Heavy rain the previous day and Friday evening pushed a lot of rivers into flood levels. We decided on the usual meeting place and time ( 9am at Dobbies ) and had said the previous evening that we may have to go for a safe option such as the Banwy ! So on Saturday morning over a coffee & a Subway we discussed the options. The decision was made and it was to be the Conwy, the EA gauge at Cwnlanerch was reading 1.58. We arrived at the A5 lay-by and we knew we had chosen well, several other groups of kayakers were already kitted up and ready to go and others were running shuttles. The gauges under the A5 bridge were just above 4 and a couple of inches into the “Green tick” but unfortunately there wasn’t enough water to run the upper section from Ysbyty Ifan. So our group of 5 were hoping to draw on Paul’s knowledge of this section from a few weeks earlier. I hadn’t run this section for 3 or 4 years and Nigel, Dave Bennett and Dave Parocki were all Conwy virgins. The Welsh Rivers guidebook describes it as a grade 3 – 4 paddle with Bryn Bras Falls being the grade 4 section. There are so many features on this river that we can forgive Paul for not remembering them all, although he did give us a good description of Bryn Bras falls, the fact that Dave Bennett chose to ignore Paul’s advice and add to his own spirit of adventure by choosing his own line was a delight to us all. The raising of his paddle and the shout of delight as he made the last drop was pure excitement and relief combined. The well marked egress point cuts out the risk now of making the mistake of ending up in the “gobbler” further down, although the walk out is still a struggle with a heavy Mamba. All changed and back in the vehicles just before a heavy hailstorm and the end of another great adventure.
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