North Wales 5 th June 2005

The major downside of the day was the start time. Because of some of the freshers taking part in a safety course, we had to leave uni at 0630 on Sunday morning, in order to be ready to drop them off at Canolfan Tryweryn for their course to start at 9. We did not quite manage to leave at the desired time, cos someone struggled to get out of bed, after deciding to stay out on Broad Street drinking until gone 0400! Needless to say Jethro was not looking in a good state.
After dropping the freshers off, Martyn, Jethro and I headed off to the Aberglaslyn gorge, for a spot of proper paddling in warm up for the Alps. On arrival, the water level was low, but it definitely looked runnable, so we got changed, and launched. Jethro started as he meant to carry on by getting pinned on his seal launch, much to the amusement of Martyn and myself.

We set off, with Jethro not looking, or paddling, particularly well. All was going well until Jethro managed to capsize and then struggle to roll back up. None of us can offer any explanation for his capsize. A minute or two later, Jethro is over again, rolling back up on his third or fourth attempt. His excuse was he got caught in a stopper, and went over. Now, Jethro 'ointed out the 'stopper', so both Martyn and I thought we would see how sticky it was. It wasn't. In fact, it wasn't much more that a ripple in the water. Conclusion: Jethro is still drunk!

Now, Jethro decides to up the anti on his next capsize, by going over a few metres above the breaker. Cue me and Martyn being concerned that that is not the most ideal place to be upside down, but both thinking he will roll before the breaker. Roll attempt 1 - fails. Roll attempt 2 - fails. He is now right above the breaker, but has managed to get himself over to river right, which is the line we had decided to run, but he is still upside down. As we watch Jethro go over the drop, we see what appears to be part of a cartwheel, but we conclude that, as Jethro is not in control, that it doesn't count. Much to our relief, Jethro manages to successfully roll up in the flat(ish) water at the bottom of the drop.

The rest of the run was uneventful, so we got out, walked back up, and started to get back in our boats when Becky Holder turns up. We had arranged with her to meet for a paddle, and said that we would let her know what the water level was like before she gets to the gorge, but we had no phone signal to communicate with her. After a very quick change, she joins us on the water for her first descent of the gorge. This time Jethro decided to see what it was like to run the drops the right way up, and managed to get all the way down without capsizing. After getting out, we start to walk up the interesting path on river left. This starts off OK, but does get quite interesting in places.

Back at the top, we had our first encounter with the water Bailiffs. Yes, they really do exist! They showed us a print out from the Welsh Canoe Association website which stated the dates of the access agreement for paddling the river. The agreement states that we are allowed to paddle between 18th October and 1st April. As it was June, and we knew full well we weren't supposed to be paddling it, we played dumb, said OK and got off.

We still had some time to kill before we had to pick up the freshers, so we stopped off a Pont Cyfyng on the Llugwy for a look. After deciding that it did look runnable at the current level, myself and Martyn decided to paddle it, for the second time in 7 months. This time, however, we thought that it might be a good plan to inspect the run in to the drops as well as the drops themselves. With Becky and Jethro providing safety cover at the bottom of the second drop, we set off. Again, the run in proved harder than it looked, and the stopper just above the first fall was much bigger than we thought it was from looking down from the road above, as Martyn found out. Sitting at the top, and having checked that safety was in position, a quick spoof decided that Martyn as going first. He made it successfully, so off I went. That fall also felt bigger than it looked both from the road some distance above, and from sitting in the eddy above, but we both made it down successfully. I took the lead down the second drop, and hit a rock at the bottom somewhere, before getting to the eddy, and waiting for Martyn to come down. Martyn made it down OK, but then seemed to struggle in getting to the eddy. We both got out, clambered up and over the rocks, before getting ready for the seal launch back in below the third drop. I think that we spent more time setting up for this than we took to run both the drops above, as it is not a particularly easy spot to launch from. We made it successfully, and headed back to the bus. Becky departed at this stage, muttering something about her setting off for a free lunch.

On the way back through Betws-y- Coed, we noticed what looked like an interesting piece of water, so Martyn got out his guide book to find out more. We decided that it must have been miners bridge rapid, and Martyn was reading the description when he announced that it was only a grade 5, and that it should be runnable then. A couple of minutes later, Martyn suddenly asks if the roman numeral VI means five or six? We inform him that it means six, to which he replies "Maybe miners bridge is not paddleable then" !!!! Never trust Martyn to read a guidebook and pass on the information within it!!! It could have been interesting!!