Sometime before light on Thursday 19th October 2006, that damn annoying alarm rattles off. After the snooze button was pressed numerous times, the realisation of the rain hammering down outside and the conversations with Sam and Kiwi Nick the day before appears in my head, if a little blurry!!!
Where’s Sam? He should be here as we have to be at Newbridge car park for 07:30 to meet Nick.
After locating him (he had been doing the nightshift at work), we pumped ourselves with coffee, and stopped for a redbull fill/hit.
We arrived bang on time, albeit slightly caffeine-fuelled hyper active.
The river level was way over the slab at Newbridge. Excellent, first paddle of the season, warm water (well, as warm as it gets over the season), sun coming out (or was it coming up?). A superb level and best of all, no one else on the river. We had the whole river to ourselves, bonus!
On we jump and paddled off for 2 ½ hours of pure fun.We were shakey at first getting back into our whitewater boats but after 30mins of larking about we were soon keyed in.
All the play spots were working nicely; there were some bouncing wave trains, a few interesting holes formed and no scraping.
We all had some rolling practise which was a good thing this early on in the season especially as the water was warm.
When we reached Little Islands (Pandora’s Box, or Surprise Surprise to others) Sam and Nick took the ‘alternative’ route down right of the island.
I have never paddled that side so after taking the photos I went up but couldn’t bring myself to do it as the main drop was too inviting and I didn’t want to ‘wimp’ out of it!(Still a grade 4 though)!
That done, we paddled out down to Newbridge and played the top wave for ½ an hour.
A couple of commercial groups got on so we got off and walked up to the car park, which was starting to fill up with other local boaters.
A quick shuttle and a stop off for late breakfast, before heading into work and working late! Me thinks we shall be doing this way more often!
Sam strutting his stuff on play wave at Newbridge
Dave Merrifield, 19th October 2006.
