Since the Barle run this weekend (7th Feb) was my first kayak river outing with the club since joining late last year, I thought I’d take my turn to record the event from the eyes of a newcomer.
Sharon and I gave Ben a lift down, meeting up with Paul, Tina, Clive and Graham pretty much as planned. Sharon (on her first club trip) and Tina kindly recovered the cars from the get in at Tarr Steps down to the get out at Dulverton whilst the 5 of us set off for the 6 mile run. This was my first time out on the Barle and I’d heard some stories about it being a bit of a hairy start with few opportunities to stop and take the time to pick the next route. However, the river level was a bit lower than last time apparently and we were able to get warmed up and into the swing of it at a more leisurely pace.
Now, I’ve only been kayaking for about 6 months and although I’ve done some white water stuff before, my skills are new and fragile. In this respect, the river turned out to be perfect for developing and reinforcing those skills. We had some nice stretches of shallow grade 1 with plenty of semi submerged rocks to hone the draw strokes on topped up with some cracking grade 2 waves to have a play around in. I have to say that Graham, Clive, Paul and Ben were a good bunch of blokes to be with- they gave me lots of encouragement, hints and tips and I could feel my skills and confidence building all the time- this is exactly what I joined the club for.
You may have noticed that there were a number of “firsts” for me throughout the day, and there is one more. It was the first time that I have unintentionally capsized a kayak on a river- and it was a cracker! Just 50m from the end, I was the last to run down a small drop across the normal flow of the river. I took the same line as everybody else (I thought) and wallop- over I went, hardly had time to take a breath never mind get a support stroke in. I was aware of some rocks quite close to my inverted face so I made a quick exit from the boat. The others were waiting in an eddy just a few feet away so they were alongside by the time I surfaced and they recovered myself, boat and paddle to the side without too much drama- thanks guys. It’s comforting to know that the system works when it needs to!
All in all, a great day out with lots to write about in my log book and a big step forward in broadening my experience in this relatively new activity. Looking forward to next time already.
Richard Westlake
