2nd Wales Trip 2007
From ICCC
People
- Rachel "Megalomaniac" Fox
- Rory "Celibacy Hole" Fyffe
- Andy "Shiner" Turner
- Patrick "Velophile" Clissold
- Adam "Swimmer" Holland
- Tom "Advocaat" Haywood
- Robert "Mulled" Macrae
- Zoe "My Line!" Huntley
- Harry "Lie In" Wood
- Rik "Wuss Out" Williams
- Alice "I don't like the way that Andy always comes up with really long nicknames for people" Grogan
- Paula "Copping A Look" Volkmer
- Ralph "Missing You" Evins
- Ally "Actually Paddled" Cott
- Luca "The Chef" Frasson
- Leo "Game On" Horstmeyer
- Ali "The Tent" Matthews
- Tom "Not The Tent" Taylor
- Ivan "The Terrible" Hunter
Trip Report
Friday
Despite a super-early shopping mission at 3:30pm and a lightning-fast trip to Paddington stores, club faff meant we still didn’t leave the union before 7. The drive up went smoothly until we reached Wales, where parts of the A5 were being resurfaced, forcing us to take a silly diversion. At some point either due to sleepy navigators or Welsh stinginess of diversion signs we managed to end up on the diversion for people coming the other way. Sadly this was only realised when we arrived back to where we first turned off. Patrick sought directions allowing us to continue on our merry way.
We arrived at the hut around 1am, greeted by a brilliant sky full of stars. Having briefly acknowledged this celestial wonder, we went into the hut and drank until 5.30am.
Saturday
As implied by the title, there were many early morning missions this weekend. The first of these was to the Croesor by Patrick, Ralph and Adam. The plan was to walk along it and put on if the mood took; they were greeted by a dry ditch. This was no matter, since being close to the hut allowed them to get back quickly.
Unfortunately, the river levels were low again on Saturday, so the plan was to mission over to the Dee. Some people opted not to get on, but instead went for walks around the hut and Beddgelert. On returning from the early morning mission it was decided that everyone should be woken up by Ride of the Valkyries from Apocalypse Now which was rather surreal, however fitting as it had been played enthusiasticaly in the minibus on the trip up.
Annoyingly this weekend was also the Dee tour weekend, hence the Dee was very crowded. When we arrived a beardy weirdy came over asking us to buy tickets, Patrick and Paula politely pointed out our position on access policies and explained that we had enough safety of our own and would not require their services. We split in to groups and got on, Serpents tail claimed only one victim. Luca styled the whole rapid and tested his swimming technique right at the end. Everyone else paddled the rapid with ease, except Rik who opted to walk around since he wasn’t used to his new boat yet. At various point down the river we paused so that people could try their hand at playboating. At one of these I spotted Luca being chatted up by a pretty girl in the eddy ;-) We arrived at Town Falls to see Cambridge uni canoe club having issues as several of their freshers swam down the rapid, to be picked up by the safety people at the bottom. Rik decided to walk around again; everyone else decided to give it a go. Harry paused for a couple of circuits of a hole half way down, confusing Luca who was following his line. Zoe got the perfect line down the entire rapid and then swam right at the bottom. We got off the river feeling rather smug about our record low number of swims compared to Cambridge's carnage.
The returning masses were greeted by 12 litres of mulled wine cooked up by Robert and Andy. Needless to say, chilli (a particularly fine one), circle of death (with new fireman's-pole card) and peer pressure (of sambuca, advocaat and port) ensued. The highlight of these games was us convincing Tom H that he should down a significant portion of Advocaat. The topic of lewd acts with bicycles kept rearing its head throughout the evening, to the conclusion that there were far too many bits to get your bits trapped in.
Sunday
Sunday greeted a club first - at least in recent history - the intermediate early morning mission. We must find a more gnarly name for this in future. Two groups, the first comprising Andy, Rachel, Rory, Alice and Ally, the second comprising Paula, Robert, Ali, Tom and Ivan, trekked over to the Conwy, expecting reasonably high levels since it had been raining all Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, the gauge was on 2.
The A-Team's (cue music) run was largely uneventful, apart from Rory inspecting the bottom and being T-rescued by Rachel. We continued on reaching Bryn Bras Falls, Alice and Rory went down first. Andy, Rachel and Ally then went for it and rounding the last bend found Rory out of his boat waist deep in water, Rory claims this was not a swim but I'll let him tell his excuses if he so chooses. The B-Team paddled the section without incident, the intermediate morning mission was declared a resounding success, and will hopefully be repeated on further trips.
The A* team (Patrick, Ralph, Adam, Tom H) did the Colwyn as their proper, gnarly and hardcore morning mission (the way morning missions are supposed to be). In fact they did it twice. Patrick passed out in a drunken crumpled heap the night before, so had severe backache and couldn't paddle initially. Adam, Ralph and Tom did a first run down this cracking little river, which was in quite good levels (6 on the gauge). Lots of muppetry - Tom pinned about 5m from the put in, Adam pinned and had to be live-baited off, Ralph had a stupid roll and punched a rock, then hurt his shoulder putting his deck on and had to walk off, Adam swam under the bridge whilst leading. After a fairly leisurely first run we discovered it still wasn't that late. By this stage Patrick was feeling better, so he and Adam went for another quick blast down.
Only four people had not gone on a morning mission (the Z team?), and they certainly made the most of their lie in. We returned to the hut about noon, and found them only just cooking breakfast. So after a late brunch, we headed over to the Glaslyn. This was reasonably uneventful, with Luca managing a roll (well, pushing off the bottom, but he didn't swim) in the boulder garden. Andy managed to smack himself in the face with his paddles, causing a nice shiner to come up, and then managed to roll up into an enormous fallen tree - D'oh!
All took out above the gorge, and we wandered down to watch people in Jefes get munched by the breaker. The level was pretty high, and most people were deterred by seeing such a big creeker getting trashed. Patrick, Paula, Tom, Adam and Harry ran it, however, managing to style the breaker. Patrick's grin was almost as wide as his face.
The homebound journey was quick - although we had to battle through snow in Birmingham! The bus arrived back to Beit at 10.30pm and we all went home to bed. The End.
