A fantastic fun day was had by all as a car full of “Silver surfers” ( Paul, Steve , John and myself ) met the “blue rinse” boy (Kee ) and his dad ( Geoff ) at Dobbies. We arrived at the top car park and after changing, Geoff and Paul sorted out the shuttle. You could have been forgiven for thinking it was the Tryweryn Festival this weekend as a large number of kayakers were queuing to get on the river ( not to mention the numerous rafts ). The intention was to quickly run the upper and get down to below Chapel falls where Geoff and Andy’s son Dylan would get on and join us. We warmed up above the Graveyard but found ourselves having to wait for eddies to empty and features to clear before we could move on. So progress was slow, but we pushed on through the Graveyard without incident. We made eddies, missed eddies and had to by-pass occupied eddies ! We came around the bend leading into cafe wave to see the eddy full of boats. It was made even more confusing by the fact that some boaters were waiting to surf cafe wave whilst others were waiting to run “fingers”. We waited our turn as the large group from Nottingham slowly moved on. We all pushed on successfully through Fingers, NRA and Chapel and met up with Geoff, Dylan, Andy and James Harding for a run down the lower. Another good run was had on the lower where we had more river to ourselves and time to play. Well done Dylan who paddled really well but had one unfortunate little trip that was soon sorted. The only other incident of note was a rare mistake by Kee who broke out of the eddy on Bala Mill Falls and was tripped by a rock before rolling up at his second attempt to prevent what would have been a right pounding ! In some ways we were fortunate it was Kee as he was probably the only one capable of dealing with the situation effectively.
We now eagerly await the results of John’s maiden Go -Pro outing, Hopefully Teuwen’s Tryweryn Trip will be available soon.
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