Tidewake 20 / 30 segments
Each guide covers a stretch of coast you could paddle in a day, between two points you can genuinely launch and land at. The same published set is offered two ways: by the coast it sits on, and by the tide state it is best paddled on.
Sandbars, estuary mouths and a coastline that runs north-south, so almost every wind is either onshore or offshore with nothing in between.
| Segment | Distance | Tide window | Wind limit | Grade | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alnmouth to Dunstanburgh Castle Northumberland | 8.5 nm | Flood 2.4-3.9 m springs, 1.2-2.0 m neaps | 12 kt | Sheltered | 2 Aug 2026 |
| Seahouses to the Farne Islands Northumberland | 6.2 nm | Flood 2.8-4.2 m springs, 1.4-2.2 m neaps | 10 kt | Intermediate | 14 Aug 2026 |
| Blakeney to Scolt Head Island North Norfolk | 7.4 nm | Slack 3.6-5.1 m springs, 1.8-2.8 m neaps | 12 kt | Sheltered | 29 Aug 2026 |
| Orford Ness and the Butley River from Aldeburgh Suffolk | 9.8 nm | Ebb 2.1-3.2 m springs, 1.1-1.7 m neaps | 12 kt | Intermediate | 22 Sept 2026 |
| Flamborough Head from South Landing East Yorkshire | 7.0 nm | Ebb 4.0-5.6 m springs, 2.0-3.0 m neaps | 10 kt | Exposed | 4 Oct 2026 |
Northumberland Flood
This is the classic Northumberland starter paddle: a shallow estuary launch, two miles of dune-backed sand, then a whin sill headland with a castle sitting on top of it.
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Read the guide →Northumberland Flood
Six nautical miles each way, one of the largest grey seal colonies in England, and a tide gate that decides whether the crossing takes forty minutes or two hours.
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Read the guide →North Norfolk Slack
North Norfolk has the largest tidal range on the English east coast and a harbour that is dry sand for eight hours in every twelve.
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Read the guide →Suffolk Ebb
The Suffolk coast has barely three metres of tide and a current that behaves like a much bigger estuary.
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Read the guide →East Yorkshire Ebb
Flamborough is 100 m of vertical chalk dropping straight into the North Sea, with caves, arches and the largest mainland gannet colony in England.
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Read the guide →Chalk cliffs, shingle banks and the highest number of paddling days in the year, with a swell that arrives from the Atlantic with nothing to stop it.
| Segment | Distance | Tide window | Wind limit | Grade | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chesil Cove and the Portland Bill race Dorset | 9.0 nm | Flood 1.6-2.2 m springs, 0.8-1.2 m neaps | 8 kt | Exposed | 5 Aug 2026 |
| Keyhaven and the Hurst Narrows Hampshire | 5.8 nm | Flood 2.4-3.7 m springs, 1.3-2.0 m neaps | 14 kt | Sheltered | 17 Aug 2026 |
| Start Point and Hallsands Devon | 10.4 nm | Ebb 3.2-4.8 m springs, 1.7-2.6 m neaps | 10 kt | Exposed | 2 Sept 2026 |
| Fowey to Polperro South Cornwall | 7.6 nm | Ebb 3.4-5.0 m springs, 1.8-2.7 m neaps | 12 kt | Intermediate | 25 Sept 2026 |
| St Mary's to Tresco, Isles of Scilly Isles of Scilly | 6.4 nm | Flood 3.8-5.6 m springs, 2.0-3.0 m neaps | 12 kt | Intermediate | 8 Oct 2026 |
Dorset Flood
Portland Bill is the classic British tidal race.
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Read the guide →Hampshire Flood
Hurst Narrows is the gap between the mainland and the western tip of the Isle of Wight, and roughly half the water that moves in and out of the Solent twice a day passes through it.
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Read the guide →Devon Ebb
Start Point is the southernmost tip of Devon and one of the most exposed headlands on the English south coast.
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Read the guide →South Cornwall Ebb
South Cornwall's coast here is a series of deep, wooded river valleys that flood at high water and become mud at low, joined by high cliffs of dark slate.
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Read the guide →Isles of Scilly Flood
The Isles of Scilly are 28 miles off Land's End and the water between them is shallower, clearer and more turbulent than anything on the mainland coast.
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Read the guide →Deep-water sounds, tidal races and islands. The largest tides in the country and the strongest streams, in water that is often flat calm between them.
| Segment | Distance | Tide window | Wind limit | Grade | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ramsey Sound and the Bitches Pembrokeshire | 6.0 nm | Flood 4.6-6.8 m springs, 2.4-3.6 m neaps | 10 kt | Exposed | 8 Aug 2026 |
| Holyhead to South Stack Anglesey | 7.2 nm | Ebb 4.4-6.2 m springs, 2.3-3.2 m neaps | 10 kt | Intermediate | 21 Aug 2026 |
| The Menai Strait and the Swellies Anglesey and Gwynedd | 8.6 nm | Flood 4.2-6.4 m springs, 2.2-3.3 m neaps | 14 kt | Intermediate | 7 Sept 2026 |
| The Gulf of Corryvreckan and the Sound of Jura Argyll, Scotland | 5.4 nm | Flood 3.6-5.2 m springs, 1.9-2.7 m neaps | 8 kt | Exposed | 28 Sept 2026 |
| Rossaveal to Inishmore, Aran Islands County Galway, Ireland | 9.6 nm | Flood 3.4-5.0 m springs, 1.8-2.7 m neaps | 12 kt | Intermediate | 12 Oct 2026 |
Pembrokeshire Flood
Ramsey Sound separates Ramsey Island from the Pembrokeshire mainland, and the Bitches are the reef in the middle of it that turns the whole channel into a tide race on every spring tide.
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Read the guide →Anglesey Ebb
Holyhead New Harbour is an all-tide, no-surf, fully sheltered launch, which is rare enough in Britain to make this coast worth the trip on its own.
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Read the guide →Anglesey and Gwynedd Flood
The Menai Strait is 14 miles of water separating Anglesey from Wales, and at its narrowest point, under Telford's suspension bridge, it squeezes through a rock-strewn passage called the Swellies where the tide reaches five knots and the direction reverses in a quarter of an hour.
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Read the guide →Argyll, Scotland Flood
Between the islands of Jura and Scarba the Atlantic is forced through a gap less than a mile wide with a pinnacle rising from 200 m to within 30 m of the surface.
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Read the guide →County Galway, Ireland Flood
The Aran Islands sit across 9 miles of open Atlantic from the Galway coast, and Inishmore, the largest, is a limestone plateau with 3,000 years of stone forts on it and a harbour that faces the full fetch of the Atlantic.
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Read the guide →Short summer nights, cold water and remote channels. The weather window is measured in hours, so the decision is made on the shore on the day.
| Segment | Distance | Tide window | Wind limit | Grade | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Pentland Firth and Hoy Sound Orkney and Caithness, Scotland | 6.8 nm | Flood 2.8-4.6 m springs, 1.5-2.4 m neaps | 8 kt | Exposed | 11 Aug 2026 |
| Scapa Flow and the Churchill Barriers Orkney, Scotland | 8.8 nm | Flood 2.6-4.2 m springs, 1.4-2.2 m neaps | 14 kt | Sheltered | 25 Aug 2026 |
| Mousa Sound, Shetland Shetland, Scotland | 7.4 nm | Ebb 1.8-2.9 m springs, 1.0-1.6 m neaps | 12 kt | Intermediate | 13 Sept 2026 |
| The Summer Isles from Old Dornie Wester Ross, Scotland | 9.0 nm | Flood 3.4-5.0 m springs, 1.8-2.7 m neaps | 12 kt | Intermediate | 1 Oct 2026 |
| Kyleakin and the Skye Bridge narrows Skye and Lochalsh, Scotland | 6.2 nm | Slack 3.6-5.4 m springs, 1.9-2.9 m neaps | 14 kt | Sheltered | 16 Oct 2026 |
Orkney and Caithness, Scotland Flood
The Pentland Firth is the channel between the Scottish mainland and Orkney, and it is the strongest tidal stream around the British Isles.
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Read the guide →Orkney, Scotland Flood
Scapa Flow is the largest sheltered harbour in the British Isles: 120 square miles of water enclosed by Orkney, with the best kayak camping in Scotland and a set of tidal channels between four islands that were joined by concrete barriers in the 1940s.
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Read the guide →Shetland, Scotland Ebb
Mousa is a small island off the east coast of Shetland with two claims to fame: a drystone broch that is the best preserved in Scotland and around 2,000 years old, and 6,000 pairs of storm petrels, the largest colony in Britain.
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Read the guide →Wester Ross, Scotland Flood
The Summer Isles are a scatter of about fifteen islands at the mouth of Loch Broom in Wester Ross, formed by the same drowned landscape as the rest of the Scottish west coast: a plateau that was cut by glaciers and then flooded by the sea, leaving steep-sided channels between low, green islands.
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Read the guide →Skye and Lochalsh, Scotland Slack
The Kyle of Lochalsh is the 500 m wide channel between the Scottish mainland and the Isle of Skye, and at its narrowest point, under the Skye Bridge, the whole tidal exchange of a large inland sea passes through a gap that is less than 300 m wide.
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Read the guide →The second cut of the same published set. Whether a passage wants the flood, the ebb or the slack usually decides the shape of the day more than the distance does.
The atlas is published on a drip: 20 guides are live and the rest are dated into the future. A guide that has not been published yet appears in no list, no link and no sitemap.