Dragon Weekend
As part of a long held annual Gucc tradition (started last year), we had a nice little trip to Wales for a paddle at the National white water centre, Canolfan Tryweryn. Unfortunately it would seem that the environment agency think that stopping people’s houses getting flooded and making sure they have water to drink is more important than kayaking so there was no dam release on the Tryweryn on Sunday and we had to paddle the Dee.
Anyway the minibus left Glasgow on Friday at some point and began the very long drive south, I was not on it as I was already in Wales, which was good as six hour bus trips are shit. The bus arrived at a campsite which had already told us we weren’t welcome but then let us in anyway because they were nice, not like the bastards at Ty’n Cornel campsite last year. On Saturday morning we arrived at Canolfan Tryweryn to find they have introduced parking charges, an outrage. A few of us, along with some pikey from Bath uni, had a quick blast down the top section before meeting up with everyone else to paddle the section from the centre down to Bala. This is a very nice little jaunt mainly grade two with the odd grade three most of the way down. We only had one swim, which is so unusual on club trips as to be almost spooky. At the end of this section is Bala Mill falls, a nice (only just) grade four. Only Louise was man enough to paddle the leet at this point with everyone else taking the easy option of running the falls. Louise did well making up for her swim at this point last year and everyone survived despite Fraser almost running it upside down.
In the afternoon everyone got on and ran the international section, a fun and short 3+/4-. No swims occurred and all was well, we even survived the rafts. After a walk back up to run it again we headed back to the campsite and then out to sample the nightlife of Bala. The night life of Bala was so good that we were back at the campsite by 10p.m.
On Sunday we drove over to Llangollen to paddle the Dee. They charge you to paddle the Dee, which is a joke and makes me ashamed to be Welsh. We got on above Serpent’s Tail where we had the odd swimmer but nothing major before heading on down to have a play at the slalom site by the old mill. The river didn’t really have all that much water in it but it was fun enough. After this everyone else had a really long drive home, I didn’t.
