Saturday 17th January 2015 River Usk.

Afon Wysg or River Usk to us from Wombourne.
Saturday morning was cold and having picked up John and Dave B we headed for Morrisons at Leominster to meet Mick Bloomer’s van with Tim and Paul. We arrived to an icy car park with a thin layer of snow and went in for coffee and in Tim’s case a sausage bap. Half an hour later you find that if you’ve left your lights on you have a flat battery and require a bump start !! So as part of the warm up to the paddle 5 burly men limbered up by slipping and sliding across a slippery car park in an attempt to start my van. After much puffing and panting the potential Wombourne tug of war team were successful at the 2nd attempt and we were on our way. We arrived in Sennybridge and turned right at the Red Lion Pub down a narrow lane to a designated Canoe Access Point car park alongside the river ( OS sheet 160 map ref 922289 ) and with the level on the Rainchasers gauge at .83 which turned out to be a good level.
Both John & Dave B had previously run this river around 10 years ago and armed with their experience we decided to get out in Aberbran a paddle distance of approximately 9 km ( 5.5miles ) according to the Rivers guidebook. This was a wise decision since we got of at 3pm, the full run down to Brecon is 19 Km according to Rainchasers so I guess we’d have needed headtorches !!
We parked in the lay by on the A40 by the turn off to Aberbran and guessed we were in the right spot as there was a PGL van & trailer parked there. We found out later, since the time of John and Dave, things have moved on and there is now a designated Access/Egress point and car park with obvious signs just before the bridge over the river. It was made even more obvious to us by a group of kayakers from PGL who had been waiting for over an hour and a half for there open boater comrades.
The river moves along at a fairly decent pace with plenty of grade 2 bouncy water and small waves for surfing. A few of the group said they preferred this river to the Upper Wye as there are few flat sections that need to be paddled and you keep moving along. The main features of this section are the 3 ledge drops/ natural weirs which are described as grade 3 in medium to high water. The first two drops have great potential for practising boofing and we watched our friends from PGL running one these drops in their open boats. On arriving at the 3rd drop the PGL group had stopped for lunch so we got out to inspect what is described as the most difficult of these drops. We discussed amongst ourselves the options and lines we might take noting the serious towback in places and the fact that it would be difficult to give cover with a throwline to much of the drop because of the distance from the bank. What turned out to be a wise decision I asked the PGL group if anyone had run this section before. The guy who appeared to be leading this group for training told us the line river right had a serious syphon if you went slightly off line and there was a serious stopper mid river if you went too far right along the ledge. Armed with this information Tim volunteered to run it first and aimed to boof off the ledge 4 to 5 metres from the bank ( he was ok because John was on the throwline ! ) Tim dropped off the ledge and was shunted to the right much in the same way that “fingers ” grabs you on the Tryweryn, but a very fine example of a hanging draw on his left side was demonstrated by Tim which kept him moving forward and in a straight line. I ran it next but slightly left of Tim’s line. John & Paul followed and both landed well. But Dave’s run in his canoe was the highlight and brought a round of applause and cheers from the group of open boaters from PGL who must have gained great confidence from Dave’s achievement.
To view the ledges go http://www.ukriversguidebook.co.uk Click on Inland then River guides. Under Regions click on Wales, South of the Severn and Rheidol catchment area. Under easy whitewater touring rivers click on Usk, Sennybridge to Aberbran. The third picture shows the 3rd drop with the stopper mid river and the width of the river here.
For those that missed this trip I’m sure we’ll be back there soon.

• This topic was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by Richard D.