Open to club members only.
Contact Jon for more information.
If you are thinking of taking up whitewater paddling this is an opportunity learn (or to brush up on your) whitewater skills ready for the winter season - we will run through breaking in/out (the minimum skills needed for a safe WW trip). Far better to try it out here than swimming within the first 100m of a 6 mile trip on a cold day.
The trip will be to Symonds Yat trip on Sunday 1st September, it probably won't be a long trip down the Wye we usually go for a warm up paddling 1/2 mile up the river to 'the rock' and then paddle down the rapids, followed by a walk back up to the top and repeat until exhausted! This will give you loads of good practice missing rocks, wobbling, breaking in/out, ferry gliding and possibly some rescues for real.
It is a really safe place to paddle as an introduction to white water, the rapids are about 100m long with loads of still eddies on either side and wide/shallow/slow moving area at the bottom.
Just the thing for 2013 Intro to Paddlesports 1-4 participants but may be worth honing your support strokes up at the pool, don't worry about a roll as it's often too shallow.
It's still fun for those of you with ww experience, with games such as dodge the hired open boat, pick up the contents of the capsized hire boat, un-pin the hire boat etc.
Meet at the club for a 08:30 departure (so if it's your first trip and you love to faff get there early! We'll unlock at about 7:45) and we should be back by 16:30/18:00 depending on fitness/enthusiasm/traffic levels.
Helpful if you can bring a car, preferable with roof rack. Most people can fit 2 or 3 boats on their car so we are limited by the number of spare roof rack spaces
Additionally it's the usual things to bring-
- Warm (when wet) clothes to paddle in
- Shoes to paddle in and walk back up to top of rapids (rocks are sharp and very slippery)
- Boat - one that is fairly short would be good especially if the top wave is any good and isn't too heavy to carry 100m back up the river
- Paddle
- Spraydeck
- Helmet
- Buoyancy Aid
- A hot drink and food - although there are plenty of pubs
- Water - not good to drink the river water if you are thirsty
- A towel big enough to protect your modesty whilst changing in a car park
- There are public toilets!
- Depending on conditions sunblock for uncovered bits and a jacket/warm clothes/shorts to get changed into post paddle
- Change for bridge/parking/launching see below-
Transport
Normally we share the cost of the fuel (it's between 52 and 65 miles depending on route and takes about 1:20), parking at Symonds Yat East- £4 for the car and £1.50 to launch each boat and £6.20 for the bridge trolls, so lots of change needed.
Jon
07966 156267
dpafilter@gmail.com