County Durham March 2009
From ICCC
People
- Rory "faceplant" Fyffe
- Zoe "swimmer" Huntley
- Will "snap" Eldred
- Holli "" Pritchard
- Tom "" Haywood
- Ant "under the table" Farrington
- Derek "tenacity" Wong
- Ally "outside" Cott
- Mark "bus-shrinker" Flower
- Lars "" Kjaer
- Bjorn "" Eriksson
- Rachel "poser" Fox
- Adam "muthaofallboofs" Holland
- Rob "Sleeper" Macrae
- Terry "chocohoarder" Chambers
- Jim "cider jenga" Pullen
- Ralph "not in front of the house" Evins
- Chad "hossina206" Sankey
- Tim "taxi driver" Burne
- Dave "pizza" Burne
- Niamh "shamefulambassadrofleeds" Stack
Trip Report
Friday
With minimal bus loading faff and a trip to Paddington surprisingly the bus made it to Jim’s house before midnight! While everyone else crammed into the house the lucky few managed to shotgun real beds.
Saturday
Claire escaped early in the morning to go on a camping trip with the girl guides, (the lesser of two evils?) leaving Jim in charge of not trashing the house. No water had fallen over the Pennines all week, and water levels were even lower than expected. After a quick look a Low Force, we decided not to bother getting changed just to fall off some wet rocks. At this point the exhaust fell off Jim’s car, after considering duck taping it back on we put it in the boot and drove off. All then missioned over to Cauldron Snout, the longest waterfall in England. It was a long walk in from the car park to the falls and even though the Burne brothers were the only people to even consider running this, the rest of us walked over hopeful of watching some good old fashioned carnage. Unfortunately the weather came in before Tim and Dave arrived, so all but a die-hard trio ran back to the bus through the horizontal rain.
Most headed to a pub for lunch, leaving the cutest-ever note for Ant, Rob and Will who were watching Team Burne wimp out... or decide "Not enough water to make it worthwhile" as they put it. Eventually all met up at the pub for lunch.
The Tees Barrage was next up, an artificial tidal course; it was guaranteed to have water in. It also had changing rooms with hot showers a definite bonus. Ralph and Tom decided not to put on because ‘real rivers don’t have curbs’, or maybe they were just lazy. Several comedy swims were had including OBEs from Mark and Rory and some broken paddles from Will, neatly followed by a broken-paddle roll. Rob chose to go to sleep in his car rather than boat with the rest of us, eventually getting on as night fell when everyone else got off while Zoe may have set a new club record by swimming further than she paddled all weekend.
We returned to Jim’s for some chilli, obeying instructions to keep wet kit out of the house. Lots of drinking continued into the small hours, including the celebration of Mark’s 50th trip, with card and cake. Happily none of Rob’s wine was spilt on the carpets.
Sunday
The house was cleaned as best we could, Mark doing sterling work with the Hoover. We phoned the gauge to discover it must have rained overnight and everything was high. Woohoo! We quickly changed plans from a low water scrape down the Wharfe to a trip up to the Wear. The 5 meter fall at the top was run by lots of us, and included a comedy line from Rory, an interesting landing from Adam and a stylish boof from Terry. The rest of the river was a nice grade 3 run which was paddled without any major incidents.
We loaded boats quickly and headed over to the Barnard Castle to Whorlton Lido section of the Tees, the weather getting gradually more bizarre was alternating between snowy blizzard and brilliant sunshine via hail. The river chocolate was then discovered in Terry’s car -- in spite of what everyone thought Rachel hadn’t eaten it all -- and there was plenty to go round. Paddling in the driving snow was quite surreal, and enjoyable if you were wearing enough thermals. Bjorn took a swim on the main rapid, otherwise the river was successfully paddled by all who didn’t wuss out to get hot chocolate. Some muppetry at the take out meant that some of us walked our boat half a mile in the wrong direction, before turning back and walking the other way to the road. Meanwhile Mark managed to fit the minibus backwards through a 6ft gap to pick us up.
After an excellent trip all vehicles set off for their respective parts of the country. Following some immense muppetry on Rachel’s part the bus took an extensive tour of East London (sorry folks) before arriving back at stores for 12:30.
Big thanks to Jim and Claire for letting us take over their house for the weekend. We all hope we didn’t get you into too much trouble Jim!
