1898 can't remember and basically it was to operate a boom which went across the river medway which could be used in times of war to protect the naval dockyards at chatham and during the second world war the barons came into use again as they operated a submarine nets which ran across the river and it could be retracted there was a massive winch and a similar facility on the other bank and they could bring the net across or stretch it out across the river to stop enemy submarines from getting up to the to the dockyard there are nesting birds out here on this island just as there were on garnet um we've been really careful to keep well away from them and not disturb them but if you're planning on coming out here to camp um i'd well recommend coming later in the year july or august is a safer bet um where you won't be disturbing those those birds sitting on eggs [Music] but jove i think we've got it [Music] jenga time yeah uh less smoking yeah much less much less smoking ah [Music] already looks good i've got some copernicus sausage oh the two burning of sausages i'm just going to put them in chunks better cheese lovely thank you look at that so smokey without sausage that's lovely that's gorgeous before we lose the light i just thought i'd show you on the map where we've been really um we started off at queensborough which is kind of down this way off the map um you can just see the edge of the swale there so we paddled up here and we came hooked around this um kind of mud bank here uh this is dead man's island here that i pointed out to you and there's grain fort or grain tower so we came down here the incoming tide and the wind were just pushing us along nicely and then we just snuck across and through into the back of donna island and to the fort that's where we stayed last night this morning we got up and we paddled around the outside of darn it fort passed the uh uh power station and the jetty there through ocum nest jetty and then we went up uh b venus creek and we stopped just there where that little hook bit of um jetty is there and then we clambered up here and that's where we had our lunch uh ub 122 is just at the back over here we then paddled out and across the med way here and we just landed on that very tip here that's where that sort of small beach was and then we paddled around this headland here and then up to the jetty there at uh burntwork island which is where we are now so that's what we've done so far tomorrow morning we're going to leave here and we're going to paddle around around here and then if we can depending on what the tide is like we're going to try and get down this channel here which cuts the corner off um that spit there at queensborough and that will just take a bit of time off if we if we can um i'm not sure whether we're going to be able to get onto dead men's island which is what i'd hoped to do um i think the tide is going to be too low and it's just going to be mud banks and we might not be able to get up there but we'll see if we can we will but we'll just have to see how things are we might not even be able to take that channel in so we might end up having to paddle up and around the end of the spit like we did yesterday and then down back down to queensborough to the uh to the jetty there so that is where we've been this is just my tied table here i've written down high and low tide uh tide times for each of the days just so that we could kind of plan what we were doing [Music] that's my best joke [Laughter] and i usually can't remember jokes now i wish you couldn't when i was teaching that when i was teaching i told that to do a class full of seven-year-olds i had three of them in tears yeah i'll get my coat [Music] [Music] oh [Music] morning folks it's about half past six we got up pretty early this morning um knowing that we had to get back on the water before that tide went out too far and um just quickly packed away i managed to squeeze in a cup of coffee but that's about it this morning have got maybe uh you know sort of 20 minutes or so i suppose so it might just be able to get some some food down as very quickly before we head back on the water it's not a huge paddle today we're really just paddling back to where i parked so um yeah it should be all right hopefully uh get a little glimpse of dead man's dead man's island um i don't think we're gonna get a chance to get on but if we do get the opportunity like i said last night then we'll um we'll go and have a little look but uh that very much depends on how low the tide is by the time we get past that island yeah beautiful morning again we've been so lucky with the weather on this trip absolutely stunning this has been a nice little place to camp actually um apart from the fact that it was clearly a rubbish dump at some point in the past so there's a lot of rubbish about and obviously the tide washes a load of rubbish up on the island as well so there's you know plastic bottles and all you normal sort of like floating debris strewn about the place but apart from that we managed to find quite a good spot to camp uh near the jetty by the water and um yeah it was good it's good it's quite exposed um you know i'm i'm sure andy was glad to have his tent and i was certainly glad to have brought that tarp to give us a bit of protection last night from the wind because that was just cutting across it wasn't a strong wind but it was a cold wind yeah ah so uh dude so [Music] [Music] so [Music] we're just passing dead man's island on our right here and we were hoping to get ashore but as you can see the tide has just dropped too much and it's just mud dead man's island was given its name because it was a burial island basically there used to be prison hog ships uh board out here in the river med way and anybody that died aboard those prison ships was buried on that island and uh as the waves wash up against the shore and the island is slowly eroded the bones of those dead prisoners are exposed and apparently you can pull up onto a beach there and there are bones on the shore those poor souls that died on those horrendous prison ships well we're nearly back in queensborough we've just uh turned off the main medway channel and we're now paddling up the swale this has been a fantastic trip i've thoroughly enjoyed seeing a bit of history hey dude yeah thoroughly enjoyed seeing seeing that fort spending spending um the night in that fort that island last night was brilliant we've had superb weather a bit of a challenging paddle yesterday but um that all adds to the fun of it really doesn't it it's just a memory [Laughter] that'll be really good and it's been good to see you buddy yes thanks a trip long in the making isn't it really yeah delay after delay yeah definitely so yeah no thank you it's been awesome thanks for watching i'll see you soon [Music] go [Music] do [Music] do [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Simon, a bloke in the woods

Views: 42,554

Rating: 4.9636488 out of 5

Keywords: river medway, medway tidal estuary, u-boat, u-boat wreck, submarine wreck, ub122, ub93, ub76, bee ness creek, bee ness jetty, darnet fort, burntwick island, deadman's island, queenborough, tidal canoeing, canoe trip, canoe tripping, canoe camping, wild camping, canoe shelter, tarp shelter, J stroke, Kent Survival

Id: KypHhiEvRo4

Length: 39min 12sec (2352 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021