They see me rollin'...

The day for the first trip of the year had arrived. Our new “no-faff” trip sec John started the day by faffing about. When we all eventually arrived at sheds (an hour and a half after the original meeting time), we picked up the pace, packed up the van and off we went.

Water levels were relatively low, so the only thing we were able to tackle that was running was the River Dee. However, I had never paddled the Dee before so I was happy to be giving it a go. Since the levels weren’t horrendous, the weir at the start was doable for people of all abilities and everyone made it over dry and in one piece.

It turns out that not paddling for over 3 months has a huge impact on your ability to avoid rocks, so it was not long before I hit one and became the first swimmer of the day! After being reunited with my boat, we carried on down the river with no major issues to report.

Then we hit Serpent’s Tail, one of the more complicated sections of the Dee. Roughly 50% made it down swim-free, while the rest of us endured a bit of a battering from the water and the rocks (I think the worst injury was my bruised thumb). We all soldiered on and hopped back into our boats to hit the water once more!

The next challenge: JJ’s. It’s basically a run of some semi-meaty rapids, but nothing too complicated, so we all made it down nice and easy. We stayed at the last section to play in a very friendly wave, which most of us had never done before. After a bit of coaxing, I gave it a whirl, and promptly got pushed out again. Determined to actually get at least one paddle stroke in whilst in the wave, I tried again. This time, I stayed in for slightly longer (hurray!) but then got tipped in (boo!). Then, something miraculous happened. I DID MY FIRST EVER RIVER ROLL!!! Amazing.

This stupendous event sparked some conversation, which led to Jasmine trying to river roll, and failing epically. While we were rescuing her, Josh also fell in (please bear in mind that this was all on flat water). Two quick river rescues and then we were on our way again.

Town Falls was within our sights, but us girls decided we would portage and end the day there (it didn’t look particularly easy, and we’d done pretty well up until that point), so we left the boys to it. By all accounts it was a remarkable feat, with an excellent line from Andrew, a roll from Sam and not a swimmer in sight.

Although I swam a couple of times and got battered by more than a few rocks, my river roll was my biggest kayaking achievement to date. To sum up: Best. Day. Ever.