The Kayaks - There and Back Again

And so it falls to me to describe the epic adventure on which our weary group embarked that afternoon. Our groups quest was slightly delayed after a certain someone realised they were missing some important equipment, but it wasn’t long before we were ready to set off in pursuit of the groups in front. 

From my own personal perspective, following remarkable demonstration of rusty edging and steering, the first twenty minutes of the river appeared to be a mixture of cold water and tree branches, with my fondness for trees in particular causing great amusement for those in my group as I demonstrated perfect technique for how to take a branch to the face. The first eddy in particular gave me and Simon an important reminder on the need for edging to avoid a cold wake up call.

From here however, with Fred leading our fellowship, we proceeded to battle through the river and negotiate our way through the first sets of rapids without any serious problem, all the time in anticipation of the promised “minor hole” and “folding wave” that would give the more experienced members of our group something more exciting to paddle…(clutching at straws). Sure enough after strong paddling we came upon the promised hole which we all advanced through without any serious problems.

However, shortly afterwards, the journey would almost come to a premature end for two of our travelling band of merry kayakers. After catching up to the other group and being signalled by Grog, a failed attempt by me to manoeuvre into an eddy resulted in Spud being given an unexpected experience of the icy chill of the river, and left myself swimming down the gorge while Ben bravely pursued the now empty boat. It is safe to say that I have never experienced cold like that of a river in the Lake District in January, and unfortunately for Hannah she too would discover that the hard way after a brave attempt to roll for the first time in a rapid. For a while it looked as if this would be the moment that two of us dropped out of the quest, but there was no way that this was going to be allowed and after some donated chocolate and pep talking from Fred, Liam and the rest of the group we were convinced to get back in our boats, a decision we were later pleased of when we realised just how far the walk would have been!

Sick-Line JJ playing again

The rest of the river was negotiated without too many problems, other than one moment where Hannah and I were again out of our boats to manoeuvre ourselves off the rocks we had managed to get pinned on. The mood was lightened during the paddle as Adi, Graham and others played the usual game of trying to throw paddles over tree branches, providing much amusement with the standard scrabbling afterwards to rescue them before they floated downstream. Finally, we reached the get off where I gratefully wrapped my arms around a tree (had to end it the way I began).

After lots of hugging and jumping around to try and get warm ( I was happily informed by Mollie and Gaby that I was in fact blue at this point) we all got changed into warm kit, racked all the boats and gratefully climbed into the cars to enjoy the heating ready to set off, that is until Gareth realised he had again left his car keys in his boat!! We had a nice stop over at a Wetherspoons in Kendal to fill our stomachs before setting off on a much speedier journey back to Liverpool. I believe the junctions on which we were stuck for 5 hours on the Friday took us 14 minutes to drive down on the Sunday. All in all, despite my complaining about being cold on the river, and despite the weekend being completely different to what we had originally planned, it turned out to be a great trip and I think despite the exhausting effects of the journey, the experience of the M6 in the snow will not be one any of us forget!!