Fraser ‘Fragle’ Watson organised a trip to the Lower Tryweryn with a view to improve the paddling skills of a group of club-members interested in doing their 3-star assessment in the near future. Dale Clarke offered to lead the trip, and the trip was also opened to any other club members with sufficient paddling skill to paddle the river without leadership. A good group of 8 of us finally arrived to paddle.
An early start had all of us at the get-on at the cafe for 09h30. We kitted up and walked down to the river bank. Not far down the river, a number of us had a go at playing on a small wave, where I had a quick swim. The cold water was pretty invigorating and helped wake me up. I was pretty glad to see Nick Topley bobbing down the river while I was getting back into my boat. He shouted some words of encouragement and I rejoined the group to practice my roll. Clearly, a good few of us started out a bit tentatively and held off getting too adventurous for a while. Commitment is everything!
As we progressed further down the river, Dale chose a few good spots for us to practice our ferry-gliding and confidence seemed to grow. A few of us attempted ferry-gliding while facing downstream, and we started playing a bit more on a few waves. Some advice was offered by some of the more experienced paddlers and I think we all felt that we were getting a lot out of the trip already.
Some of the rockier sections of the river proved interesting and Dale encouraged us to seek out our own lines, which got us trying to read the water. This is something I definitely need to work at. I had a particularly bad line down one stretch that had me bouncing off nearly every rock on route! After that bumpy journey, I found myself much more tuned to look for pillows and rooster-tails in the water. An unfortunate sharp left turn had Dave Carrington pinned between two rocks and directly in my line. I attempted to change my line a little too late and found myself pinned on top of him and hugging a rock. I pulled myself around but found that I had to swim to get out of the situation without crunching Dave’s face any more than I already had. The lesson learned here was that you need a bit more space between you as you move down the river or you can rapidly make a situation worse than it needs to be.
When we finally got down to Bala Mill falls, a number of us were emboldened by our previous success and felt ready to run the falls. We went up to inspect the water from the shoreline and a few of us committed to doing the run. I found myself undecided during the entire walk back to our boats. Everyone kept reminding me that I could take the chicken chute proudly knowing that I had done an excellent paddle for the day. I got the “there is no peer-pressure” speech from Dale and Neil Smith, but Elliott Clarke was pretty quick to let me know how much of a chicken I was. Good on Elliott and the subtle nudges I was getting from everyone. I finally gave in and climbed into my boat. My gut was a tight ball and my mouth had started to dry out. I knew that the falls would always look frightening until I mustered the courage to actually try to paddle them. So I did. The run seemed fast and and I felt like there was not a lot of time to think about what you are doing. You have to choose your line quickly and react to the bumps and kicks almost reflexively. And then it was over. I was at the bottom. I held my paddle above my head and whooped. The adrenaline continued to pump around my veins for a long while after.
Special thanks to Dale for leading and to Fraser for organizing. Thanks also to Rob Harrison and Neil Smith for the car share and all the encouragement and pep talks on the way. And also to all my paddling buddies who came on a really relaxed and fun river trip and offered such good support.
I think the Lower Tryweryn is now my favourite paddling spot.
Here’s Frasers vid of the day.
Ro Puttergill