Two New Rivers, One Weekend

The final sheer sided gorge of the upper Wnion

The weekend in North Wales for me saw two new rivers paddled - The Dwyfor and the Wnion. The Dwyfor was described in the guidebook as a bigger and better Tryweryn, however the low water levels on the Saturday meant we were unable to experience everything the Dwyfor has to offer. Alistair, Oli, Derek and myself finished the river a full ninety minutes before everyone else which gave us time to watch the local village football match that was being played at the take out. I was remined how dirty village football can be when a pub style brawl erupted on the pitch amid some of the players!

The rain came on Saturday night and we decided to paddle the Wnion on Sunday, which turned out to be a great paddle. The last two km of the upper Wnion offer really good grade 4 read and run, nothing too pushy with clean drops. The final few hundred meters is through a sheer sided gorge before the river opens out. Unfortunatley Ant suffered a blow to the face that resulted in him knocking half a toothe out on this section - Get better soon Ant.

Me on the Wnion gorge, photo by Derek Wong

Mark Wardle getting ready to enter the gorge on the Wnion

Spooky wood on the Dwyfor

Harry Wood admiring the fleet

A rare sight in North Wales - snow covered mountains!

Architects go Surfing!

Chris, Sarah and Tia

On Saturday Chris Lees, Tia Randal, Sarah Bromley and I headed down Croyd beach in Devon for surfing. We were pleasantly surprised by the temperature of the water and had a really good day.


Chris having his first ever paddle in a kayak

Scotland New Year

New Year means the annual Imperial trip up to Scotland. This year we stayed in Roy Bridge outside Fort William. While in previous years we have always been lucky with good water levels, this year there was somewhat of a drought in the UK over the Christmas period with there having been no rain in weeks. This meant all the rivers were at an unpaddleable low level apart from the Spean gorge. Funnily enough on the first day when we paddled the Spean gorge it was the highest I had ever paddled it due to the man at the Laggan dam accidentaly switching one of the overflow pipes on! I should also mention that it was freezing. I think the air temperature was below freezing for most of the trip, with ice forming on all our river clothing and even our hair!

However the rest of the trip there was no water, we managed a couple of scrapy runs down the arkaig, but nothing else was running. The trip was still a real fun though - we did quite a bit of walking and inspecting dry river beds and the Ceilidh on new years eve at Fort William was so much fun as usual.