Words: Jan Edwards Pics: Fomento del Turismo de Mallorca, Eduardo Miralles
Standing up for
Words: Jan Edwards Pics: Fomento del Turismo de Mallorca, Eduardo Miralles
“ I remember thinking that SUP wouldn’ t catch on!” 28- year-old Cat Friend laughs at the memory. She had been a sailing instructor in her late teens when she learnt about paddle boarding. In 2011, whilst teaching sailing for the summer in Greece, Cat tried SUP for the first time. Now, she is training for a 555-kilometre endurance paddle with a friend.
Cat and Valerie Bisbal( 41) will attempt to SUP around the Mediterranean island of Majorca this June. The two women met for the first time in June 2017, when Cat and a friend were holidaying in Port de Soller, on Majorca’ s northwest coast. Valerie has her home and family restaurant there and took the pair paddling with Soller SUP.
“ We bonded straight away,” says Cat, who suggested that they ought to paddle around the whole island. Majorcan mum-of-three Valerie replied that it was her dream to do so; the seed was sown. Cat went back to Majorca in August 2017, when she and Valerie began planning their‘ Soller to Soller’ feat.
Before their 10-month training programme, Valerie’ s longest SUP had been four hours. Cat had done no long paddles but is now training hard. She takes to the water on London’ s Queen Mary reservoir and the Norfolk Broads – where she grew up and sailed as a child. She will train with Valerie in Majorca before June.
They expect their‘ Soller to Soller’ challenge to take at least a month. They aim to cover between 14 and 28 kilometres a day, depending on several factors. These include weather, sea conditions and suitable places ashore to camp overnight. Valerie believes the most challenging paddling will be around Palma ' s busy shipping area and the rocky north coast. s t a n d u p p a d d l e m a g u k 44