Tag: paddling

Brawling in Bosnia – World Cups 1,2&3

Brawling in Bosnia – World Cups 1,2&3

It was an early start for a dawn flight. We were bound for Zagreb where the ever inconspicuous British buses would scoop us up in the searing Croatian heat and carry us forth to Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The busses had spent the past week at the Junior and U23 World Championships in Solkan, where the British Team had enjoyed just a modicum of success. The Christies retained their title in U23 C2 winning both the sprint and the classic, and Kerry picked up a silver in the K1 Classic. With Freya Pryce the sisters picked up another Gold in the U23 WK1 Classic team, then with Elsie Landsborough they snagged a silver in the U23 C1 classic team. Not to let the Christies have all the medals Elsie went on to win another silver with her C2 partner Ciara Maloney in the sprint. All the aforementioned girls then teamed up together with Sophie Cameron to pick up yet another silver, in what I believe was the first ever women’s C2 team race – a testament to how the sport is growing and developing.

However it was the junior boys team result that I was perhaps most pleased by. Going into this year we knew the Stevelys were going strong, but two does not make a team. So enter Malaki Grant. Malaki, a strong K1 paddler, had never been in a river racer prior to the winter but we put him on a crash course, with a focus on sitting on washes. The gamble paid off. The boys came in 3rd with Sam and Will helping to knock nearly 2 minutes of Malaki’s individual time. A Bonze medal.

Some snaps from the Juniors/U23s

Back home, We’d seen the press releases and Instagram posts, but as the busses carried us forth to Banja Luka we got to hear the inside scoops. The gossip, the drama, the little misadventures missed by the ‘slightly’ sanitized PUK articles. As we crossed the border into Bosnia, we were riding high on their success and exited for what the week ahead would bring.

Banja Luka is renowned for the Krupa Canyon section. This section of the Vrbas river cuts a spectacular gorge through the hills outside the city. It’s hosted numerous international competitions and this renowned course, would not be the section were going to race.

We would instead be racing on the much flatter section of the Vrbas that runs directly through the city. Apparently, there was some sort of issue with the road access on the canyon but we were all having flashbacks to last years race in Veles (which was extremely flat). As a general rule of thumb, I think that if you can paddle something in a marathon boat, then it probably should be paddled in a marathon boat. River racers are for the properly bumpy bits.

Yet after a first lap on the river we were relived to find there were at least some bumpy bits and a few swirly areas to boot. In fact in places the river almost felt weirdly British, if you ignored the lush blue water and hot weather. Needless to say it was still a bit of a gear shift from Mezzana but it seemed like they’d be enough rough for an interesting race, particularly for the mass start – the event that had drawn me to this set of world cups.

Shots from team training

Bosnia is an, “exciting” country. To put it politely, the politics are… complex, however all the people we met were extremely warm and welcoming to us. And, extremely understanding when Alex and I realised we didn’t have any cash for our coffee – we did eventually pay. Just after a short side quest to find an ATM that wouldn’t swallow our cards.

As a general rule of thumb the further east you get in Europe the ‘looser’ things get. I mean that both in metaphorical sense and with regards to the taps in our accommodation.
Bosnia’s building regulations are second only to North Macedonia, with our accommodation featuring the presumably mandatory sprinkling of exposed wiring that gives life here that extra little spark. But while this attitude of lax building regulations would send a shock down many a Brit’s spine, it also comes with an air of freedom. During an afternoon ‘tourist-ing’ around the city we found ourselves free to roam the walls of the ‘Kastel Fortress’, despite the star-wars-esque approach to railings (i.e. None – something that would be unthinkable in the UK). It is nice, to be in a place where the powers that be trust you to not to merk yourself at every available opportunity. Or at least accept that if you do, it was your own damn fault.

A good old bit of tourist-ing

Of course the quirks with our accommodation didn’t end with the exposed wiring. Us boys were situated up in an attic apartment which had been recently redecorated. No expense had been spared on the fixtures, but clearly the fitting had been a slight afterthought. A large luxurious sink in the bathroom, now obstructed the door from opening forcing any would be loo-user to awkwardly shimmy through the skinny gap that remained. Meanwhile the kitchen sink was tucked so far under the rafters, that it required a Quasimodo impersonation any time you wanted a drink. And whoever had installed it had clearly given up before connecting the overflow. Alex best summed up the accommodation, exclaiming “Its like staying in a Turkish Barbers”. There were even glimmers of sunlight around the edge of the hole, the aircon unit had been thrust into. However, we were grateful for the unit. It was over 30 degrees outside, but mercifully that overworked unit kept our room at a cool 17 – cold enough to give me the shivers at night.

Still it managed to rank as one of the better places, we’ve stayed. Having a bakery on the ground floor was wonderous. Leon alone must have spent a fortune there with his new found penchant for their ‘cheesy bread pastry thing’ (Pita Zeljanica?)

Not being particularly complicated, we more or less had the river down in the first couple of days. That gave use Wednesday as a rest day, before the onslaught of racing scheduled for the Thursday, Friday and Saturday. And what to a bunch of canoeists do on a rest day? Go canoeing of course!

While we weren’t racing on the Vrbas Canyon Section this year, next year it will host the World Championships. To us it seemed very rude not to go give it a little scout while we were in the area! The rest day meant a leisurely morning departure heading south from Banja Luka into the hills. The glaring sun that had defined most of our practice days had been usurped in the night by a thunderstorm. Now we were greeted with drizzle, coating the mountains in atmospheric mist.

As the canyon enveloped us the river narrowed giving rise to playful rapids mixing waves and boils as the rock walls further encroached. Then came the horizon line. The start of the sprint course. Suddenly the river dropped, only to rise again in peaking and crashing waves. We took a moment to eddy out and watch everyone through the grand rapid. Then it was playtime. We took it in turns to cross the mighty haystacks, and taunt the crashing waves. River racers are not the easiest of boats to surf, but they are a lot of fun!

Once we had had our fill, we continued on down the second half of the sprint. Another steep section, more waves and then cutting it close to the house sized boulder at the bottom. it was pure joy! From here the river calmed returning back to playful rapids and boils until these too faded as the canyon released us from it’s grasp.

That day we exchanged stories of our extremely restful activity over lunch as Leon devoured yet another cheesy bread.
“Any requests for this afternoon?” asked Jamie.
“Could we go again?” replied Eddie. We all burst into laughter.
“Your supposed to be resting”
“I know, I just love canoeing”.
I think we’re all excited to paddle again here next year, but sensibility prevailed and instead we took the opportunity to do a little ‘tourist-ing’ around the city.

Classic Day arrived, and with it the Sun and the heat returned. It had all the makings of a suffer-fest. As we waited for our starts we sheltered from the Sun in the bus. Despite the odd joke the focus amongst the team was strong. So strong, that Eddie managed to walk into a giant metal chariot, that he somehow didn’t see. We waved the girls off for their runs, and eventually it was time for us to race too.

The sun was hot, but mercifully the water was cool. No kags today, just a spray deck and the lightest top I could find. I was boat 99, chasing down previous European Champion Maxence Barouh. I’d joked with Leon earlier about how I was going to catch him – though truth be told I was more relived he wouldn’t have the chance to catch me! My race went okay – I tried hard and there wasn’t any drama, but something seemed to be missing from my form. I finished 23rd, a respectable time, but not one I’m particularly proud of. Unfortunately I didn’t quite catch Maxence who eneded up in 3rd.

However, any disappointment in my classic result was soon forgotten as Freddie crossed the line. Freddie had decided that today was the day to trial his new nutrition strategy: bicarbonate of soda. Any athlete will tell you that race day is always the best day to try something new. For those not keyed up on the science, sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) is an alkali, which means it can help neutralise lactic acid that builds up in your muscles. However, the side effect of bicarb can include bloating and nausea, which isn’t too surprising given bicarbonate of soda is what you put in those kids volcanoes!

Freddie crossed the line in visible discomfort – which to be fair, is pretty common for a classic. Yet, this looked to be quite an extreme and different discomfort to normal. He claimed he’d been fine during the race but a few moment after finishing he began doing his best volcano impression – much to our amusement. Everyone in the British camp had predicted this exact outcome, and to see it manifested like the fountains of Versailles brought tears to our eyes.

Those, not in the British team were less amused. In fact they looked quite concerned. Probably because in his wisdom Freddie had washed the bicarb down with a healthy amount of beetroot juice. Said beetroot juice was now colouring everything a dark red, making the whole scene look pretty macabre to the casual observer. We tried to reassure everyone, through breaks in our laughter, that Freddie was okay and was definitely not dying. Tjaš, from Slovenia, remarked that this is how he wanted to finish every race as he watched the scene unfold. Freddie quipped back “yeah, but you wouldn’t do this just to get a WK1 time” before expelling more beetroot juice from his body.

Kerry took a bronze in the WK1 and then the a Silver with Emma in the WC2. Freddie decided not to bicarb the following days.

The following day was sprint day. We’d taken great care to rest up the previous evening in the manner that all great athletes do – lounging on the sofa, marathoning the Shrek films.

The sprint course through the centre of Banja Luka was very reminiscent of the course in Veles: Flat. There was lot of flat. A long old flat section, before dropping into a few waves and powering through to the finish. The waves were a bit bigger than Veles, and it was certainly possible to get them wrong. Something that wouldn’t be too difficult after absolutely burying yourself on the initial flat pool. Though arguable the hardest aspect of the course was narrowly avoiding a hidden reef just off the start, and then making sure you lined up correctly over the horizon line before the waves. However after a few days of practice we were feeling pretty confident, and hopes in the team were high for for a final given the similarities to Veles.

In Wildwater Sprints there are two heats, followed by finals. In the first heat, the first five paddlers qualify for the finals. Then, everyone who didn’t qualify in the first heat races in the second and the first ten paddlers from the second heat qualify for the final. The final is a one and done type affair, and everyone who didn’t qualify for it is ranked by the time from their 2nd run. This means that unless you make it through in those first 5 qualifiers (which I am extremely unlikely to do), the first run is just a practice. Everything is all on the second run.

Personally, I don’t think that makes a great format. But I’ll be damned if I don’t exploit it for my own ends! My race plan was simple: chill out a bit on the first run, – I mean still try, but not the full 110%, just treat it as a practice. Then, smash it on the 2nd.

I finished my first run with a time of 51.87s. All the way down in 46th place, over 7 seconds off 1st. But that didn’t matter, it was part of the plan. And I had rehearsed the important things. Not just the line and locking onto the water with powerful strokes, but also the warm up, getting changed, faffing about and all those little parts that add up to make the race routine.

Then the day got a little chaotic. With heats and finals all on the same day, the schedule was packed. It kept changing up until that morning as the organises shuffled the different classes around. We should have had an hour or two between runs, just enough to have a little nibble of lunch and rest, but as 2nd runs drew near we still didn’t have a start list. Then came word that we’d keep bib order, 10 minutes later we were going on heat 1 timed (a difference of nearly 30mins for myself!). Then the girls started their 2nd heat – in bib order? Needless to say the confusion didn’t make the race prep any easier.

I got on, leaving myself plenty of time to spare. A slightly extended warm up then slotted into my place in the queue. Go time. The only thought in my head was “pick it up, pick it up”. Based off the first run, to qualify for finals I had to knock 5 seconds off my time. To do that I’d have to bleed out my eyeballs before I got to the horizon line. Bleed I did. Somewhere in the midst of the race I faintly heard our coach Billy screaming “Up! Up! Up!”. Time to dig even deeper, 110%. I don’t really remember the rapid, it was pure-auto pilot, but I knew it felt smooth as I poured everything into the last few strokes to over the line. 47.72 seconds. A colossal improvement of 4.15 seconds. But not quite enough. In the end I came 22nd, 2nd fastest Brit – just two hundredths of a second behind Alex. But neither of use were through to the finals.

We gathered along the banks to cheer on Kerry and the C2s. Kerry had managed to qualify for her final in the 1st heat and put in an incredible run to finish joint 4th, 0.2 seconds off the medal. She’s yet to achieve a K1 sprint podium, but it feels like it’s on its way. The C2 was another matter though, with Kerry and Emma securing another silver to match their result in the classic. Amongst the boys there was a little disappointment that none of us made it to finals. We take a lot of pride in the girls’ success, but we’re hungry to replicate it – difficult though that may be. But, as I watched back my Sprint with Billy on his phone I couldn’t hide a smile. It was one of my best sprint results to date, and for that I was proud of it.

The third and final day of racing brought the Mass Start Classic. River racing usually operates on a time trial format which gives everyone a fair race. In contrast, mass starts are chaotic carnage, but that is exactly what make them so much fun. We normally run a few in the UK throughout the year, but rarely (if ever) do we get such a stacked start line.

Any start procedure on a moving river is destined to be a little troublesome. We were instructed to line up behind a rope which would be raised on ‘GO!’, but with flow nothing is that simple. Any attempt to push or jump the start would lead to disqualification. The line was tight with over 50 boats crammed across the river. I’d been planning to sort of sneak in at the last moment and find a gap between some faster boats in the hope they’d pull me clear from the impending melee. However the plan began to go awry as my ‘last moment’ extended into minutes and the gaps came and went as everyone jostled for position. The tension was building, the pressure was on, and the start line felt like a powder keg ready to…

“GO!”

The air exploded with water and whirling blades. I guffed my first stroke. I’d been busy trying to reposition myself on the other side of Lean Bogaerts (111, BEL) but it was to late – I was now in the brawl for positions. Ahead of me Tristan Meersman (72, BEL) and Ilija Kleut (76, SRB) collided, screaming across the river, but fortunately the wash carried my bow over the two paddlers and I tried to power round the side. Ilija came back quick though, now on my right but then someone (Tristian maybe?) clipped my stern spinning me into the Serbian forcing us and a few other unfortunate competitors into the the shallows of the first rapid.

(In retrospect I probably should have backed off and tried to go around Ilija, but isn’t that just the power of hindsight.)

It felt like we were stuck in the shallows for an eternity, watching the whole field come past. The carnage continued as we tried to re-join the flow on the first rapid. Swaths of boats continued to pass, nearly forcing us back into the slow and stagnant parts of the river, but fortunately I was able to bounce my bow over some of the mess and back into the narrow conveyor belt of water.

I’d been seeing red since the collision. The frustration had given me a little extra oomph to claw myself back into the race, but as the everyone strung out I began to realise I’d over cooked it a little. I still had some good fight left in me, putting in burns here and there to defend lines but climbing over the wash was becoming a struggle and after the sprint course I hit a wall.

From here it was roughly 2km of flat and once again, to my dismay, the positions started slipping away. Maybe the biggest insult was watching Luca Barone (107, FRA), a self confessed sprinter pull past. It wasn’t a slight I was going to take lying down. I took a brief moment to recover, trying to bring my heart rate down a little, and breath a little bit of life back into my muscles. Then it was time to turn and burn.

I slipped past Aljosa Travar (86, BIH) but it wasn’t exactly a sprint to the finish. My arms felt like concrete, and my lungs where on fire, but I dug deep and paddled as hard as I could. The last the last two minutes of the race seemed to stretch out for an agonising eternity, but slowly and surely I was clawing Luca back in. As we came in towards the line we were level pegging. With my vision beginning to black out and on the verge of cardiac arrest I found one last ounce of power to just inch ahead.

It was a small victory, but a valuable one. Aljosa let out an almighty scream as he crossed the finish it’d been a hard fought race, but an enjoyable one. The smiles around the finish line were testament to that. Everyone gathered to swap stories of one eventful race. As we got off the water for the last time the mood was clear, we want more of these races.

There was however one small oopsie. Somewhere in the scrum off the start I broke my right paddle blade. I’d heard it crunch in the first few strokes and to be honest, I was just grateful I still had a blade at the end. I don’t think I even hit it on anything, but lets be honest river racing blades do not live an abuse free life. So on the off chance, you fancy donating to the ‘Nick’s new paddle fund‘ it wouldn’t go unappreciated.

Finally it was time to pack up, prize giving and home. The Christies’ collected their medals – this time including Jamie who’d won the masters mass start race (Billy also came a close second). We set off for the long journey back to the UK still buzzing from our races.

Medals galore!

The Czechs who came to Tea (Dee ECA Cup)

The Czechs who came to Tea (Dee ECA Cup)

If I had one word to describe the weather in the UK it would be ‘changeable’. And, after one of the mildest Autumns the paddling community can remember, change the weather did.

The last of the 2024  European Cups Race was to be held on the river Dee, North Wales, and the Czechs had assembled a small invasion force. Their plan had been to arrive early on Tuesday and tour round the UK sampling rivers and campsites. But as they disembarked the ferry they were shocked to find empty rivers and snow blanketing. It was then that they turned to the backup plan: Nottingham, and my apartment floor.

Anyone who has visited my flat may be wondering how I could possibly fit  5 Czechs plus an additional Slovakian. However where there is a will there’s a way and my unannounced house guests proved adept at tessellating themselves into my limited floor space like a bizarre game of human tetris.

While it might be lacking in warm weather, beautiful scenery or even clean water, Nottingham is surprisingly a paddlers’ paradise. Between the white water course, river, lake, canal and the nearby weirs there is never a day in Nottingham that one can’t go canoeing, and there is rarely a day when we don’t. Something our international friends were a little bit horrified to discover.

During the day Molly did an excellent job of showing our guests down the white water course, but it was the evening sessions, in the dark and sub-zero temperatures on the Trent that shocked our friends. I’m led to believe that over in Czechia it gets so cold all the rivers freeze and they all take up more appropriate and sensible sports like skiing.In contrast, the UK climate exists in some sort of anti-goldilocks zone where it never gets cold enough to do proper winter sports, but is more than cold enough to be utterly miserable. Yet there is a saying that “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing”. And in the bleak midwinter, bad clothing consists of anything less than a hat, cag, pogies, and at least two thermals. But we paddle on, as ice forms on our boats and spray decks freeze like concrete. Getting off the water Alexandra turned to us and said “We have a newfound respect for the British, you are very tough!”

Maybe the highlight of their stay was the Canoe Thursdays session. The brainchild of Nicky Cresser; ‘Canoe Thursdays’ is an effort to grow the C1 and C2 classes at Nottingham Kayak Club (and the UK in general). It’s a session that has played no small part in the entire British Teams’ success over the past year, and it was a joy to share it with everyone, particularly Alexandra and Viktoria who’s unbridled love for the canoe class, is at least half of the reason why us Brits climbed into (and then promptly fell out of) C1s in Macedonia last year.

We finished the session with a little pizza party in the NKC clubhouse. For all the geography and waterways that make Nottingham a paddlers paradise, it is really the community here that shines the brightest. Upon the return to my flat I treated everyone to a ‘wee dram’ of Scotch to toast the visit and the weekend’s racing ahead.

Outside of paddling the Czechs had busied themselves with touristing around Nottingham, visiting the caves and poking around the castle, but there was one major UK tourist attraction they wanted to see above all else: Clarkson’s farm. The mention of this had raised a few eye-brows around Notts, particularly as we tried to explain that it would be quite a detour on the way from Nottingham to North Wales but our visitors were adamant, Diddly Squat is a ‘must see’ on any visit to the UK. Over our whiskey, Alexandra had explained the show had been a big hit (alongside Top Gear) back in Czechia as we rewatched an episode and how the show had gotten everyone talking about the plight of farmers, much as it has here. Plus they explained that they just enjoyed driving around the UK and seeing all the different styles of towns and houses. It’s enlightening to see all that you take for granted through the eyes of others. She then went on to tell us a tale of how she had once told an old lady she looked like Jeremy Clarkson. Somehow, said old lady took a lot of offence to this comment, much to Alexandra’s surprise. For the life of me I can’t think why…

While it was lovely hanging out with everyone for a few days, one thought had persistently troubled me: The low river levels. Rarely are you unable to paddle the Dee but as the water gets lower it certainly becomes more unpleasant. Alex had been over to the racecourse at Llangollen the previous week, and had described the experience as ‘crunchy’. With folks traveling from across Europe to come to our little race it felt embarrassing to show them UK paddling at its absolute worst.

These conditions (cold and empty) persisted on Friday as paddlers from France and the Netherlands joined the practice sessions on the Dee. However I’d spent the week making prayers and sacrifices to the rain gods and fickle as they are, the rain gods answered on with storm Bert.

It had rained heavily through Friday night, and by Saturday morning practice, both the river and temperature had risen to much more comfortable levels, although those of us who know the Dee well knew the river level was unlikely to stop there. All rivers in the UK are extremely rain dependent. Small catchment areas generally means rivers are quick to rise as it rains and then promptly fall off as the weather clears up. The Dee is by no means the worst offender, but with the heavy rain melting the snow that still blanketed the hills we knew there was a lot of water on its way, and yet we still underestimated how much and how quickly the river would rise.

As rivers rise the racing lines down them can change quite dramatically. In the case of Serpents Tail, the rapid we were racing, the line entry to the crux shifts from hard right over towards to left. Both lines converge to fire you through the tight constriction at the bottom, but the change to that entry move is significant. As we sat in the warmth and shelter of the Chain Bridge hotel watching the river rise, the debate in the British Camp was whether it was worth abandoning all of our practice down the right and whether the river had risen enough to do a ‘hail mary’ down the left.

In a standard sprint race, you get two runs and your final time is taken as the best of the two. But with the river rising as it was, we were almost guaranteed to get a faster 2nd run. Therefore we were split between two schools of thought: Play it safe, do the first run down the right then try the 2nd run on the left, or do both runs down the right, with the 1st run acting as a bit of a practice for the 2nd.

By the time I’d made it to the start line the river had risen even further and was starting to lap around the feet of the volunteers on start duty. I decided to go for the 2nd option and when the whistle blew I set off for the left line.

Unfortunately everything went askew quite quickly. Not only does the line down the crux of Serpent’s Tail change with the level, but so does the little lead-in rapid. As the river widened and the waves grew I found myself a little lost and astray from the main tongues of flow that would carry my speed. Still I dug deep and worked myself back online for the drop into the main event of the rapid. The last time I had run the left line was well over a year ago, but my memory served

me well, as I skirted the large holes down the main ramp of the rapid. However as I crested the final wave, the river revealed that the end of the rapid, that had previously been the constriction, was now a chunky hole feeding into an undercut on the right. I managed to sneak in a right hand stroke, keeping the bow up and narrowly avoiding the undercut, but my speed stalled out on the boils behind this and I once again found myself fighting to reaccelerate the boat as I headed for the finish. It was far from a perfect run, but I now knew what I could do to fix it on my 2nd.

Alas the second runs were not to be. In the scheduled hour between our first and second runs, the river continued to rise and rise and rise. The river was no longer lapping at the feet of the starters; it was now flooding them. All the timing equipment had to be moved and the second runs abandoned. Our final times for the last of the 2024 ECA cups would now be taken off the first run alone.

It was a disappointing end to the race series but the mood quickly shifted – just because the racing was over didn’t mean the fun had to be! We quickly assembled a rag-tag group ofBritish, French, Dutch and Czech paddlers to enjoy a rare delicacy: a high-water Dee lap.

We set off in a mega-train so long that it was impossible to see both the start and end of our soggy conga line. It was hard to believe how quickly the river had risen, and the rocks that we had stood on earlier that morning to scout the Serpent’s Tail rapids were now deep under the water. We continued down the river hooting and roaring our way down the full classic course. Now free of any ill-placed rocks the Dee was a fast flowing joy ride down to Town Falls in the heart of Llangollen. Here we jumped out of our boats and went to inspect the final rapid of the river.

Town Falls is the last and largest rapid on the major section of the Dee. Once upon a time it was raced regularly by wildwater paddlers, but in recent years it had fallen out of favour due to some safety concerns and the wish to run more accessible races  (plus it doesn’t look particularly pleasant at lower levels). However as we eyed it up from the bridge it looked as if the river levels were on our side and I offered to lead Will Stevely and Jan Sindelar down. It was, in truth, the first time I’d run it in a propper wildwater boat, but the line isn’t too hard and I was feeling confident following our lap of the rest of the classic course.

As we dropped in through the entry waves, I once again got a little lost and took a tail tap through the second stopper, but I quickly got back on track. I paddled straight at the balcony that sits above the smooth line through the falls before hopping the boat onto the shelf, avoiding the slots to either side. It’s here that I realised the ‘smooth’ line we’d scouted from the bridge was in fact much bigger and steeper than I’d anticipated (isn’t that always the way!) but I planted my paddles deep and rode out the frothy rollercoaster. We collected ourselves at the bottom with big grins excitedly swapping the little trials and tribulations we’d experienced during our descents. It was the perfect end to the day and left us frothing at the mouth to race the classic on the river tomorrow!

The rain didn’t abate overnight and the river continued to rise. We awoke early on Sunday with the aim to scout the river and squeeze in a practice run before racing commenced. However, by the time we’d made it to the top of the course we received the message from the race organisers that the classic race on the river had been cancelled, the river was now too high and there were no longer any safe, access or egress points from which the race could be run to a reasonable degree of safety. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but at least there was a backup option: to run the race on the canal.

The Llangollen canal was dug around the 1790s to transport coal and iron ore from Welsh mines; the canal is renowned for its beauty (and the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct). But, more importantly it also forms a very convenient loop allowing canoeists to paddle back to the top of the river section. Our race would go down the canal from Horseshoe Falls to the Llangollen Wharf dodging such treacherous obstacles such as bushes, narrow bridges, and a horse drawn barge. It perhaps wasn’t the most exciting ‘wildwater’ course we’ve ever had, but a race is a race and we threw ourselves into it all the same.

With racing complete there was just enough time to squeeze in a sneaky fun lap of the now extremely high Dee (now at 1.78m on the gauge). We assembled a crack little squad of myself, Nicky, Jacob, Freddie, Huw, Leon and Jan and headed down to the get on. At the start Nicky gave a quick but serious briefing, a rare thing in river racing, but one that served to underline the seriousness of the moment. “This is dangerous, really really dangerous. If you swim you are going to lose your boat. It’s going to be really fun, but we just need to be extra careful”.

We eddied out and blasted down Serpent’s Tail, now transformed into large wave trains and more akin to what we had paddled in Mezzana this year than a small Welsh river. The fun continued downstream with even the flatter sections featuring enjoyable undulating waves. The river was pumping so fast it felt as if we had strapped jet engines to our boats. Perhaps my favorite move was at Mile End Mill, sneaking past stoppers and using the big pillow off the island to make the sharp right hand turn. While I couldn’t quite shake the nervous energy from knowing the full consequences of a swim, I could not hide my utter joy with a big grin plastered across my face.

We eddied out shortly above the Town Falls section. The usual get out (above the falls) was now completely underwater leaving us with little options other than to run the falls blind. For Jacob, Freddie and Huw this would be their first time running the rapid and we briefed them on the line. The decision was made they would follow Nicky down while Jan, Leon and myself would sweep at the back and with that we set off for the final rapid.

With the rising river entry holes to the falls had now transformed into large standing waves. So large that once Leon crested the one in front of me he disappeared out of view behind it. Despite their size, I navigated these waves with ease but then to my alarm I massively underestimated the size of the boil behind them. The  boil turned my boat near-sideways to the flow, and in my fight to get the bow back downstream, I didn’t manage to get over to the balcony. Below the jaws of the rapid opened up before me, it was too late. As the river dropped away I used the lip to swing my bow towards the largest breaking wave of the sequence. That brief moment seemed to stretch out in time as the wave loomed above me, and all of a sudden I was engulfed by the water.

But all was not lost. As the wave bared its teeth, I reached out with my right blade and dug it deep within the bowels of the beast, providing enough purchase to launch myself out the other side. I used the squall of waves behind it to fling my bow into an eddy on the left and regain some composure. In the eddy on the right was Leon, having suffered a similar line. We had a quick laugh together before swinging our boats round to crash through the final wave under the bridge and trundle over to the get-out. We were beaming as we walked up to the car park, and Jan later remarked it was some of the best big water paddling he’s done!

Despite the cancellation of the race the weekend had been a massive success. While Jan had taken the win in both the classic and the sprint. Alex Sheppy racked up enough points to win the overall ECA sprint cups series (in MK1), with Freddie bagging the 3rd place. Even better, in the WK1 Kerry, Molly and Emma had taken 1st, 2nd and 3rd overall, a clean sweep for the Brits! Molly and Kerry continued their ECA cup success in WC1, securing 1st and 2nd places overall. And, of course in WC2 the Christie sisters secured yet another 1st, with Iona Partick and Laura Milne hot on their heels in 2nd. Jacob Holmes and Rob Jefferies also managed to secure a 3rd place finish. Meanwhile in the classic, while I had come 2nd to Jan by 1.11 seconds, I had been the first Brit, making me the 2024 MK1 British National Classic Champion. A lovely end to a fantastic year of paddling.

We said our goodbyes, as we left the prize giving at Chain Bridge Hotel. It had been a whirlwind few days but an absolute pleasure showing our friends round (at least a few parts) of our tiny island. In 2025 we will be hosting another two ECA cup races, one in Nottingham and another on the Dee. I for one can’t wait to see everyone for next year’s adventures.