South Wales March 2007
From ICCC
The Stars
- Rob "Taxi Driver" Tuley
- Patrick "Waterproof Arse" Clissold
- Theo "Did Anyone Bring A Spare Helmet?" Petre
- Ralph "Actually Made It On A Hardcore Mission" Evins
+ the cameos'
- Tim "No Rain In North Wales, Shall We Bother?" Burne
- Dave "Apparently Got A Beating" Fairweather
Trip Report
The rain was forecast to sweep eastwards over Wales at around 9am, peaking at around 12. So Patrick and I learned looking at the BBC forecast at 6:30am, while waiting for Rob (expected at 6:00, arrived at 7:00; next time we'll help load boats). When we got to South Wales at around 10:30, having picked up Theo in Swindon, we found it to be raining hard, and looking like it had for some time. We got there and decided that the Nedd Fechanwould be a good choice. We phoned Tim and Dave, who were supposed to meet us there, but they were late, and we decided not to wait.
The Nedd Fechan was good, with a double portage almost straight away around two big falls landing on slabs, then a three drop rapid called Horse Show Falls. At this level the slab by the last drop made the second one into a nasty slot on the right. Theo, Ralph and Rob all ended up too far right, got flipped, and ran the third drop on their heads. Patrick learnt from watching them fail and went far left. Some more fun rapids brought us to another three feature sequence, the first easy, the second easy if boofed, and the third having a nasty slot on the right and an even nastier slot-into-rock on the left, requiring a rock slide down the middle. All managed fine except Theo, who was fractionally too far right so fell sideways into the slot with the bow pointing at the sky. He disappeared for fully 5 seconds before surfacing downstream at exactly the same angle. The final drop was a ledge that tapered to a point on the right. The middle was a bit sticky, so all made the stick-to-the-right line.
A few more bouncy rapids and we found the confluence for a tributary called the Afon Pyrddin. We walked up it for a while, and found a few nice rapids, preceded by a 10m fall, again onto a slab, with a flatter section above. So we paddled the rapids on the way down. The first was a drop with a sticky bit middle-left and a rock offering an unlikely but terminal pin on far right; Rob and Patrick boofed right, next to the rock. Theo went down the break in the middle but got pushed right along the stopper, which luckily wasn't as bad as it looked. Ralph nailed the middle line. Back on the Nedd Fechan, a bouncy final section got us to the takeout. Rob and Patrick walked back up for the car, meeting Tim and Dave near the top.
We decided the Tawe would be our next river. Patrick was talking about running the upper, graded at 4+ in medium flows, 5+ in high flows. It had been raining hard all day, and now began raining even harder. We got to the Tawe about 3:00, and drove up to the put in for the upper. It was absolutely stonking; "off it's tits", as Patrick put it. There were white streaks down the hillsides every hundred metres as the water poured into the river. We drove on up the upper upper, normally an easy bimble. You could have counted the eddies we saw on the fingers of one hand. It looked very tempting - a complete blast down off the moor. We got out of the car, but discovered it was blowing a gale, driving the rain horizontally, and promptly got back in the car. The normal upper was clearly out of the question, so we went back to part way down the middle section, where the fun bit starts. Looking back upstream, the II/III section looked to be lots of mammouth standing waves. The river was actually a pinkish brown by this time, completely full of sediment. We ummed and ahhed, and chatted to a group who had come down the II/III section before getting off as their beginners had clearly swum lots and were looking hypothermic in a bivvy bag. We went back to the car intending to find a nice easy run in the guide book as it was now getting quite late. However, we failed to unfold the map well enough to see where we were, so decided to get on anyway.
The first half mile passed in a blur. Every eddy, maybe every 200m, was in the trees. The grass was more than a foot underwater. Big pushy standing waves abounded, with the occasional hole to skirt at the last minute. This was supposed to be the easy lead-in. We eddied out twice in about 1km, which took about 5 minutes. We then decided that this was a bit silly, as we couldn't really see the next eddy, and if the first person saw something nasty, no one else would be able to stop. So Rob and Ralph walked down a few hundred metres below the next road bridge, and found the first major drop, normally a huge slide, bouncing around on the slab. Instead, we found a very steep rapid with this amazingly high flow forming a series of three huge holes. The first one could possibly have been skirted on the left; the second one could possibly have been boofed. The third was off the scale. River wide (more than 10m), the pile was approximately half a boat length HIGH. It was more like 2 boat lengths deep. Truly the hole from hell. So we went back to get the others, and eddied out below the bridge. Then we all walked down to look at the next drop. The second smaller slide looked fine, with only a kicker wave at the bottom. Next was the waterfall, usually a few metres wide in a slot over on the left. you can walk around on the slab at the top, which might have a few centimetres flowing over it. Today you couldn't see the slot. The fall was completely river-wide. It looked runnable, probably, if you boofed far right, practically into the eddy.
We went back up to get the boats, to portage the heinous slide and carry on down, but in the field by the bridge we noticed a farmer with 6 big dogs. We had previously noticed signs saying private, but as there was also a footpath sign, and a footpath, we'd carried on. Turns out it was private, so we had no way to portage the slide without fighting off a pack of dogs. Oh well. Rob and Patrick went back for the car, and while we were loading up we met a much nicer local landowner who was also a paddler, politely informing us it was out of season, but that paddlers were welcome to use her garden as a takeout. Very nice. We made it on our way by 6:00, and missioned all the way back to Swindon for supper at Theo's. We made it back to London in time to drop Patrick home (to do laundry - wft?) then to the Hereford Arms in time for last orders. We found that Anne's impromptu birthday party had turned into a full-on club social. Got chucked out at 11, went and unloaded the boats, and made it to bed by midnight - nice one.
