Bristol adventurer leads anti-plastic kayak mission to London

An all-woman team has left Bristol for London – by kayak. They will navigate 300 kilometres of canals to reach Queens Bridge, and have to heave their kayaks out of the water every time they pass a lock. There are 151 in total.

Sixteen women will take part in total, some for short stints and others for the whole journey, and their level of kayaking experience ranges from zero to professional. But they are all one hundred per cent determined on their mission: raising awareness about plastics pollution.

A map of the part of the journey

Bex Band, a professional adventurer, came up with the coast to coast idea when she met Erin Bastion, a professional kayaker. (Let’s take a moment here for the job title envy to subside).

Back when Bex was a teacher, she didn’t consider herself outdoorsy or adventurous but something must have told her she would be, because she quit her job to undertake various exploits including hiking 1000 kilometres along the length of Israel, sailing across the North Sea, and kick-scooting her way 240 kilometres around the London LOOP.

Bex Band, professional adventurer

“I’m not super fit, I’m really clumsy and I don’t have any special skills, I’m not rich – I’m very ordinary,” says Bex, explaining how through her blog The Ordinary Adventurer and her company Love Her Wild she tries to make adventuring attainable and accessible for women in a typically testosterone-powered environment where it can feel that you need to already possess either Instagram-ready fitness or expensive kit.

“Creating opportunities, like the Paddle Pickup, where people can sign up is another part of that. I always try to make them so that you don’t need experience, you can just wing it,” she says.

Save for extreme adventures, in many cases you can just give it a go – something Bex would like to see more women doing, and perhaps one reason why she chose the coast to coast kayak mission, which to her knowledge has never been completed by an all-woman team.

But another key to the kayaking mission is a passion for conservation and the natural environment, particularly the oceans. The women plan to pick up all the plastics they encounter on their journey and upon reaching London will tour schools and events to show just how much our insatiable plastics habits are reflected in our waterways.

According to the expedition’s website, there are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. The problem is continuously growing as 8 million tons of plastic are dumped in our seas every year, with 80 per cent of ocean pollution coming from land-based activities.

Beach plastics

Hopefully, the women will look such a sight on their kayaks that people will want to know what they’re up to.

“The great thing about adventures is you look really weird when you do them, so people always come and ask, ‘what are you doing?’” laughs Bex. “It’s a real opportunity to show them the plastic we’re collecting and explain why we’re doing it.”

In this changeable August weather, the team will be camping and cooking in the wild, with a few nights off in places where they have been kindly offered free accommodation – one night in a church and another in a leisure park.

What’s certain is that the kayak trip will be far from Bex’s last adventure. She’s already planning an “Everest adventure” where she and a group of women will climb the height of Everest over five days in the Lake District – because another part of her philosophy is the staycation: that you don’t need to jump on a plane to have an adventure.

So what does she think of her teaching job, the endless hours of marking and lesson planning, now?

“It’s a different world,” she laughs. “It’s mad. My life doesn’t even compare now and it’s great. It’s hard work, working for myself, and I’m always on the move which does have its downsides.”

But at least she has her teaching qualification as a contingency plan if she ever runs out of energy.

You can follow the women’s progress on the Paddle Pickup Facebook page.