Archive for the ‘Italy’ Category
It’s a beautiful sunny weekend, but I’m sprawled on the sofa under a blanket, trying to shake off a nasty bout of man flu. Mrs R is upstairs in bed trying to sleep off whatever the female version is called (whatever it is, it surely can’t be as bad). What a pair. This is pretty irritating and disappointing, as this weekend we were supposed to be down in Cornwall taking part in a triathlon and also going surfing.
To assuage my boredom, I’ve just cleared my mobile phone of photos, taken in random places over recent months. I’ve spared you drunken pub shots, but each here tells a small story…
This Catholic shrine is located beside the get-on to the Torrente Ayasse, a steep and frankly terrifying looking Italian river. We looked long and hard at this creek, whilst rain visibly brought the level up. For certain, if you were going to take on the section directly below this shrine, you would be needing to spend a fair amount of time beforehand praying at the shrine. We eventually decided to give the whole thing a miss, and ran away from the valley with our tails between our legs.
This is Pendeen Lighthouse in west Cornwall, late one evening back in February. We were staying in a Coastguard cottage beside the lighthouse for a week, pretending to get some work done. As offices go, it doesn’t get much better…
This is our most unusual wild camp in recent times. The river is of course the Thames, and we’re overlooked by the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf in central London. The location was an outdoor centre from which the London Kayakathon was to be based the following day. We’re not really city people, but as places to wake up go, you could certainly do worse…
The final pics are taken at Perranporth Youth Hostel in north Cornwall. I was there for a friend’s Stag Do. The choice of location was inspired; the Youth Hostel is a small building perched atop the cliffs overlooking the Perranporth beach. We enjoyed attempting to surf the waves by day, and then spent the evening chilling out with a beer in hand watching gannets dive. It’s also where H and I are meant to be surfing today, but no worries…the summer hols are coming soon.
All good.
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The Torrente Egua is a steep creek in Piedmont, Italy, which happens to be the best quality Grade 5 river I’ve paddled in a long while. The gradient is ridiculous; in the very first rapid, you actually head downhill towards the top of a church steeple! However, amazingly for a river this steep, the rapids are all clean and friendly, and there are no portages. After heavy rain, we had a good chunky level to smooth out the drops, and the river just kept getting better and better. We were paddling well and ‘in the zone’!
So it was that we reached the take-out, just above a walled in waterfall with a very sticky back-tow at the bottom. Everyone but myself got off. I was really fired up from the river so far, and simply didn’t want to finish the trip. I was going to run that waterfall and no one could talk me out of it. I didn’t inspect the base of the drop properly, I was convinced I could find a nebulous sneak line around the towback, and mostly, I was blinded by mindless optimism!
It was over in seconds. I clumsily plugged the worst part of the towback (not that there was any hope of clearing it anywhere), got flung rapidly end over end in the base of the waterfall, and pulled my deck.
The swim wasn’t good. The towback kept me trapped in the base of the fall. Swimming in deep highly aereated water, I didn’t surface. This was not a good scenario at all, but was the inevitable price of poor judgement and hubris. Thankfully I had enough of my wits about me at least, to raise my arms above my head. I didn’t know how deep underwater I was being held, so I was hugely relieved when I felt my hands break the surface. An instant later, I felt a rope land on them. It’s good to know that you can rely on your friends to cover your back, when you get things badly wrong…
All the same…play safe out there kids, and remember, white water paddling has no Playstation-style ‘re-start game’ button.
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Just returned from a splendid white water paddling trip to Italy. That’s me above, on the splendid Torrente Gronde. It rained and rained and rained, river levels were usually too high or too low and only occasionally just right (‘Goldilocks paddling’), my tent flooded and I blubbed with terror more than once…but why haven’t I been paddling there before? Beautiful place, wonderful steep granite creeks. It was good also to catch up with some British and American white water paddler friends, although paddling at their level gets harder and harder, as I seem to do much too much sea kayaking these days (= mostly easy). I didn’t entirely disgrace myself, although I did take one nasty swim in the base of a nasty waterfall, and a week of steep paddling has made my body feel like it’s been worked over with a baseball bat. I’m not getting younger, and the rivers aren’t getting easier.
All good.
I will update on the South West Sea Kayaking Meet shortly, once I’ve waded through my mail and email…
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This was the sight which greeted me coming home from work yesterday; a grumpy cat wondering where her dinner was. However, it’s what’s behind which is perhaps more telling; the large oddly shaped blue garden accessory is my creek boat. The fact that it has almost become part of nature gives away the fact that for a number of reasons (lack of water, back injury, too much sea kayaking) I have barely touched white water in the last year since the Thuli Bheri expedition. This is not ideal, as I’m off to the Italian Alps tomorrow night, and am so out of practice that I’m not even sure how you get into the thing…
Anyway, other news…
- I’m flogging copies of the Second Edition of South West Sea Kayaking on eBay. This is the way to get a signed copy/ personal message, if so required.
- There is plenty of space still for the South West Sea Kayaking Meet. Come along and make some new friends, hope you can make it!
Must pack now…
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