Two days later we were off to the next river. I’m so bad for remembering names of rivers and so on, so the lovely river shown in these photos will be called the ‘Left Branch of the North Fork Little Upper’ until such time as someone tells me otherwise. It’s as likely to be the correct name as not.
At the put-in you can see that it’s the tail-end of winter…
Over the Easter week, The Man needed me to visit the company office in Oregon. The conversation went a little like this:
The Man: ‘I need you to visit the company office in Oregon.’
Me: ‘What? You want me to go to Boating Country, USA, in the middle of their spring kayaking season? At a time when I need to buy loads of gear? When the dollar is really weak? To a place where I have great boating buddies and the weather is nice?’
The Man: ‘Yeah, would that be possible?’
Me: ‘I don’t know; it’s a big ask…’
The Man: ‘I’d really appreciate it, and it would help push the company’s revenue over $1 billion this year.’
Me: ‘OK, I’ll do it, but on one condition, The Man… Only if I can take a week off when I’m there…’
Well, it’s been a few years coming but I’ve finally got myself a creekboat. Bigger than my creeking Disco. I concede, officially, that I’m getting old. I’m also getting tired of showing you guys how stuff can be run in small boats, only to have you remember nothing except that I surfed some hole on the way, but that’s by-the-by.
After years of adventures together, the Disco has decided to retire from international kayaking and has chosen to remain in Ireland in future.
Good times together on the Castro Laboreiro in Portugal:
The Disco announced its retirement after recently being inducted into the Mañana Mañana Boathouse of Fame with the accolade ‘Sexiest Boat Alive.’ Its final foreign trip, therefore, was Portugal in January. It intends to concentrate on the after-dinner speaking circuit.
In mid-February there was a UCDCC Safety and Rescue Weekend. The title kind of explains it all really – a UCD Canoe Club weekend where the emphasis was on safety and rescue. About a dozen elder lemons of the club, with qualifications up the wazoo, and approximately 16 of the up-and-coming lemons decamped to Wicklow for an intense two-day session of rope-work, scenarios, lectures, and the finest vats of Spaghetti Bolognese ever created.
The morning of the first day was given over to technical skills and kicked off at 10 AM. That is to say, 10 AM at the river in Clara Lara, not ~10 AM at the Texaco deli counter on your way to the Boathouse shure we’ll be grand, nobody will be there yet. Oh no, Benny runs a tight kayak.
Eoin, Sara, and Meabh, all ready for action…
After the briefing, there was a tutorial on defensive swimming, mercifully given by the people who had drysuits, accompanied with lots of rope throwing.
At the start of February, Daithi and the Cork Boys organised the annual snowboarding trip. This year it was to Verbier in Switzerland, chosen for its altitude. The theory being that the higher the resort is up a mountain, the more likely there is to be snow there.
And so it happened, as it was written.
Verbier is in the very south of the country, right up against the border with Italy. In fact as the crow flies it’s only about 50 miles from Val Sesia in Italy where we were boating the previous May.
The view of chocolate-box Switzerland from the door of our apartment building…
On the final boating day, Kate took some more photos of local flavour…
By now the rain had arrived, just as we were gearing up for the long drive back to Madrid (Ryanair don’t fly into Porto from Dublin that early in the year). Today’s river was the Tamega, the bottom section of which takes in the Beça as a tributary. We forgot that the Tamega is dam-release, and it wasn’t releasing this day.
Ferg and Kate team-talk…
From our new base in the town of Mondim, home of Rabiço and the Tamecanoes canoe club, we loaded up for the Rio Louredo.
Team Nordic-Westgarth had by this point left the building and we were down to just four. The Beardy Brits were also long gone. The club, en masse, loaned us their creekboats. Pete loads up Jorge’s van…
We had suspicions that there wasn’t enough water to be running low-volume steep creeks, but Pires was confident that either Louredo I or II would be running.
Andy and Jac headed off home in the direction of Curragower and the rest of us headed for the Rio Beça. Now this was a bit more like it. Rocks and water.
Pretty damn cold though, although nobody was complaining. We were just glad to get to run some river.
With some water finally arriving, this was a day of two rivers. Some of the team headed to do two sections of the Rio Vez…
Sadly, they neglected to take a camera with them, so the only photos are from the bridge at the put-in. I know what you’re thinking: Worst. Write-up. Ever.
Here’s Andy in his creeking OrbitFish…
Nothing much happened on New Year’s Day, as it doesn’t every year. This is mostly attributable to what happens on New Year’s Eve…
The boats of Simon and crew ended up in the town fountain after late night escapades on New Year’s Eve. They were still there in the morning…
Some of these gentlemen took the blame for that one: Theo, Rob, and Tom…
