Aire Waves: While everybody were in the Alps trip...

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Aire Waves

Leeds Canoe Club Blog. We paddle... lots!
Airewaves used to be Leeds Canoe Club's magazine letting people know what the club was upto. Its quite hard work pulling together a publication letting people know what the club is doing and publishing dates in advance is always hard as things tend to change. Step forth the blog.. Push button publishing for the masses. So here is the idea a few people in the club take it in turns to write up trips and talk about things in the club.

Friday, August 05, 2005
While everybody were in the Alps trip...

Alright, alright, we've missed the Alps trip, and the photos really make me jealous - but the life went on around Leeds as well!
We went to Teesside with Dave on the 24th hoping to see the Acid Drop at 0.4 tide - but unfortunately they closed the outer gates for safety reasons and all we've seen was just a couple of weak waves instead of huge drop. A bit of a disappointment for us especially after Martin's report from the previous day (Saturday the 23rd) that the Drop was there at its best. However, Dave has taught me how to flatspin my barge in the Happy Eater and despite a swim I had to go for having let my paddle a bit more independende than I should, it was a fantastic training session.
We went to the Ure by the Sleningfor Mill campsite on Friday the 29th with Bob. Not a breathtaking whitewater experience - despite the heavy rains on Thursday, there was no water by Friday night - but still a good hour of paddling.
Then, on Saturday the 30th, Chris and me went to Holme Pierrepont, which turned out to be a great day on the water! We were lucky enough to try it at both 20 and 27 cumecs (3/4 and full releases respectively) and surprizingly, the 3/4 turned out to be more interesting than the full one - at a full release the majority of Grade 2ish features got flushed away, whilst it made almost no difference to the bigger stuff. Among the other things it's worth mentioning that during my last descent I got stuck in the first hole (the one in a narrow concrete channel looking like the one in Teesside, but behaving a bit differently) for about ten minutes (even though the spectators said so - it felt to me like I'd spent there no more that just a couple of minutes) on the side surf, absolutely stable, but helpless as a kitten on a tree, having had to roll a dozen of times, trying everything I've read in the books to get out of there, but finding myself in the same position in the hole every time I've rolled. Two pleasant moments from this epic were that a)there was a huge queue above the drop waiting from me to clear the hole, and they all thought I was playing as they told me afterwards (well, there definitely was a game played, but I'd rather say that the Whitewater Mama was playing with me than vise versa), and b) a nice blonde girl came to the top of the wall to ask whether I was alright.
However, I still had enough courage to film Chris's last descents on the course - the movie to follow soon, and I hope I can get the music sorted. Apart from this, we've seen a 'demo playboating session', which was cool - a lot of aerial elements and all sorts of moves I can think of.
I must admit that the water wasn't even half as bad as it's normally thought of. Unlike the Aire, it didn't even smell, and the color was OK. Don't know about Chris, but I had no digestion problems afterwards - probably, four pints of Guinness kicked in, I dunno (and who says Cola is the best remedy?). Overall, it can be compared to Teesside by the water quality, probably, we've just been lucky.
So I must admit that HPP is a really good alternative to Teesside - more powerful, with a lot of playing features and just 80 miles away from Leeds.

But that wasn't it. We packed the gear and went to North Wales with an intension to camp overnight and go for Tryweryn the next day. It took us surprizingly long time to get there (3.5 hours) - and as a consequence, all pubs got closed by the time we got to a nice camping site at Caerwrswrsllwrsrrllw Station at 20 miles distance from Bala. But there was a Spar still open at quarter to eleven in Llangolen, so that's where the Guinnes came from, even though somebody preferred to drink milk.
In the morning we went to Bala, and after having a 50th burger over the weeked each, we've discovered that the bottom park was full of suspicious people obviously living in caravans at the car park, so we had to park a ferry car a bit further down the road.
The Tryweryn at nine cumecs was - quite expectedly - a really enjoyable descent. We've run it down to the Chapel Falls not even trying to catch any eddies except the ones below the major rapids to catch or breath - alright, we've missed some training opportunities, but at least we've enjoyed ourselves. Then we portaged up to the Cafe Wave and run the rest of the river from there down to Bala.
Two remarks about recent changes on Tryweryn - first, the seal launch from the shore below the Chipper is no longer possible unless you are ready to scrath your boat's hull againts the concrete slide - the soil slope is fenced off and slosed for seal launches due to erosion. Second - they removed the scaffolding from underneath the road bridge, so it's totally safe now.
Overall, we really enjoyed the river and got home by around seven o'clock.

So that was it. Really good weekend, pretty intense, with a lot of driving, but that was worth it.

# posted by Russian Paul @ Friday, August 05, 2005

Comments:
Sounds like you've been pretty busy! Any pictures?

# posted by Gavin : 4:20 PM

Not really. There's some footage from Chris's constant rolling on HPP - I'll try to make something of it and will publish on the Web. Not sure about the timings, though.

# posted by Russian Paul : 9:37 PM

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