On the morning of Wednesday the 30th December my alarm went off at 5.30 am then it hit me I am off to wales.
The idea was to paddle the river Ceiriog there was 6 of us went down Steve, Sarah, Alan, Adrian, James and myself, Adrian wasn’t paddling due to a bad shoulder.
So we all met up at Tesco café at Telford at around 8.30 and after consulting Rain Chasers the Ceiriog was to low so we went for the Alwen Llanfihangel
North Wales.
After a hearty breakfast for some we carried on and arrived at the putin at a village called Betws Gwerfil Goch at around10ish and yes it was raining.
After the usual ritual of taking the cars to the get out and Steve’s great briefing we finally got on the water.
The river was running quite fast, well it was to me after only paddling twice before in Wales. Steve was leading with Sarah, James in his new play boat on its maiden trip and then me and Alan bringing up the rear. We all finally got on the water and man what a RUSH it was none stop all the way down, I think was 14k in distance with rapids, roughish waves large boulders which needed quick thinking on the steering many trees and branches to avoid I did quite a lot of ducking and with my GoPro on my helmet it was rather worrying, we did a lot of ferry gliding one of my favourite manoeuvres there were no swimmers and we only needed to potage twice one section was grade 3 and wow it was hard going intense but what a RUSH my fav word this trip lol.
Eventually we arrived at the takeout at the A5 roadbridge at Plas lsaf I was feeling very chuffed after a great day paddling as were we all. After getting changed very quickly as it was pouring with rain and we got wetter doing that than the paddling, we headed off for a very enjoyable hot cup of tea at the Rhug Estate Farm Shop. After chatting over the days paddle we all made our way home back to England, Alan and I made a small detour to take a look at Town Falls in Llangollen
it was well worth it spectacular then we set off for home…..
