Upper Wye, October 31st
[ Photos are here. ]
Kiwi ‘Jungle Boy’ Nick’s determination to paddle every godforsaken ditch in the UK led us to ‘pop up’ to Rhayader in Wales to run the Upper Wye.
Five of us met up at the docks and took the decision to use one car – it was going to be tight, but we managed to squeeze everybody in. The ‘pop up’ to Wales quickly began to stretch into a bit of a trek, and a whole series of ‘Are we there yets’ and ‘How much further is its’ started to ring out. When we did get there we couldn’t remember where the get out was, so we retired to a local café and awaited the arrival of Dom n Lisa and Jim n Jenny, who were driving separately.
After much tea, cakes and lashings of ginger beer, we finally found the get out and headed off to find the get in. More by luck than anything else we found a small bridge in the middle of nowhere, which sounded like the get in. A quick change (involving Martin’s stripy leggings dominating the local scenery, scaring small animals and attracting tourists from miles around) and we were ready for the off.
The river was pretty low and for a few early sections a bit of a bump and scrape – the major excitement was waiting to see who would hit the next hidden rock.
The first interesting section is a rock garden leading into a small drop called the Letter Box, which in higher water would have been easy to line up and run, but with a nasty hydraulic. In low water getting up any speed to hit the lip of the drop was a problem due to the number of rocks around, but after some careful manoeuvring (i.e. scraping) we all made it through.
Next up the river narrows and speeds up a bit through Glyn Gwy Gorge, which consists of a series of rocks to thread through, though in the low water there wasn’t much pace in the river.
A couple of drops followed this: Gamalt Falls was uneventful in the low water, but provided a mini playspot for the dedicated; Cwmcoed falls consisted of a gradual slide on river left, a stopper to punch through and a nice wave train to play on under the old railway bridge.
Town Falls is right at the end of the run next to the get out, and provided an interesting finish to the run, as it’s the biggest drop on the river. As with the rest of the run, though, it didn’t really live up to its reputation in the low water and didn’t claim any victims.
So far the drive up and finding the get out had been the trickiest parts of the day, but now we faced our most daunting challenge of the day: finding a pub in Wales still serving food at 5pm on a Sunday. It was a vain search, however, and we ended up in some back street kebab takeaway, where Nick ate possibly the largest burger ever seen – by far the most dangerous thing attempted that day.
Paddlers: Dom, Lisa, Jim, Jenny, Nick, Martin, Ernst, Andy and me.
John Kerswell