Skip to content

River dart report

RSS Feed Subscribe to feed

« Show message list

REPLYDoug - 12 December 2013 22:39:20

Hello everyone, 

 

First of I would like to say what a fantastic weekend it was, i think everyone will agree that the hostel where we stayed was very good, as well as the weather and the paddle. First thing to say is the river was extremely low, other paddlers who have paddled the river before have said how different the river is in higher water. Despite this, on the Saturday pretty much everyone paddled the loop and a bit Further down river.

Going onto "Zaf's weir" as I’m going to call if, where he was laughed at by families on the side of the river for getting stuck on the edge of the drop. And further down to the railway station. I will say, for a first time paddling the river, it was still a fantastic paddle, even though it was more of a scrape, than a paddle. Never the less, still a fantastic paddle. 

After being out on the water for almost all day, we returned back to the hostel, which again i must say was very good, a warm, good sized hostel with a good kitchen where Sue, Norman, Zaf, Gemma and Dan where able to cook us a fantastic dinner. With a huge spread of vegetable and chickpea curry, beef with chestnuts, coq au vin and then a lovely dessert of Christmas crumble and bread & butter pudding.  We then played secret Santa, where a lot of good prizes were won, including a hip flask with whisky, boom boom bats and my personal favorite, which i ended up taking home, a mankini. 

At least we ended` up seeing our chairman wear the mankini first. We then all had a very pleasant night a good amount of sleep and woke up for another day on the river dart. At the start of the day the weather was very good, being clear and the sun trying to come out. We had a few less paddles on the Sunday as some people had to leave early that day. But as before the paddlers such as my self wanted to paddle the river so we ended up in doing so. And the other people who were still at the hostel went for a nice walk. 

0 0 1 422 2409 mg promotions 20 5 2826 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-GB JA X-NONE

The river level was still the same on the Sunday as the Saturday, very bumpy but as before we still paddled, but this time only doing the loop. Me and Jordan were put in charge of leading the group which was very good fun and good practice, but we all ended up at the end of the paddle safe which was the best thing. But I think Jason and David Yates came out of there boats 1 foot shorter, after myself, Jordan, David Yates and James all went on the "large" seal launch. Jordan’s launch was very good, entering the water like a pencil, mine was okay, James’s was fine but David managed to land perfectly flat. Which the noise was probably heard valleys away, Jason landed his boat side ways into the water, also making quite a load noise and then capsizing, but then rolled back up. We then had a very good paddle down river to the end of the loop and to the end of a fantastic weekend and paddle. 

 

REPLYZaf - 13 December 2013 00:01:02

:) cheers DH. 

Clear & concise.

One addition. The helping hand which avoided a swim. The recipient will remain nameless.but can be seen in Trevs vid. Nice move:)

REPLYDougie - 13 December 2013 19:51:27

Cheers zaf :)

REPLYDave Yates - 13 December 2013 20:25:49

Nice blog Doug,ye think im an inch shorter after that launch! Thank's to everyone who made the weekend possible grt time!!

Website hosting kindly sponsored by EC Plus