Christmas Paddle Report!

The early start of getting to the sheds at 7.30 in the cold and the dark was a shock to the system to all but soon enough everyone was fighting over boats and they were loaded up and we were off. With a bit of moaning from people at the front of the bus, mainly me, we found a spar in the middle of nowhere in Wales where we cleared the shop then caused havoc trying to get the bus back out of the village!

We got to the get-on after asking for a few directions to work out where we were and everyone donned their Christmas outfits; most went for hats, antlers or shiny bows with Hannah’s (JJ) ending up mostly floating down the river after a swim! While a few went the extra mile with fairy lights and Santa outfits. Spud decided that making a reindeer head to stick to her boat was more important than doing her university work, which looked great flowing down the river along with her Viking-esque helmet; winning her the best Christmas outfit for the day which surprisingly survived the whole river.

After the shuttle was done and Tolly had provided some entertainment by scraping down the small
stream leading into the river, we all ventured on to the river. We broke into groups and heading down to the first rapid, this claimed the first set of swims with Tim, Hannah and Simon swimming after about 5 minutes of paddling and then soon after Iain had a quick dip which resulted in him losing his hat, but was kindly recovered by Ben. Soon after we all stopped in an eddy to have a quick breather and photo opportunity then Fiona and James decided to test their dry suits out by having a swim and try and drag others in, quite unsuccessfully resulting in them struggling to get back into the eddy!

The next few rapids were done quite uneventfully even though we perfectly demonstrated cluster f***ing with everyone staying the right way up excluding Jack who felt like he needed to test his roll. We headed down to the last rapid which took a few more swims courtesy of Hannah, Simon (and maybe a few more I can’t remember) and a roll from Fiona. This drop was also nicely styled by Schneiders No2 (Hannah) who rotated 90o and fooling everyone into thinking she was going over before casually flicking the boat upright and styling the drop.

After getting out and packing up the boats we all got changed and Kim set up the mulled wine and mince pies while Stu set up a slack line. After feeling all Christmassy and being warming up on the mulled wine and mince pies we moved on to very unsuccessfully trying to walk along the slack line until it started to get dark and we headed home. I think everyone will agree that the Christmas paddle was a great way to finish the years paddling off and made us look forward to much more paddling next year! – Graham.

Happy Faces