Happy paddlers: Dom, tolly, gaby, jack, gareth, tim, greg
So 7 happy chappys set off to the trewelyn for a trip that turned out to be full of firsts. In dom’s first trip as trip sec (I think) we set off at some ungodly hour, 8am, to do the lower to start with. We got on just before chapel falls and led for the first time by Gareth cruised down at a comfortable pace with everyone dealing well with the rapids. Tim in particular showing how far he has come this year dealing with the rapids with ease… It’s just a shame he couldn’t show the same level of mastery with those pesky eddie lines! Gaby, after swiping hannah’s beloved boat, had a swim-free run and finished it off with a textbook practice river roll, much to her delight.
After the world’s soggiest lunch we all set-off to run the upper, bar gaby who didn’t want to tarnish her clean sheet for the day. After a quick change of river leader the excellent gareth stepped back to allow our newly appointed captain to take charge, we got on at the upper graveyard, eddie hopping down followed by 2 more circuits, where the focus was more on avoiding the many, many, many rafts than catching any eddies.
Led by tolly the rest of the first circuit was relatively uneventful with everyone managing well at ski jump whilst tim decided to go down miss davies bridge without his boat before everyone tightened spincters when tolly told us exactly how “fingers” had earned its name. Spincters intact we ploughed through the rest of the rapids until we reached our original get-on for the lower.
We decided to run the upper again bar-tim who was feeling the effects of sharing a hole with his boat. Graveyard was blitzed before I was pushed out of my eddie into ski-jump by a raft, said raft then followed clearly not happy with just a push tried to run me over when I was upside down in the rapid, as you do.
After my death-defying stunt we carried on without incident down the river with everyone avoiding a good fingering to the eddie before the final drop. After 2 swim free runs and only one more rapid to complete the hat-trick I was feeling suitably smug, after getting a strong grip on a sturdy sturdy patch of moss I turned to tell tolly about said smugness and lo and behold my sturdy moss detatched itself from the bank dumping me into the water and back into the flow. With paddles long gone and my last glimpse above water being that of tolly in hysterics I pulled my deck happy in the knowledge that I was in my trusty dry suit and couldn’t possibly get wet or cold. So 2 minutes later with me wet and cold standing on the bank and my boat and paddle heroically saved by greg and the still giggling tolly I got a few well deserved “right dickhead” signs off gaby and gareth and we packed up to set home after a fantastic day paddling.
Thank to dom for organising the trip and driving us down and more thanks for gareth and tolly on their excellent river leading.
P.S I love the trewelyn!
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