A little run down of happenings

It's been a long time since my last message so this is gonna be a bit scrambled as much has happened since my last post.

There has been 4 trips to the alps all of which went really well and were generally wicked days of from "work."

Also in the alps I took a week off to meet up with the aber guys and had a chilled week with lots of faf as there always is with uni groups. I finished the week by dropping a clanger as I decided to solo the Ubaye gorge which is a steady pushy grade 4 with sections of 5. Towards the end above lion's den one of the major rapids i capsized and got pinned under a rather sharp rock. I was forced to ditch my blades push off the rocks with my hands and then after hand rolling up chaced my paddles down towards the lions den consequently running it blind which was not part of the plan at all. But all was well and no one died which is the main thing in these matters.

There has been lots of evening expeditions to find climbable crags localy and general sillyness with bikes.

Today I took a couple of guys up to lyon for a blast on Hawai sur Rhone and a blast it was. The wave was running on 1200 cummecs which is rediculasly big. The wave a 15 foot drop in ramp and the wave was a huge green ramp almost exactly the same height. The only problem was the equally huge hole behind it. Many big moves were thrown by myself. Simon and nathon who had never been on a river wave big enough to bounce and both had rather ropey rolls were loving it to until simon got spanked in the boils and wurlys behind the main wave. Then on the next run after fishing him out nathan broke a brand new set of blades just bouncing on the wave.

So they are the major thing that I have been up to over the last few weeks.

There are many more things that have happened over the first bit of summer but I save thoughs for a sunny evening with a chilled beer where ever I see you all next.

I am going to sleep as my back hurts from bouncing around the wave and landing sick moves. Fingers crossed pics will follow.

Bonjour! From sunny france

On the 27th of march myself and Cat started our rather random journey south wards with the aim of arriving at the Ardeche on the 8th of april ready to start work the following day.
Our first problem came soon after leaving the the home land of Wales when a massive crash had closed the M4 (I think it was. I was following sally satnav) No problem set the satnav around the closed section, easy, till we came across a head on smash between 2 wagons on the major route everyone took around the crash.
Nuts to it we thought, phoned the ferry company and told them the refrence number we had been given only problem was that the refrence wasn't for a ferry till june many confused conversations later we were booked on to a ferry leaving 3 hours later than the origonal going to be late and they moved us to a ferry 3 hours later.
When we arrived in France our first stop was Fontainebleau a lovely forest full of Sandstone bolders and one of Frances most popular climbing areas. We met up with some cool guys from Inverness, who showed us how a few things were done and I pleasently suprised by myself as i slithered up some hard routes than I was expecting. 4 days of finger/arm abuse and it was time to head south again for some paddling.
We arrived at Lyon in the dead of Night and by a miracle of satnav and my memory of random French bridges we found the wave on our first pass. Lyon was wonderful as usual but unforts there was 10 whole people for shefield Uni who soon made themselves un-popular by make the dreded que from 11 till 6 nearly everyday. Luckily we made friend with Simon and Seppi Strohmirre (spelt terribly) and Xaviou from gemany. Which helped us a stay reasonable sain by playing on slack lines and generally having a laugh. 6 days of german and chez humour and we were ready to head south as water levels dropped for easter weekend. Think we had a days driving at the least we set up the sat nav and headed off.........
2 hours later we arrived a day early at are lovely piece of sunny southern France. A day early the managers were suprised but very welcoming. Everyone else arrives later today and I will keep you posted on my sanity levels.
So there you have it a very boring account 980 miles and a good bit of fun.
Have a good summer guys and I will see you soon.
Keep smiling and keep paddling.

Bonjour! From sunny france

On the 27th of march myself and Cat started our rather random journey south wards with the aim of arriving at the Ardeche on the 8th of april ready to start work the following day.
Our first problem came soon after leaving the the home land of Wales when a massive crash had closed the M4 (I think it was. I was following sally satnav) No problem set the satnav around the closed section, easy, till we came across a head on smash between 2 wagons on the major route everyone took around the crash.
Nuts to it we thought, phoned the ferry company and told them the refrence number we had been given only problem was that the refrence wasn't for a ferry till june many confused conversations later we were booked on to a ferry leaving 3 hours later than the origonal going to be late and they moved us to a ferry 3 hours later.
When we arrived in France our first stop was Fontainebleau a lovely forest full of Sandstone bolders and one of Frances most popular climbing areas. We met up with some cool guys from Inverness, who showed us how a few things were done and I pleasently suprised by myself as i slithered up some hard routes than I was expecting. 4 days of finger/arm abuse and it was time to head south again for some paddling.
We arrived at Lyon in the dead of Night and by a miracle of satnav and my memory of random French bridges we found the wave on our first pass. Lyon was wonderful as usual but unforts there was 10 whole people for shefield Uni who soon made themselves un-popular by make the dreded que from 11 till 6 nearly everyday. Luckily we made friend with Simon and Seppi Strohmirre (spelt terribly) and Xaviou from gemany. Which helped us a stay reasonable sain by playing on slack lines and generally having a laugh. 6 days of german and chez humour and we were ready to head south as water levels dropped for easter weekend. Think we had a days driving at the least we set up the sat nav and headed off.........
2 hours later we arrived a day early at are lovely piece of sunny southern France. A day early the managers were suprised but very welcoming. Everyone else arrives later today and I will keep you posted on my sanity levels.
So there you have it a very boring account 980 miles and a good bit of fun.
Have a good summer guys and I will see you soon.
Keep smiling and keep paddling.

NSR 9th and 10th March

HPP was the site of the National Student Rodeo March 2007. Not being a student I went along to meet up with friends for the last time before I go to the Ardeche for the summer (work). Allot of fun was to be had weather on the water, in the party or just watching the carnage.
I thought it brilliant to see people making a big effort to run the event or to competing and wish more of these awesome people would come to the freestyle events around the country as it would take the events back to there origin of fun based events where swimmers were as common as big moves.
To the guys from Aber Uni thanks for another awesome weekend and I will see you in the land of frogs legs and bererts.

Photos are at www.letsgetwet.com

Keep paddling, Keep smiling guys.

Big waves, sliding vans and a whole lot of laughs

(one of the "smaller" waves)

Sunday 25th February saw my second trip this year to find big surf due to a lack of water in the rivers. Once again I dragged fellow boater Rick Foster out of his pit at an ungodly hour of the day and feeling a little worse for the night before we set off with the predictions promising a minimum of 7-9 feet of clean swell.
We arrived to the car park at Hells Mouth, full of surfers bumming out in their vans. Expecting that we had missed the best of the surf again we hobbled down to the beach to find roughly 14 foot of surf dumping on the beach in sets of 4. After about 20 minutes of hardcore tea drinking we decided to follow some others to a remote beach that was “more sheltered.”
That is where it started to go wrong! The roads got worse and worse until we were simply rallying though fields and mud filled ditches. My vehicle is a light ended rear wheel drive van which doesn’t really do anything but tarmac and we were soon doing about 5 MPH in third rearranging most of the Llyn peninsular. With Rick holding on for dear life and screaming like a baby every time we went near the cliff edge, I did my best to keep control of the van as it slithered around in the mud like Bambi walking on ice. After 10 minutes of muddy toil we reach our destination.
A super clean average of 12-foot waves barrelling perfectly greeted us. I managed to time my sprint to the backwater perfectly and made it out the back with just one near miss. The others we not so fortunate and 4 beatings followed with one swimmer. Once out back I started picking my waves and quickly became aware of the shear scale of some of the waves. Rick later said “that on one wave I picked up I had 2 boat length ahead of me to the trough and one behind” if true that wave would have been a staggering 18 feet roughly and I could believe it when I got nailed by the wave and got forced deep to the sea bed. The next wave I took after a long recovery picked up beautifully and I threw my biggest ever airscrew unfortunately the wave collapsed below me and I free fell to the pit and ruining my back for the rest of the day. Three more waves that was me done or should I say one nice barrel and two beatings.
“Sweet, back to vans for tea and medals” I proclaimed but, no we still had to get the vans back off the farm, a further 15mins of hells mud and then we were homeward bound with tales of freak waves and sick moves.

Just another day in North Wales.

Keep paddling, keep smiling guys.