The River Dove tour hosted by Burton Canoe Club followed a stretch of river from Aston Bridge near Sudbury to Claymills – a stretch of river only accessible to paddlers one weekend each year. Paddlers turned out in their masses for this trip, with 12 from HCC and many from other clubs, making for a very busy river. This was our first river trip and we were excited to get on the water.
The first 5 miles of river was relatively calm and gave us an opportunity to familiarise ourselves with moving water, which proved to be quite different from the swimming pool that we had spent all winter training in. En-route to the first weir, Mark collided with an open top canoe and nearly had to put his rolling skills to the test, but was luckily able to recover with a sneaky push off the shallow river bed.
We were greeted at the first weir by a large audience of lunch-eating paddlers watching as we each braved the chute. Setting up to hit the chute was probably the most difficult part and was only possible with the navigational hand of Dale who was helpfully positioned at the bottom of the weir to guide us down. Once in the chute, the slide down was easy! Gordon however decided that the chute was too tame for his liking, jumping off the side wall of the chute in extreme style. With confidence high at the bottom of the weir, Mark decided to play on the stopper. Confidence quickly transformed to fear as Mark was sucked in to the stopper, getting stuck and having to paddle frantically to get out.
After a refuel we continued downstream until reaching the second weir. This was a smaller weir with a large wave at the bottom. Following Dave’s advice of “PADDLE, PADDLE, PADDLE”, we successfully navigated the weir. Ian was less fortunate however and took a swim at the bottom. The final weir was easy after the first two and everyone managed to stay upright. A short paddle after this final weir we had reached the end of our 11 mile paddle and got out to stretch our aching backs!
At this point a special mention has to be made for Rob Harrison who managed to complete the trip without swimming once! Well done Rob.
Thanks are due to Dave and Richard for organising and transporting equipment for us and also Dave and Rob for buddying up with us and providing some coaching throughout the day. This was a very enjoyable trip!
Cheers, Mark & Ross