Hello all,

After mainly surfing most of the summer, taking the kids out on slow
stuff, including, the annual Sunday Teifi Tour run a couple of weeks
back - the conditions fell just right this weekend for the first lads
only run of the year.

The upper Tawe, my favourite river. The perfect solution to dust off the

summer cobwebs.

We brought Matt along, one of the lads in the club, you know the type...

sixteen years old, damn fine freestyle paddler, loves the park and play
world - not really sure what to make of river running, finds it pretty
boring (to date!).

At first, the visual inspections seemed to be extracting a lot more than

fear from him - judging by the amount of time he seemed to be peering
from behind the shrubbery! But once on the river his eyes and smile
seemed to widen more and more the further we traveled. If adrenaline was

a bright orange colour flowing through the veins, he'd have been a
prefect match with his boat!

Its amazing how you dismiss the feeling of paddling over a horizon line
once you know the line really well. Evident by the amount of frantic
back paddling and scrambling into micro eddy's by those that don't.

All in all it was great day, perfect run, clean lines no swims and no
epics of any kind. Plus, I think we may have converted one of those
'park and play' types into real kayaking...

A good inspection is needed of the upper gorge, its beginning to look
messy, with fallen trees making river wide strainers in a couple of
places. If scrambling up steep leaf strewn river banks isn't your thing,

I would suggest starting below the upper gorge (grade 5), somewhere near

Craig y Nôs for a great grade 4 portage free run.

Careful! the Tawe fills (and drops) really quick, and turns into a
committed grade 5 in high water. A good guide is to look at the river as

it passes under the bridge on the road to Penwyllt (just a 100m off the
main road a mile short of Craig y Nôs).

If the river looks runable without scraping the bottom, then your on. If

no rocks are clearly visible downstream, then you're in for the ride of
your life. If you can't see rocks anywhere and water is fast and muddy,
don't go!

Plus, the WCA have done a great job in gaining access for this great
river. There have been loads of problems in the past with the locals and

fishing clubs. So please, respect the area and river banks, park
considerately and never paddle in fishing season. I suppose the same
applies to all rivers.

I'm still high on the adrenaline now, I love winter...

Steve - AVP

p.s. Whats your favourite river? The river you would choose to paddle,
if you only had one choice.

Steve wrote in message ...
After mainly surfing most of the summer

We're still pretty much waiting up here in Scotland, though EKC did
luck out on a a higer than expected trip down The Etive at the
beginning of the month:

http://www.edinburghkayak.com/gallery/etive03/

p.s. Whats your favourite river? The river you would choose to paddle,
if you only had one choice.

The Guil, before the floods.
UK, The Roy (or maybe the Gloy)

In message
(Charlie) wrote:

Steve wrote in message ...
After mainly surfing most of the summer

We're still pretty much waiting up here in Scotland, though EKC did
luck out on a a higer than expected trip down The Etive at the
beginning of the month:

http://www.edinburghkayak.com/gallery/etive03/

We've cancelled three trips so far this year, because of lack of water in
the rivers we had intended to paddle.


p.s. Whats your favourite river? The river you would choose to paddle,
if you only had one choice.

The Guil, before the floods.
UK, The Roy (or maybe the Gloy)

The Ubaye - with a stretch to suit almost anyone
UK - Upper Dart (but then I haven't paddled Scotland).

--
Alan Adams

http://www.nckc.org.uk/

Charlie,
Really interesting to see your local rivers. Am involved in WW kayaking in
Nova Scotia (Canada, eh.).
They seem steep and narrow from your photos.
Mike in Lunenburg, NS

"Charlie" wrote in message
om...
Steve wrote in message
...
After mainly surfing most of the summer

We're still pretty much waiting up here in Scotland, though EKC did
luck out on a a higer than expected trip down The Etive at the
beginning of the month:

http://www.edinburghkayak.com/gallery/etive03/

p.s. Whats your favourite river? The river you would choose to paddle,
if you only had one choice.

The Guil, before the floods.
UK, The Roy (or maybe the Gloy)

"Mike Taylor" wrote in message ...
Really interesting to see your local rivers. Am involved in WW kayaking in
Nova Scotia (Canada, eh.).
They seem steep and narrow from your photos.

Scotland's geography (i.e. it isn't really a big enough country)
doesn't create any serious big water runs, though The Etive is
probably not representative either, being at the steep and narrow end
of the spectrum.

There are a few 'bigger' water runs. The Orchy, a classic collection
of III-V pool drop rapids peaks at around 100m3/s. The Tay carries up
to 1000m3/s on paddled sections but is greade II/III (excluding
Campsie Linn maybe?). And these flows are probably peakish, not
regular levels.

100m3/s == 3500cfs I think.

Charlie wrote:

Scotland's geography (i.e. it isn't really a big enough country)
doesn't create any serious big water runs

But some of the tidal flows around the islands on the west coast can
make for fairly festive paddling! ;-)

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Peter Clinch wrote:
Charlie wrote:

Scotland's geography (i.e. it isn't really a big enough country)
doesn't create any serious big water runs

But some of the tidal flows around the islands on the west coast can
make for fairly festive paddling! ;-)

A apologise for my alluviacentric viewpoint.

I guess the flow rates through the Grey Dogs and Corryvreckan, not to
mention Lora, would put them up amongst the world's big water paddles.
Maybe?

Charlie wrote:

I guess the flow rates through the Grey Dogs and Corryvreckan, not to
mention Lora, would put them up amongst the world's big water paddles.
Maybe?

Depends on what your definitions are and what you're looking for... In
terms of sheer volumes of moving water you'd be hard pushed to beat the
big tidal streams, but even the small constrictions they're passing
through are pretty big compared to what's common in rivers so they're
relatively flat if you're thinking of size in the Z dimension (I'm
thinking turbulence size rather than physical drop, which will obviously
be small).

I think (ICBW) you get about 12 knots through the quick ones, and that's
over a front a good 100m+ wide and deeper than your typical white water,
so that's *vastly* more than the Tay will ever manage and that has the
highest discharge of any UK river.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Hey Charlie, where did you get that flow data? I know the Tay is wide
and deep, but 1000cumecs seems too much to me. I've paddled a lot of big
volume rivers and I'm sure the tay wasn't one of them

To put it in context 1000cumecs is around 38000cfs - that's the sort of
volume you might see in the salmon or snake or colorado.

I'm not saying it's impossible so close to the sea, just wondering where
the info came from?

JIM

Charlie wrote:
"Mike Taylor" wrote in message ...

Really interesting to see your local rivers. Am involved in WW kayaking in
Nova Scotia (Canada, eh.).
They seem steep and narrow from your photos.


Scotland's geography (i.e. it isn't really a big enough country)
doesn't create any serious big water runs, though The Etive is
probably not representative either, being at the steep and narrow end
of the spectrum.

There are a few 'bigger' water runs. The Orchy, a classic collection
of III-V pool drop rapids peaks at around 100m3/s. The Tay carries up
to 1000m3/s on paddled sections but is greade II/III (excluding
Campsie Linn maybe?). And these flows are probably peakish, not
regular levels.

100m3/s == 3500cfs I think.

Jim Wallis wrote in message news:08egqb.opv.ln@Eskdale...
Hey Charlie, where did you get that flow data? I know the Tay is wide
and deep, but 1000cumecs seems too much to me. I've paddled a lot of big
volume rivers and I'm sure the tay wasn't one of them

Good old SEPA.

http://www.sepa.org.uk/data/river_le...k.asp?id=15006

It has exceeded 1000cumecs on a couple of occasions, though not very
often. If you look carefully there's one spike at over 1500cumecs.

To put it in context 1000cumecs is around 38000cfs - that's the sort of
volume you might see in the salmon or snake or colorado.

1000cumecs is 35,300cfs but then that's peak. The Colorado in the
Grand Canyon has a suggest maximum paddling flow (AWA) of 100000cfs
and I guess it goes a lot higher than that, and that's with dams
holding it back.

And at the opposite end of the water level spectrum, a wee trib o'The
Etive...

http://www.urchaidh.com/gallery/madsun/