Coasteering: the cool new adventure activity

COASTEERING is an awkward amalgam of the words “coast” and “orienteering” and it essentially involves going from point A to point B along the coastline, avoiding C — the soft stretches of sandy beach.

Accompanied by my 13-year-old son, we set out in a group of eight on a cool March morning from Garretstown Beach near Kinsale with G’Town Surf School, who have recently branched into this relatively new and intriguing discipline. We stood on a grassy height overlooking the beach in our coasteering gear, listening to the preliminary safety talk by Paddy Keating. A qualified coasteering instructor, he received his training in the UK, where the sport was conceived and developed by a bunch of hardy Welsh devotees.

Paddy was showing us how to jump from a height into water without coming to grief. One step well forward, then swing your arms forward, letting them give you forward momentum. It’s basically all about staying moving forward. Then close your legs and jump straight down, feet first, ensuring to bend the knees slightly, just in case you hit something solid — a highly unlikely event, both Paddy and owner Steve Tobin assured us.