What a
weekend. Bus sing-a-longs, jelly wrestling, pool games, press ups, shirtless
Dom and EVEN some kayaking! Teifi 2013 will go down as a truly great weekend.
FRIDAY – LATE FOR A
VERY IMPORTANT DATE
The
weekend began with the troops assembling at sheds on Friday afternoon to get
our gear packed into the vans, which surprisingly was achieved with minimum
faff! The occasional torrential downpour promised great kayaking conditions for
the weekend, as well as giving everyone the first opportunity to get used to
having damp clothes; this would become a theme for the next few days! We all
split into our vehicles to get comfortable, with our bus getting into the mood
quickly with a heavy bass version of wrecking ball getting the windows steamed
up and the bus shaking in traffic…that sounded better in my head. The next few
hours passed without incident, as everyone got in the mood for the party that
night with multiple sing-a-longs as well as discussing what magazine Meg was
going to have to buy in front of her mother at tesco (keeping traditions
alive). It was at the petrol station however where we learned that Elliot had
kept quiet about being the youngest member on the bus, leading to an
interesting conversation with customer services about whether they had anything
more hardcore than NUTS. We didn’t do any better in improving the Welsh
perception of the English when Tom decided to test whether the 70cl bottle of
vodka he was carrying could bounce, leading to the biggest avoidance of
“spillage is lickage” I’ve ever witnessed! Everyone stocked up on food and
drink for the weekend, with enough alcohol being bought to supply the Raz for a
month, and with that we embarked on the final part of the journey slightly merrier.
We arrived at
Teifi to be greeted by a madman driving a lawnmower and wagon who happily told
us all to jump in to be driven to the campsite (wouldn’t want anyone getting
muddy). After narrowly avoiding falling out of the trailer 3 or 4 times we
arrived at our spot to find the rest of LUCC already engaging in the fun
activity of setting up tents in the dark. Surprisingly, this didn’t pose as
many problems as you might think, although it became apparent quickly that Tom
(pronounced Jack) had brought a canvass with a pole attached to it rather than
a tent!! Social Sec extraordinaire JJ jumped to the rescue of Sarah and Siriol
after their tent broke within minutes of arrival. With this done the drinks were cracked open,
as Liverpool made their presence felt at Teifi with our bright and beautiful
pink tshirts. Everyone’s favourite forfeit game was alive and well as one by
one people claimed possession of objects, allowing us to get a close up
experience of the growing mud. Once everyone had drank enough to stop feeling
the cold, special mention to fresher Tom who drank enough vodka to impress a
Russian soldier, we got ourselves into the marquee to join the other
universities and make Liverpool’s presence known with a moshpit forming almost
straight away. The braver of us ran to the pool for some water antics, although
most were more sensible in knowing that it would be GOD DAMN FREEZING.
Suddenly, a ripple of excitement went through the crowd, as the promised jelly
wrestling got underway, with the particular highlight being Spud rugby tackling
an increasingly drunk Meg. It was around this point that I helped Meg from
being crushed as they rolled the paddling pool away, despite what pictures may
suggest was happening… one thing’s for sure, Meg certainly did her fair share
of improving inter-club relationships that night! Highlight of the night had to
be the front row seat of our amazing trip sec Dom thrashing away in the pool
while wind milling his shirt above his head, something not many would have
thought they’d see!
SATURDAY – TEIFI IN WONDERLAND
Despite his active
role in the drinking the night before, Dom was up to get the rest of us
sleepyheads out of our tents and ready to get on the river. After a quick
breakfast, and with heads ringing from the night before, we set off to get the
shuttle to the get-on. A quick look at the river was enough to see that the
heavy rain had done its job, as the water was moving quickly and had risen
above most of rocks on the river; it would also make finding eddies more
difficult. We split into our difficult groups and got ready to get paddling for
the first time. For Aqueel this was his first time on a river at all, but he
displayed the enthusiasm we look for at LUCC and was eager to start. Despite
the fast flowing water, the river didn’t pose too many problems for our groups
for the most of it, other than giving Graham the unenviable job of finding
eddies; this led to a lot of zig-zagging across the river as we discovered that
the eddy we were heading for wasn’t an eddy. Other than a small wave to drop
through the high levels of the river had washed out most of the features on the
river, although we did get excitement on hearing rumours that our mighty Trip
Sec had swum, although it turned out he had actually just been rescuing a
member of his group.
The first bit of
carnage of the weekend happened purely by accident, as we all eddied out into
what I can only describe as the eddy from hell. The size of it had lured many
of the groups into it, across a very boily eddy line which claimed victims from
each group, and it quickly became necessary to maintain a low brace as
precaution as more and more people came crashing in and nearly binning people.
Gareth in particular enjoyed this part of the river as he was called to rescue
not just members of our club, but other clubs as well. After escaping out of
the chaos we carried on as before, only for Graham to spot a paddler casually
standing in the water by a tree. After guessing correctly that it was one of
ours, we discovered a stranded Jack (Tom) on the side of the river. This led to
an example of how not to rescue someone as some idiot from another university
attempted to help, instead dragging Tom through more trees. It was after this
point that we discovered that Dom had in fact managed to swim!
Without much
carnage we reached the get off for lunch, with everyone happy to tuck in to
some food as hangovers started to kick in. Unfortunately, my hangover took a
turn for the worse leading me to sit out the last bit of paddling for the day,
as the last thing anyone wants to see is chunder in an eddy! The rest of the
group, after a bit of faff, got back on the river to run the slalom section of
the river, which nearly everyone completed without difficulty. I say nearly
everyone, after Ant’s friend capsized
trying to avoid knocking one of our freshers out of an eddy, failed to roll
twice, Ant’s attempt to dead man rescue him leading to his own roll, before
finally the friend swam! The group then decided to keep it as a short second
session as the high river levels had essentially washed out the Cauldron and
there was no easy way back to the campsite without going right down to Henllan.
The torrential
downpour shortly after this gave an excuse to impose LUCC nap time, with Tom
finally admitting that his tent was not a tent and joining the growing
contingent sleeping with Tabs. Greg’s tent joined the growing list of
casualties, however stayed standing with the help of beer bottles used as tent
pegs. We were roused out of our warm (albeit slightly soggy for some) sleeping
bags by the news that food was being served in the marquee, and so we made our
way in excited at the prospect of a warm meal. Despite a few delays, for some
reason Jack from Manchester didn’t want our table getting food and supposedly
gravy takes a LONG TIME to cook, the food was awesome and set everyone in a
good mood for the party that night.
We all took
advantage of the pause in the rain to run back to our tents and get our
pre-drink in for the party that night. Eager to out-do the night before, the
majority of us took the “no alcohol going home” rule seriously, and Ryan set
the mood with the revelation of his own homemade speakers to get the music
playing. Gradually, we each donned our costume for the night, with me finding
out the joy of how comfortable fish net leggings are! Although there was
awkwardness as myself, Adam, JJ, Malin and Ailsa all went for the queen of
hearts costume; I wouldn’t say I pulled it off the best out of everyone, but it
was a close call. After some group bonding over a pre-drinks session of “I Have
Never” we set off for the marquee looking like an advertisement for “don’t let
your kids talk to strangers”. Within minutes of being in the party I had been
thrown head over heel into the pool, and decided that as I was already wet it
would make sense to join Meg in representing our illustrious uni in the pool
games. Unfortunately, for the 2nd year running Greg managed to beat
us in the name of JMU, but we took defeat graciously. I would love to describe
what happened at the party that night but if anyone wasn’t aware I was so
trashed that the majority of it would probably me made up. I do remember having
a piggy back battle with Tom, Ruth and Spud in the pool, and there are photos
that have me in the pool with Greg, who was wandering around with a pink
flamingo tied round his neck, and I remember the night ending with a huge conga
line to the song Love Train, but other than that specifics are quite difficult.
One thing’s for sure, it was a fantastic night and the sort of night that
proves why LUCC is such a good group to party with.
SUNDAY – A TRIP TO THE WYE
After deciding
against repeating his drunken antics of the Friday night Dom was up bright and
early to get everyone out of their tents to pack away, ready for our last day
of paddling. Due to the high river levels washing out anything interesting on
the Teifi the decision was made to journey north in search of something more
exciting, namely the Upper Wye. Packing away tents was easier said than done as
the strong winds nearly made more than one blow away while being unpegged.
Without too much faff we got everything sorted and said a fond farewell to the
campsite before climbing into the minibuses for the couple of hours it would
take to the get-on. Surprisingly, our bus was most lively when Enrique
Iglesias’ Hero came on the radio, as
we all joined in for a rousing sing-a-long, but it became clear quickly that
the DJ must have recently been going through a break up as the playlist
resembled the sort of music you would listen to when crying yourself to sleep.
We reached the get
on without incident, and engaged in eating a quick lunch before getting
stripped off in the road into our gear. Those of us who were still drunk from
the night before, mainly me, enjoyed Ben’s music booming from the van and
happily danced away until the heavens decided to open on us. Attempts at a sun
dance were not very successful. To try and make the most of the light we got on
as quickly as possible, with the water flowing slightly slower than the Teifi,
but still at pace. A small set of waves around the first bend gave us a chance
to shake the cobwebs from the night before out of heads before we set off
confidently downstream.
The confidence didn’t last too long though,
as our group had our first bit of carnage of the weekend. A seemingly innocuous
rapid took myself, Tabs and Sarah out at the same time, on the same rock,
giving Graham and Greg some much needed work to do. After all the boats had
been rescued and Greg had succeeded in crab walking Tabs and Sarah to the river
bank we got back into our boats in time to watch the group behind us go to the
far right and avoid the rock completely. Our good form of the first day paddling
had taken a turn for the worse as we had several over the rest of the river,
however, this is what trips are for and it’s great to give the experienced
members practice in rescues! A boulder garden and a couple of small drops on
the river gave everyone a great excitement rush, as well as giving the newer
paddlers some good experience of upper grade 3 rapids. Ben Thwaites also
selflessly taught the freshers a lesson of why a spraydeck is so important!
After deciding it wasn’t worthwhile putting his spraydeck on for the sake of
dropping down twenty meters to an eddy he happily set off downstream. Five
minutes before I’d been talking to Graham and Greg about a rock just underneath
the water by the eddy that had almost binned me, and watched with surprise as
the same rock lifted Ben’s boat just enough to fill it with water, giving him
his first ever swim with LUCC. Safe to say Ben was not a happy bunny!! With
visibility becoming an issue, and after a large amount of swims over the last
section of the river the decision was made to get off the river early. The get
off produced a bit of drama of its own, as an overhanging tree root gave one of
our freshers (Malin?) a scary experience, but fortunately superman JT was there
to make sure things didn’t get nasty. This led to a tense get off for our group
as JT and Kim stood in the water to make sure none of us went near the same
spot. Unfortunately, Kim was also responsible at this point for saying the
forbidden word, and did her forfeit in the river like a trooper.
Once we were all
of the river we happily got changed into our warm clothes, relieved at the
thought that we wouldn’t be getting wet again that weekend. With it getting
darker we got the stuff packed away as quickly as possible, and afterwards Dom
gave us our Teifi in Wonderland tshirts that he had sensibly kept away from us
while we were all getting muddy and horrible. A trip to mcdonalds on the way
back was the perfect end to the trip, with everyone tucking into their
hard-earned greasy meal after a good days kayaking. Unfortunately, there was
still time to piss of staff members again as I could only watch as my large
coke went sliding off my tray to explode on the floor, leading to the second
refusal of the spillage is lickage rule. After filling up we made our way back
to the minibuses to rest and contemplate on an amazing weekend. Thank you so
much to everyone who came, it was probably my favourite trip that I’ve been on
with the Canoe Club and I can’t wait to do it all again next year!!!!!
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