East Lynn January 2006
From ICCC
People
- Jim "Le Manns" Pullen
- Claire "Elbow Basher" Browne
- Patrick "Completionist" Clissold
- Chad "Insanity" Sankey
- Dave "Paddle-tying issues" Burne
Report
The plan was hatched - a one day Wednesday mini mission to the infamous East Lyn in North Devon.
The 5 of us headed back to Jim's house with the pre-packed landy to allow for a quick getaway in the morning. Allegedly Ralph would be joining us at 6:45, but (possibly unsurprisingly) an ultra last minute drop-out occurred involving a text at 5:30am concerning all-night parties. Dam hippies - can't be trusted...
We left relatively on time at around 7:15. The drive down took a fair while (sponsored by Red Bull TM) with Claire finally announcing her bladder was giving up when we got to Tiverton around 10:30. Unfortunately any form of toiletage seemed to be non-existent/shut, which resulted in her having to find a suitable bush (being male definitely has its advantages!)
We got to the river around 11:30 to discover low, but runnable levels. Jim's bike was deposited at the get out and we drove back up to the top and unloaded.
The first section was somewhat scrapping grade 3, that past without incident. We quickly arrived at the gorge and got out to inspect. A few ums and ahs were heard looking down at the rapids in "mini-vision" and the sensibility of using three inazones was mentioned. However, these fears proved to be completely unfounded.
The gorge was great fun, with every rapid being run by everyone and no swims or even rolls to report (although Claire managed to bash her elbow somewhere). Safety was needed on a couple of the more tricky drops, especially one near the start with a dodgy looking siphon to the left.
We finished the gorge and scraped down the remaining mile or so, with some walkers taking pictures of our comic rock-bashing. Patrick wanted to be a completionist, so we paddled into the sea, and attempted to surf some of the waves. This was somewhat hampered by pointy rocks on the shoreline.
We headed back to the car park, where Jim recovered his bike and peddled back uphill to collect the landy. As we were getting changed a familiar face appeared with his kayak - ginger Mark (again).
After loading up, we drove for a couple of hours to Swindon and called in on Theo. He fed us some (very) garlic bread, followed by lots of pizza with unusual toppings. Chad and Patrick decided to check if insanity sauce was a bad as we said - it was. We filled up the landy (a thirsty beast at ~£70 for a tank) and headed back to London. After driving to various houses to drop of kit, we finally left SK around 11pm.
Bit of a mission for 3km of paddling, but a class river and well worth it!
by Jim
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