Recent Posts
- LCC annual awards & xmas party 2008
- Grand Canyon, May 08
- Sowerby Bridge slalom 8 june results
- Allt a Chaorrain - Video
- BCU to UKCC switch over
- Upper Tees - In Spate
- Bird watching with Ian Young
- Canoe polo - Hull sept 07
- Sleningford Slalom september 07
- Liffey Descent 2007
archives
- May 2005
- June 2005
- July 2005
- August 2005
- September 2005
- October 2005
- November 2005
- December 2005
- January 2006
- February 2006
- March 2006
- April 2006
- May 2006
- June 2006
- July 2006
- September 2006
- October 2006
- November 2006
- December 2006
- January 2007
- February 2007
- March 2007
- April 2007
- May 2007
- June 2007
- July 2007
- August 2007
- September 2007
- October 2007
- November 2007
- January 2008
- April 2008
- June 2008
- January 2009
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.
Monday, April 30, 2007My life in the stopper
Dateline Saturday 28 April. Four of us decided to head off to Wales to paddle the notorious Triiiiyywyrrenninin (or something like that). The party consisted of Drevil, Crouchy, Tim, and Mark.
The weather was glorious, and when we arrived it seemed everyone had similar ideas - 13 rafts were running. The levels were not especially high (9 cumec relaese I think).
We pootled along in our usual way, trying for as many eddies as possible, and making (most of) them, including the one half way down the ski jump. In fact, all seemed well - until Crouchy fluffed an eddy at the top of a section and pinballed backwards down it. He he he I thought, and smirked and gave a sarcastic thumbs up. Then I set off. Fluffed the eddy, and dropped backwards, pencil style, into the nasty little holding eddy that some of us (eg Smokey Dave) know so well. So there I was, sculling hard, and thinking hard. Cut backwards and out of it? Nope. Cut forwards and out of it? Nope. Turn and paddle out of it? Nope. Now it flips me in revenge. Sit underwater and think a bit - not too long 'cause I'm a bit out of puff now (age). Hooray! Something's happened - roll up and I'm facing downstream with the tail in the stopper. Paddle like fury and pop out to a look from Crouchy that said it all - Jammy sod!
I was! Somehow the rest of the day was a slight anticlimax.
I think I'll try again next weekend.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007Andy Hall: Diving video
The video of Andy Hall performing 2 mid-air somersaults whilst diving into the waterfall at the end of the Etive is now on-line here
Tuesday, April 10, 2007Where was the water?
It wasn't in the rivers near Fort William for the 24 people on the club's annual trip to the rivers around Fort William. After the long drive on thursday, and rumours that the Garry was releasing from the dam on friday, it made an obvious choice, and we were rewarded with a fun grade 3 river that in its short length has many more features than the washburn, and saw us trying to playboat in our creek boats. Paul clements took the first swim of the trip.
Saturday we went to look at an extremely low Etive. the main drops all looked ok, but in between the river looked very scrapey...people were walking in places. After a park n play session on triple steps we headed down the river, steve swam on crack of doom. Right angle falls was the main event - 6m water fall (almost double the hight of low force on the tees). Hopefully there'll be plenty of photos on the gallery sometime soon, as for many it was their first big waterfall. For some they prefered jumping/diving in off the cliff face rather than repeating the drop in their boats!
Sunday was the Spean gorge, again in extremely low water. Once we'd scraped to the gorge the gorge itself was fine, though less boily than normal. Martin had many swims, and phil also.
The afternoon was the Arkaig for 5 of us, where Gill ended the trip by breaking her paddles by dropping her boat on them!, and fort william leisure pool for the rest.
Monday saw the group split in 2, with half prefering an earlier drive home, and the rest repeating the Etive (a swim for Mark this time).
We'll be back there again next year... hopefully with some rain!
© Leeds Canoe Club 2009