Tryweryn report. Saturday 27th September

With the weather still so mild we dubbed this the last of the summer paddles. With the eldest member being 63 and the average age of the group around 54 ( where was Kee when we needed him ! ) it was re -named The Last of the summer wine paddle !
7 of us made the journey up to the T as Steve Mason was down at Lea Valley for some coaching and his assessment and Tim, Mark, Kee and Shane were down there on Sunday.
We got on above the chipper for the usual warm up and soon dropped down to the pre Graveyard section to warm up even more. Barry decided to meet us down at Chapel falls as he didn’t think his knees could cope with the upper section if he should come out of his boat. Nigel decided to get out and watch the rest of the group run through the graveyard to look at lines and eddies. As there were no mishaps we waited for Nigel to get back on and run it, no problems, made it look easy. Onward to the ski slope and Dave ran it first and dropped into the eddy half way down whilst the rest of us went straight through, a few late strokes pulled everyone through the stopper and we all sat in the eddy river right as we watched Nigel run down last, brilliant, first a high brace on his left, a bit of a spin causing a high brace on the right side ( all this pool work pays off ! ). We grouped up again and push on to Mrs Davies’s bridge, no problems there so onward to cafe wave and the feared “Fingers rapid “. The pressure was on as a group of 25 to 30 people were stood on the cafe embankment watching. Gary tempts fate by saying to Paul “you don’t want to come out here with this lot watching “. Dave leads off drops through “fingers” and eddies out river left, I follow him and join him in the eddy. Gary follows, a little too far right , not quite the right angle and the wave captures another victim and slams him into the rock face river right and flips him. I break into the flow as he attempts his first roll and Dave follows me out. Gary goes for another roll but misses again and is out of his boat. By now I’m in the eddy by the raft get out and Dave manages to nudge Gary’s boat into the eddy where we manage to empty it of water and tow it across to Gary who is waiting eagerly to be re-united with his boat to carry on down to the NRA Wave and Chapel falls none the worse for wear. No more problems and we finally meet up with Barry at Chapel to continue on down the lower. We stopped a couple of times in order to stretch our legs and generally loosen up as the age of the group necessitated this (Has any one ever suffered deep vein thrombosis whilst paddling ? )
5 of us decided to run Bala Mill Falls. Gary and myself dropped into the eddy river left, Dave river right. We then watched John cruise through with ease followed by Nigel looking totally in control in only his second run in his Burn. There is unlikely to be any video footage of this event as John parked himself strategically in front of Barry’s perfectly positioned camera !! Boing boing, John.
We cruised on down to the get out having been paddling for over 4 hours. There was a chorus of groans as we dragged our aching bodies out of our boats. Dave summed it up nicely when he said Steven Hawking could get out of his wheelchair easier than we got out of our boats !!
But as George Bernard Shaw once said “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing”.
Looking forward to next week.