Tony Barrass
News of good weather reached us early on Monday :
The Environment Agency – has issued 64 flood watches and 25 flood warnings across Wales.
We checked the Environment Agencies advice to see what we should do:
ENVIRONMENT AGENCY ADVICE
- Ring Floodline on 0845 988 1188 for up-to-date information
- Tune in to weather and travel bulletins
- Keep a watch on the weather and water levels
- Tell family, friends and neighbours
- Drive carefully
- Grab your boat and nick off work if you want paddle first class whitewater
Encouraged by this good advice we planned a trip to the wettest spot in range and headed for the Afon Irfon near Llanwrtyd mid Wales.
We found the river in good shape confirmed by a level check and a look in the guide book.
- WATER LEVEL INDICATORS: The Irfon rises and falls very quickly but needs big rain to really make a difference. There is a pipe across the river @ GR877472 – if the water is more than 4ft below this, it’s probably too low to paddle. Touching the pipe and you’re in for a wild ride!
- GRADING: An easy 4 at low levels – a hard 4 (5) with lots of water.
Satisfied that the pipe was fully covered with water we set off for the get in.
The crew assembled for this run were Harvey ‘Headcase’ Lyons, ‘Ladyboy’ Leopold, myself and Nick ‘Kiwi’ Cleddon who was taking further advantage of our advanced beginners course.
We checked our safety equipment ,( Nick had kindly decided to buy his self a throwline for us to throw at him), and agreed that we had to try our best not to let Nick drown as our legal defence to justify him being on the water was at best weak.
The start of the run is through an open ‘moor like’ valley bottom. We decided on a 50 meter seal launch from the road as there was not lack of lubrication. The first few rapids were pretty impressive with plenty of power in the water and the correct lines essential. This river is normally characterised with flat bits between rapids – not today though, staying upright was a constant battle.
As the run progressed the river dropped into more of a n enclosed wooden valley and tree obstacles became a real concern. We knocked off about 4 hard rapids taking time to inspect each one with Nick joining in the fun on all but a few.
Not long after we reached a particularly nasty rapid just past a bridge. The line was fairly straight forward – paddle really fast river left – avoid the haystack wave in middle under the bridge (as there was only about a 4 inch gap between the top of it and bottom of the bridge) – hit the first stopped left avoiding being sucked right into a tree river right – hit the next hole hard – deal with the next 50m if waves / stoppers as you get to them.
I had decided to portage this on first inspection but once on the water with Harvey determined to try it I ended up running it – all over in a flash and not as hard as it looked was the conclusion although I shudder to think to about what a bad line would have meant.
Carrying on we knocked off a couple more big rapids and then lost control a bit. With the water in the trees and no eddies, (believe me we were looking), we ran a very large rapid blind with water thundering through and large trees and drops everywhere. I was a bit concerned to see Nick pinned with the phat vertically splatted on a large tree with 2/3 of the boat out of the water, (he was still in it). Fortunately he was washed free. I got down most of it but faced with a chunky tree branch low down my only option was to roll under it – not pleasant.
Carrying on, this problem repeated itself on the very next bend with desperate measures required to survive. Nick however seemed perfectly at home, rolling on grade 5 just seems to come easy to him, (thank god). The last thing we wanted to do was add a throwline to an already hairy situation.
Finally we reached the get out. Egress by paddling over the barbed wire fence on your left and onto the road !
Cold, wet and very happy we packed up to go. Unfortunately it was not going to be that easy – my car decided it could not swim and as I write is still in a garage in Llanwrtyd – just got to persuade the treasurer to stump up for the recovery charge.
Anyhow 3 hours in the pub waiting for the AA cheered us up, drinking with flooded out locals – highest level in 12 years and that’s official.
2 closed roads on the drive home – ducks in the center of Builth Wells. The bridge at Crickhowell we crossed on the way was no longer an option.
Bridge Inn at Crickhowell
Then home safe by midnight !
