Also starring – Hannah Draper, Stu
Haywood, Squirrel, Penny, and other miscellaneous ‘Olds’
Dick
of the Day:
·
Thursday – Liam – for
apparently saying he would run safety for Kim’s group on one of the rapids on
the Garry and then paddling off.
·
Friday – Chris – for not
swimming on the Garry when Jack Ward spread the rumour that he had after seeing
his boat on the bank. Everyone except me was disappointed as it was my kit he
was rescuing when the accusation was made.
·
Saturday – Dom - for ruining
Loser is a Cat by throwing the pen into someone’s garden.
 |
| Boater X!!! |
FRIDAY
- Upper Garry
Friday began with hungover paddlers
wandering out of their rooms at various times. Stu was the most drunk and
correspondingly the last to appear. We mooched over to the Garry again, where
there were even more kayakers than yesterday due it being a Bank Holiday.
Several people get loser points for not paddling although to be fair Gabby was
in A&E having a broken toe diagnosed (or not as the Scots are stingy with
their X-ray machines). Chris’s Dream Team ran the upper section once as a big
group with zero points except Jack’s roll, well done to Tim for zero swims on
rapids OR eddy lines, then me Chris and Jack hiked up again for another run. At
the get in we found ourselves sharing an eddy with a Squirrel! Hannah joined us
in a red rocker – didn’t recognize her without the signature pink WRSI. Haywood
followed shortly after, his new yellow Shiva being met with several comments
along the lines of “have you got it pinned yet?”. Our second run was more
eventful – the epic ferry glide across the full width of the river was not
achieved by Jack , who then rolled in the same hole as before. I had a small
mishap concerning the biggest hole on the river and my boat did the next rapid
unpiloted before Chris rescued it without swimming himself – my hero of the
day, everyone else’s dick of the day…
Picnic lunch was followed by BoaterX!
Order of finishing, all quite close: Liam, Greg, Chris, Ben, Adi, Dom (who
rolled at the finish) and Spud.
 |
| No Olds were harmed in the making of this photo |
Friday was BIG PARTY NIGHT in Roy Bridge
Hotel bar with all the olds and the two men with their accordion and guitar,
otherwise known as Off The Rails! Lots of alcohol was consumed. The Greenwoods
started off the mad drunk dancing, rapidly joined by Penny, Will Potts, me,
Hannah and Stu, then most other people. Dan (bullshitter) started a new
tradition – kissing the boar’s head on the wall. One by one he lifted us up on
his shoulders to kiss the boar, I’m not sure it was anyone’s most pleasant
experience of the week unless they were really desperate! Dan and Adi had an
epic game of Loser is a Cat outside, which ended catastrophically when Dom dashed
out of the pub and got involved, stealing the pen and throwing it over a garden
wall. He disappeared ninja-like as speedily as he had arrived. When asked to
explain his actions the next day, he said: “Everyone was outside so the best
way to get them back inside was to get rid of the pen.”. Despondent at the
untimely demise of Loser of a Cat, we trudged [staggered] back inside for a
second rendition of The Roybridge Song! It was enthusiastic, it was loud, it
was Scottish, tune didn’t feature largely… it’s hard to describe, you kind of
had to be there…
 |
| Custard is good!!! |
Back in the bunkhouse, custard (but not
the lumps because Ade ate them selectively) got everywhere including all over
Dan, JJ and Kim (thankfully not the toaster this time like the jelly). I tried
to go to bed but was interrupted by Dan bursting in insisting he wanted to spoon
with Chris - little spoon, if anyone was wondering.
Our Trip Sec Stuart Earnshaw slept
through the whole thing. He must have overdone it the night before, bless. You
snooze you lose….
SATURDAY
– Etive and Allt a’ Chaorainn (sort of)
 |
| "Paddling" |
 |
| Kaptain Kim learnt to levitate |
Dom set off on a long winter walk, the
rest of us headed to the Etive, doubtfully noting all the ice on the lead in
and tributaries as we drove up the glen… We found the Etive to be on
superscrape level so walked up a tributary, the Allt a’ Chaorainn, and threw
rocks at all the floating ice. Adi slid down a bit in his drysuit, Liam whipped
off his fluffy duck onesie and slid down stark bollock naked (and no I am not
writing this on 1st April – it was immortalized on GoPro, like most
of our Scotland trip). It was lovely and sunny so we decided to have a picnic
lunch, get into our kit and mess around on the Allt a’ Chaorainn and see if the
level rose during the afternoon with snowmelt. Liam was the only one who
carried his boat up to run Chasm and Ecstasy minus the lead-ins, and Speed
which sounded a lot like scrapebangscrapebumpslpash. Stu and Adi also ran
Speed, without a deck or paddles! He gave Pinball a miss as there was really no
water and Adi, Fiona and Spud ground to a halt trying to swim down it. We all
jumped off into one of the pools. We also jumped off the bridge at the bottom,
and several spots off the cliffs around Chasm. Style points for Adi for a back
somersault off the bridge. However we avoided the very bottom pool as Gareth
got a bit too friendly with a dead deer which crept up on him from behind –
girly shriek recorded on GoPro for ever more!
 |
| Liverpool University Gorge Walking Club |
 |
| Look behind you!! |
Spud, Kim and Fiona gorgewalked up most
of the river, with a pause on Ecstasy to try the slide into teacup eddy, best
enjoyed on your elbow pads and toe tips. Fiona however made holes the
willy-zip-flap of her drysuit and wandered around shouting “I made a boo-boo!”
pointing at her crotch. Spud managed to stand on her bumzip as she got up,
undoing it, and getting her whole right leg wet. It was fun but very chilly,
and only Chris, Stu, Gareth, Jack, Tim, Adi and me stayed in kit for nipping up
to session Triple Step, the first set of drops on the Etive which had risen by
mid afternoon. I ran it a few times – Triple 3 is still my favourite drop! Tim
took a sneaky swim and Jack nearly joined him by getting pinned at 90 degres
with no paddles and having to implore Greg for a T-rescue. I got off to take
photos of Stu, Adi, Gareth and Chris doing BoaterX down Triple Step: not sure
who won out of Stu and Adi, and Chris and Gareth battled it out on Triple 2
with Chris landing on top of Gareth and binning [the term binning is harsh
here, Chris just landed on Gareth’s stern] him with a fierce grimace, then
laughed as Gareth failed to roll up against the wall. The photos tell the
story… BoaterX = no rules!
 |
| What everyone else missed out on |
SUNDAY
– Upper Tummel
A big cooked breakfast, some cleaning
and we left Grey Corrie Lodge behind for another year. Half the people got on
to paddle the Tummel, looking very similar to when we declared it too bony a
week ago. It was described to me as a few fun ledges and one 4+ but otherwise
scrapy rocks causing much pinning and technicals! We watched them paddle the 4+
- it was fine if you were upright but not somewhere you wanted to be upside
down and there was a chance of landing on a rock. No one messed it up too much,
some portaged, and they continued downriver. We drove down to choose a get-off
for them. We were tempted to make them (especially Stu and Liam ) paddle the
2km of flat following the interesting section but the driver wasn’t that mean
and wanted to get home! We stopped by a chute-y double drop with a big
curler/cushion wave on the last bit. Everyone ran this fine and braced off the
curler except Tim who tried to James-Tomkin style it.
We finished our Scotland trip with two
A&E trips, well over 100gig of footage from 6 GoPros, and thousands of
photos which you can peruse at your leisure on Facebook. The Swim Chart should
be available to see – Spud, Iain and Gabby and Tim were all vying for who could
get the most points. [who won?]. Sadly, the swim chart didn’t total enough for
either of the hero[moron]-boaters to go skinny dipping in a river of everyone
else’s choice.
A huge thank you to everyone who came,
drove, organised, lead, seconded, rescued, cooked, cleaned, washed up,
navigated, DJed, filmed, photographed and ultimately PADDLED.
Schneids
(and Ben)
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