White Water Improvers day
WFCC White Water Improvers day
September 11th - Tryweryn
Paddlers: Keith, Dean, Trevor, Bill, Ali and Chucky
With plans in place we rocked up at the club house to move the boats
around, collect the campers’ boats and head off to Bala. The Tryweryn was to be
the days training venue. Taking in the views on the mountain road as the weather
gradually got warmer and the clouds disappeared.
When we arrived at the Tryweryn we decided to walk from Cafe wave up to
talk about the river, the features and just give Dean and Trevor a small amount
of guidance before we got on, and kill some time before Bill and Ali arrived.
We donned the paddling attire with the usual dry suit / long sleeve / short sleeve
discussions and debt followed by the comment “i’m going to boil in this from
the chairman.” Just as we finished getting ready Bill and Ali arrived and then
setup up their temporary camp site for a ‘spot of lunch’ before they paddled.
We started on top site messing around on the wave, ferry gliding, S
turns and rescue practice. After spending a short while on the wave we moved
down to the bridge and practiced more of the above, including no paddle stroke
ferry glides and S turns before attempting worlds hole. Worlds hole was
interesting with a young lad showing us how it is done in his play boat
throwing moves i can only dream about throwing. Keith Trevor and I got stuck in
though, doing a few pop outs, poor attempt at a loop from me and just some eddy
hoping and rescuing boats and or paddles from the chipper. Dean worked he ferry
glide with a noticed improvement throughout the day. We ran this section
several times as a group with Bill and i joining us after they’d finished the
brunch.
It was well after at 2:00 before we moved on to the pre grave yard
section of the river. Joining some of the guys from Shrewsbury CC we worked the
pre grave yard section braking it down, making eddys, Dean and Trevor worked
this section well, no out of boat experiences just big smiles. Keith, Bill, Ali
and I ran down through the grave yard working the features hitting different
eddys and surfing some waves, before heading back up to pregrave yard. This
would be our final run before heading down to the cafe. Dean and Trevor opted
to join us for this final run and just go down the middle of the grave yard.
This didn’t go totally to plan with a raft deciding to plough through splitting
the group in half, and Deans paddles deciding the give up on him after he had
finished the hard bit and departed from his boat unscaved. After regrouping
Keith and i went off after his boat , which had rather conveniently caught an
eddy down stream. Trevor decided at this point he was going to get off the
water with Bill so Keith and I carried
on down to complete the run and d!ck about on cafe wave. We were going to play
in NRA but decided against it when a rather strong smell of sewerage seemed to
be coming from or near to the feature and was rather unpleasant.
Improvement was noted by Dean and Trevor so aim of the day achieved, fun
was had by all paddlers. On a personal note i felt like i had the mojo back and
was pushing it more including running ski slope backwards after surfing the
middle wave, blatantly planned as i put a woop on the end of it, and generally
d!cking around. Looking forward to the next paddle.
Photos and videos have been posted on the club facebook page. Check them out :) See you on the River
Chucky
