Saturday 02nd Novembers “PADDLE”

[Nigel]

A small group of hardened paddlers from the club decided to risk the elements on this very blustery wet Autumn day. Timbo, Roberto, Keelano and Nigelico, ventured to Mid Wales, to tackle the Upper Upper Wye, (Upper Upper, as it was another Timbo, epic all 17 Kilometres of it ) and a new river for three of the group.

We arrived at the get in around 10-50 AM, in the village of Llangurig, the river here runs at grade 2 and meanders through open countryside until it reaches a heavily wooded section, some great features start to appear, the first real drop is a grade 3 and runs through a sharp left hand bend with a big grabby eddy on the right if you miss the left hand line, doesn’t look the ideal place to end up certainly on todays level !

Many more great grade 3 features, which need your respect as you cannot just run straight through them you need to manoeuvre around obstacles and across the river to be successful. I speak from experience as we didn’t realise the one feature was the Letter Box, due to the water level so we tackled it far left coming across to the centre and dropping through the stopper and waves at the bottom, I hit a rock as I leaned the boat hard left in an attempt to make the bottom eddy, no chance, took a swim, Timbo and Roberto tried boat rescue, Timbo eventually got my boat to rest after 400 to 500 metres, due to the terrain I could not be bothered to try and scale the rocks and trees so got back in the river with my blades and swam this section which I must say was quite pleasant.

Keelano, decided to paddle a proper boat for a change and used Geoff’s  Bliss stick, and in his usual style paddled it with great ease and skill, well done Buddy.

We portaged to look at the Town falls of Rhayader, which I was going to be cameraman on, but unfortunately a huge tree is wedged in the narrow exit channel forming a strainer, so it was decided to give it a miss today. Off the water at 15-10pm.

Big thanks to Timbo, Roberto and Keelano, for a thoroughly enjoyable day.

Cheers 🙂

 

[Richard D]

Beats my swims in the canal at Brownhills today Nige and I bet the water was a lot cleaner !!
Never mind, I can join up with you guys next week. Looking forward to a warm mug of coffee from that new kettle.

[Barry]

Cracking river

[Tim]

For the record the level at ddol farm was about 0.95 compared to the 1.10 we ran it on last time. Strange because it felt like it had more water on it this time! Around a metre and this river is good to go. What impressed me about this trip was all the little reminders we kept giving each other. Dont forget to breathe, keep the blade active and so on. People are making up their on minds about what line to take aswell as trusting my judgement after viewing a rapid. From a coaching perspective I would like to do another session on a short section of grade 3 and 4 water. The bottom of the glaslyn is good for this and withypool on the irfon. Keep running the same rapid, build up confidence and skill level in a safe environment.

[Geoff]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wYAN4g2yRtk

[Tim]

Great Video Geoff. For this section of river the EA gauge well upstream of Rhayader is called Pant Mawr and may give a better reflection of levels than the Ddol Farm gauge which is below Rhayader.

[Nigel]

Hi Tim,
“Pant Mawr” is this Welsh for keep breathing or Geordie maybe ….?? lol

Cheers 😉

[Author]

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