Tryweryn Training

Late last year someone had put a call out for some paddlers to receive free coaching while they were working on a qualification.  Being students we could not turn down a free offering and jumped at the chance.  On a cold and dark January morning we set off.  Ruth’s brilliant idea of leaving the curtain open so the sun would wake her had not worked but we managed to leave Liverpool only slightly behind our plan.

A misty drive later we arrived at the Tryweryn to meet Paul Bull our coach for the day.  Introductions were made and we discussed what everyone wanted to get out of the sessions.  Common themes included becoming a better paddler so we can stop future freshers drowning and having increased confidence whilst paddling.  We got changed in the warmth of the centre before heading to the top of the course.  Deracking revealed some ice accumulation on our boats but we were not
put off.

Four happy kayakers

The morning session was mainly focused around us showing our skills on the graveyard section of the upper Tryweryn so Paul could work out our standard.  A slightly lower release than usual created a slightly different river and made sure there were no rafts about.  After an uneventful session catching eddys on the very top section we moved on to the main section of the graveyard.  Here our eddy catching skills were somewhat less effective getting a maximum of 3 eddys on the way down.

Backwards goes...

We walked up and tried again with a plan of 5 eddies to catch.  Ruth failed to catch the second eddy and demonstrated her skills going down stuff backwards.  I similarly failed to catch the eddy but turned by boat in time to go forwards.  Next up was spud and her eddy catching skills were no more proficient.  A laughing happy spud then proceeded to drop into a sticky hole sideways.  After a short period of happy smiling side surfing spud went in and demonstrated her upside down hole surfing skills.  Soon a not so happy swimming spud appeared.  Kit was retrieved (pro swimming tip keeping hold of your paddles makes things a lot easier especially if you decide to buy black paddles) then Rach decided the eddy was unreachable and paddled safely down the correct line avoiding the hole.

Happy smile or nervous grin?

It was then decided to move back to the easier section and work on improving forward paddling so we could achieve the power to make it into the eddy.  A short time later people were getting hungry so we stopped for lunch (my first ever lunch stop at lunch time with LUCC).  After some interesting discussion (apparently someone competent on grade 3 should be able to catch 10+ eddies on lower graveyard, a challenge for next time we are there perhaps) and nice flapjacks we restarted.  Warming up again took a while since it was quite cold.  Then we worked a bit more on catching eddies on bit above graveyard.  We then moved on to practicing some boofing which we did on repeat for some time getting it sometimes but missing it others.

Safety first

When we had had enough of that we headed down to the ski slope (with Ruth taking a quick roll on graveyard as we went through).   Everyone got a bit scared here and we decided to inspect it for some reason (another first on the Tryweryn for me).  We were meant to be doing something there but it mainly consisted on making the eddy on river left at the bottom probably the best line at the flows we had anyway.  We then carried on down to get out below NRA wave without further incident.  Having just over 30 minute water left we then decided to call it a day, get a few more pro coaching tips and say goodbye till next time.

Thanks to Paul Bull for the coaching and photography.
http://www.paulbull.co.uk/