The Scotland Story

Scotland gave us a lot of stories.

The Preface

Most of the time when I go kayaking nothing happens. Lines are clean, fun is had and at worst someone might take an embarrassing roll. Even if the river is not that challenging, or the levels are a bit off it is just like Ratty said: “there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats”. And while it is these days that motivate me and drive my love for kayaking there is one thing that they never give, a good story.

 

A good story often follows the path of the hero’s journey, a narrative arc that is common among almost every story from fairy tales to Star Wars. The issue with a good days paddling is that it tends to go exactly to plan. There is no call to action, no challenges (bar the ones we sought out), nothing to overcome and nothing really to learn (at least in that seemingly deep existential sense that makes for a good story). In contrast those not-so-good days where events deviate from their intended course have a nasty habit of following this ‘Hero’s Journey’ to the letter. We are presented with problems we had not anticipated or desired and have to overcome them for reasons more interesting than our own personal enjoyment. Consequently we are left with a good story that is enthralling for paddlers and non-paddlers alike.

It is with this context that you can now fully understand my meaning when I say that last years trip to Scotland gave us a lot of stories.

Day 1: Enter an unfamiliar situation

If I were a superstitious man I would have said that an attempt by a lorry to run us off the road before we even reached the boarder was the first sign that this trip was not going to go smoothly. But, I am not a superstitious man.

Eight hours later and we were the last to arrive at the hostel, a lovely little place with its own bar and two friendly owners. Everyone was enjoying amenities and settling in for an early night. Well everyone except for Matt ‘Big Deal’ Brook, who had taken up residence in the hostel’s toilet after succumbing to a devastating bout of Trent belly somewhere around Yorkshire.

When the morning rolled around Matt still hadn’t left the safety of the bathroom, but somehow mustered enough strength to head over to the Universities Creek Race with one Tom Clare while the rest of us had a causal morning preparing and breakfasting ourselves for a run of the Loy.

Tom and Matt’s adventure to the creek race was short lived when they arrived to find the Etive flushing through more water than the bunkhouse loo. Not fancying the chunky levels and risk of involuntary mid race jet propulsion, Matt made a hasty retreat to the bunkhouse and Clare joined us for our run of the Loy.

This was probably the highlight of the trip. Bar the usual beatering and the spontanious disintegration of Snape’s new dry suit everything went smoothly and was generally enjoyably to the point where there is not much to report on. Unfortunately this bliss was short lived. Next up Polldubh

Polldubh is a waterfall, probably the highest I had run at the time and much like everything in Scotland at this point was on sizeable level. Despite this there was evidently a line and we were going to paddle it. In retrospect the execution of some of these ‘line’ was quite questionable but for my part I’m proud that my entry into the falls was spot on however what I did next can only be described as a Poll-durp. In retrospect, looking at the photos the boof stroke should have gone in on the left, compensating for the sizable deflection off the boil on the lip. But hindsight is rarely of use as one pencils off a drop destined for Atlantis.

Poll-durping off Polldubh

Dry suits are great. However it was at this point that I discovered mine wasn’t as dry as previously anticipated. This slight leak through a newly discovered hole somewhere around my bottom was further indication that something wasn’t quite right as I still couldn’t find the surface, tucking ready to roll once I finally arrived. The thing about a Deck implosion is that the bow of the boat will fill up with more water than the back causing it to sink deep. Therefore no matter how long you tuck forwards for, you will never find the surface. It took me quite a long time to realize that this is what happened.

Lesson 1: Don’t be too lazy to set up safety. Its sods law, and we decided that we didn’t really need a line if we had another boat at the bottom of the falls. This is a decision that I thoroughly regretted as I separated from my boat and began a long swim down a gorge. Lesson 2: Practice your throwline skills. There was one opportunity for a bag during my swim and I watched wistfully as the bag flew through the sky trailing rope in a fruitless direction. Eventually I got myself to the side, and we found my boat perhaps a mile later pined on a shale Island. Unfortunately the gopro that had been mounted to the bow was never seen again.

Mistakes are made on rivers. The important thing is that we learn from them, and so instead of going for a round two or dashing off to another river we spent the rest of afternoon practicing safety and rescue techniques. This was a smart decision as we soon had some more ‘practice’ tomorrow.

Day 2: What they wanted?

You may have heard the Zet kayaks are indestructible. For the most part this is apparently true. Tom’s raptor has suffered all manner of abuse and still refuses to die. Ant’s raptor did not share such dogged determination. The Spean gorge is a classic piece of Scottish grade 3/4 it is therefore of little surprise that Ant managed to put a sizable crack in his boat on the shingle grade 2 run in. The day was already off to a sketchy start.

(I should also say that the kind guys over at Zet sent Ant a new shell to replace the cracked allowing Matt to break it in Madagascar.)

With damp and cold duct tape struggling to keep Ant’s boat water tight and Matt, today braving his boat, dashing off the river and up into the bushes every 200m we made a sorry sight as we got into the full swing of the gorge. Once again the paddling was fantastic and it was easy to understand why this section is an absolute classic however just as we were coming to the end of the gorge disaster struck. Portia hurt her back and swam in agonizing pain.

Thanks to the previous days practice Ant’s line was spot on target and he had Portia out of the water in mere moments. All kit was collected, bar one throwline which was never seen again and everyone was out of their boats and we were assessing our situation.

It is possible to ‘walk’ out of the Spean gorge, but it is not easy, we needed help. A quick scramble up to the side and a call to mountain rescue and everything was set in motion. A friendly police officer arrived at the top of the gorge to oversee the situation and mountain rescue descended in to help carry Portia out of the gorge.

With everything under hand and rescue under way a faint beating sound started to grow louder. Before we knew it, hovering above our head, a yellow Sea King helicopter, the RAF search and rescue chopper had appeared. With 3 days of service left before the operation was privatized they had been on a ‘training’ mission one valley over and had picked up the radio chatter and kindly flew over to see if they could assist. This is how Portia got a free helicopter ride back to Fort William hospital and how Snape got what has to be the best profile pic I have ever seen.

Best profile pic EVER!!!

After two rough days we were all a bit put out and returned to the hostel to drink beer and chocolate milk.

Day 3: Pay a heavy price

The next day was our final day paddling the land of the brave, so we did what anyone would do and head to the Etive. Because what is a trip to Scotland without paddling the Etive?

We rocked, weather as grim as it had always been, and found a sizable ‘but not stupid’ flow passing through triple step. Learning from past mistakes we set up our safety and Matt cleanly demonstrated the line. This would be the only clean line through the whole affair with successive attempts by Tom, Matt and I all involving involuntary inversion, usually after the first drop. Snape decided to take this a step further and attempted some ‘play boating’ in the hole formed by the second drop. This was a bad idea, but not bad enough to stop him from trying again on a second run. The beatering continued as Veasy converted his raptor into a yellow submarine by plugging the third drop which Sophie preferred to treat as a water slide without her boat. ‘Enjoyable’ was not one of the terms used to describe her visit to the green room or the later return visit to Fort William A&E after head butting a rock. Sophie was fine but the repercussions of concussions are not enviable.

After this collage of carnage we decided to head over to right angle. Matt, Tom, Snape and I would paddle and everyone else got off. Floating down a flat-ish section of the Etive, eating my river cake, I was unprepared for what followed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvgPiFLBPZs

Nottingham’s ‘team IR’ on the Etive

The first post I ever made on here was about the ‘describe and run’ technique of running grade 4. This technique can be both a blessing and a curse, with the curse part coming into full swing as we approached ski jump. Like a muppet I missed the important eddy just above the feature, a trick I hadn’t pulled for years’. This left a surprised and resigned me heading over the left hand side of the slide like drop. Ski jump is a river wide slide-y drop into a hole with a weakness on river right side. The important thing to note here is that the ‘boof-left principle’ doesn’t apply here, something I felt I had firmly and scientifically proven as I was dragged back into the hole. This lead to a swim, a re-circulation, a brief adventure to the bottom of the Etive and a few minutes to catch my breath. In these few minutes my boat enjoyed several more goes in the hole before it chose to eddy out next to me and the others who had now successfully styled the right side (in every sense) of ski jump.

This should probably have been the end of the affair, there is a large section of flat between ‘Ski Jump’ and ‘Crack of Doom’ however in an incredible turn of events we failed to get the boat out of the river before it disappeared over the horizon. A large thud later and we watched it from the side recirculate just out of reach in a frustratingly close eddy with +1 dent before it plucked up enough courage to continue its solo decent of the river. The chase was on and a mad dash on foot along the bracken banks of the Etive began, jumping over fences and slipping in mud like some kind of macabre cartoon. Sadly the boat was too fast and we had to continue the chase by car.

“Lime green Mamba, usual bumps and scratches”

We caught up with my now slightly shorter Mamba somewhere bellow right angle where it had finally pinned on some rocks near the side of the river. With a bit of persuasion we unpinned it from its resting place and lugged it back up to the road, inspecting the damage. I had all but given up hope of finding my paddles when they daintily floated past and we resumed the kit chase down and I was reunited with them in an eddy just below the confluence with the Allt A’Chaorainn.

In total the final tally for 3 days in Scotland was:

• 1 x throwline
• 2 x drysuits
• 1 x gopro
• 2 x boats
• 1 x back
• 100 Acres of forest for loo roll

Having Changed?

Some trips go well, some trips go not so well. Some trips end up like THE Scotland trip. It is important that we take the mistakes made on these trips and learn from them, but it is also important that we embrace the stories of times where things didn’t go entirely to plan. They are humbling, they remind us that we are not invincible and most of all they make great tales to tell down the pub.

I pen this post from Scotland, where we have bravely returned. In contrast to last year I have just had one of my best days ever paddling back on the Etive. Scores have been settled, and I now look forward to telling some (hopefully not so eventful) stories in the near future