Review: coasteering with Wild Edge Adventures, by Owen Meredith

An original contemporary review.

Coasteering, for anyone who has not tried it, means travelling along a rocky coastline at the level of the sea: scrambling over rocks, swimming across channels and jumping off ledges into deep water. Wild Edge Adventures has been running sessions from Carreg Bay since March, and last weekend I joined a group of ten to find out whether it is as terrifying as it sounds.

The kit is excellent. Everyone is given a thick wetsuit, a buoyancy aid, a helmet and old trainers if you have not brought your own, and the changing area, a converted shipping container, even has hot showers. A three-hour session costs £55, and the minimum age is ten.

Our guides, Rhys and Nia, were calm and clearly knew every rock. Before each jump, Rhys checked the depth of the water himself by swimming down, and nobody was ever pushed to do anything they did not want to. The jumps begin at knee height and rise gradually to a ledge about six metres above the water, which only four of us attempted. I was not one of them.

The highlight was swimming into a narrow gully where the swell rose and fell like breathing and a seal watched us from a rock near the entrance.

My only complaint is the steep path back up to the car park, which felt endless in a soaking wetsuit. Otherwise, this is a superb morning out. Five stars.

(a) How much does a three-hour session cost? (b) What did Rhys do before each jump? (c) How high was the highest ledge?