We are just now entering the coldest months of the year in the UK. The period where the weather refuses to recognise that the winter solstice should mark the turning point back to the warmth of summer, instead choosing to abruptly dump a pile of snow mid April. At this time of year you should wrap up warm and maybe even break out the pogies, though one should never complain about the temperature!
Those who have complained about the chilly temperatures to me have all met the same fate. They have all had to endure this story of mine, a story that I’m sure some of my paddling comrades could now recite off by heart.
It was the back end of 2010, we were off to paddle the river Wye, and by some miracle I had just received a pair of dry trousers to complement my questionable semi-dry cag. I was very excited at the time to possess the power to wade into the water without catching hypothermia like a bad Aquaman. Unfortunately this was not a power I would get an opportunity to test.
It should be expected for it to be a tad cold on the water when running the shuttle with a fine layer of snow on the ground. When you are measuring this fine layer in feet you may want to consider going skiing instead. Without any skis we experimented with snow boating but after briefly lodging myself and boat in the branches of a tree we thought we may have more luck on the river.
A river in winter is a truly beautiful place to be. Water freezes around rocks leaving icy Saturn-like rings when the levels drop. However, should you ever witness this spectacle you may want to bear in mind that it will have been cold enough for the river to freeze in other places such as eddies, banks or even across its entire width. Something we would discover as we rounded the second meander. The water was still and the ice thick but it only stretched less than 20-30m. We rammed the heaviest boat in our flotilla, an open canoe, up onto the ice with one Brian Biffin pushing the boat from behind to check the ice. The rest of us followed in our kayaks, bum shuffling across the ice like deformed penguins.
This alone would have made a good anecdote. “Hey do you remember the time that river froze?”- Person 1. “Yeah I told you we should have brought huskies” – Person 2. Unfortunately once you have to go through this process 3 times the deformed penguin impersonation grows cold. Yet even this would have been fine but our 4th encounter with the ice was a different affair. The river, having gained water from some small tributaries, now possessed a flow. As the 4th ice blockade came into view it became clear that the newly acquired flow had decided that the best course of action was to travel under the ice. We firmly disagreed with this decision.
Driving our boats onto the ice sheet at the edge of the river we egressed on the left bank before the we entered an icy ‘V’ that led straight to the blockade’s sub-glacial Narnia. Inspecting on foot, the ice lead on out of sight. The day was drawing on and now less than a few km down from where we started we were beginning to lose light. We had to get off the river. The road however was on river right.
This time on our great crossing of the river we had no desire to take chances dealing with the additional flow under the ice. Trailing a throw line Brian once again set off in his canoe chartering a route across the Arctic wasteland that the Wye had become. With this line we then set up a guide for us to pull ourselves across in our kayaks, one at a time to avoid simultaneously drowning should fate decide to make our day any worse. This was quite a long haul, but eventually we all made it to the the other side of the river and celebrated our success… at least until we realised that the road in question was now up what the Welsh would call a mountain.
Now Welsh mountains are not that large on the mountain scale but they are still large enough on the: “There is no way I’m carrying my boat up that, let alone an open canoe” scale. Especially when they are covered with a good foot of snow. However on this occasion, with darkness closing faster than a door in the face of a Jehovah’s Witness, we had no other option. Kayaks are designed predominately for going down rivers but tend to keep the desire when confronted with a hill. This desire is so strong that they are capable of rebelling and forcing their accompanying human along for the ride in order to fulfil it. Battling on against these insurrections night had fallen by the time everyone had made it up to the road. We set up camp in a survival shelter, Brian making a brew on his stove while a friendly farmer gave the drivers a lift to our cars. Quest complete we retired to our bunkhouse for a hearty dinner and much-needed booze.
The next day we returned to the river and hiked along it’s snow covered banks to see what we would have encountered had we ventured on. The ice continued for miles, more unbroken than not. According to locals, temperatures had dropped below -10°C before our arrival. It seemed our trip had been foolhardy from the beginning. Climbing into our car, defeated but intact, we acknowledged our silly decision before sliding down sheet ice into the bull bars of a Toyota 4×4. As red and yellow radiator fluid pooled on the road below the two vehicles my Dad turned to me and said “Wye did we bother?”.
