Thursday, June 29, 2006

May In Snowdonia

Intermediate canoe course at PYB. Ian, Alison, Jackie, Steve & my roommate (again) Adam were with me to learn a bit more boat handling. Since the last course I had bought a Solo Boat & wanted to learn how to handle that & do some Tandem skills. Rosie Powell & Leo & Keith were our instructors. The sun was out, the water a bit low but enough rivers in north wales to play on.
Day 1 was paddling skills - hard technical work - I am hopeless on stroke names but managed to paddle around in circles all day. In the evening session we did rescue drills & most of us got wet - some kept on falling in. Was a beautiful snowdonia day & so not shivering by the end.

Days 2 -4 on the Dee above Llangollen. Eddy lines is a paddlers haven with changing rooms & Shop & water. We did a wee trip up the top of the canal, parking in a layby & jumping over the fence into the canal. Then through the tunnel (70m) passing Army paddlers going the other way - it was not just the identical hair or kit, but the strokes but by the book. Tidy but no flair!
We had a bite of lunch at the head of the canal before dropping into the Dee. It is a great river with big rapids & then a whore of the Serpents Tail which was showing a very narrow get out. It is a grade 2-3 for kayaks but 3 -4 for canoes. See http://ukriversguidebook.co.uk/dee.htmk/dee.htm for full details. At the Chain Bridge Hotel there is a great rapid just beneath the balcony that runs close to the cliff. My Canoe earnt its nickname - Dragster - here as it cut through the waves without a thought. Turning nicely too into the eddy all was going well. Then we all went to the aforementioned Serpents Tail.

We had a quick look & decided that the boys knew that sense was the better part of valour. So we carried our boats down the rocks...well not all of us.

Leo Hoare ran it, to show Alison how to do it.
They both hit exactly the same spot - one got wet the other was OK. Then I foolishly asked Leo if he wanted to run my boat down as was a whitewater rigged boat - he did just & said she is a twitchy boat. But no bangs! The next couple of days were spent learning ow to pole & Line & portage in beautiful weather. We knew the river pretty well by then & ran the weirs by Eddy lines pretty cleanly. It was busy with loads of courses from all sorts of OB centres as the water was low everywhere. Keith swopped with Leo after a couple of days & we had a change from 'when I was on the way to Norway...'stories.

The last day was a great change - Menai straits & in Tandem boats. Ian & I paired up & got back in the swing of things pretty quickly - I am still not as technically good as him & need to be more aware of power & angle. We sailed & ran tidal eddy lines & generally grinned our way through the bridges of Menai.

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