Went to Pyranha fest this year for the first time – it did not disappoint! After the Friday night pre-party (at which I got far too drunk, and consequently failed to drink much at all on Saturday night) the Saturday involved being volunteered by Lowri to enter the race, which was surprisingly fun and silly (I didn’t win anything but never mind!) followed by food in the evening and a talk about the Borneo rolling expedition from the guys who had just got back from the first leg of the trip.

This was followed up by a serious amount of drinking and silliness resulting in strong hangovers the next morning, with more boating on the Tryweryn.

Unfortunately during boating in the afternoon Dave gave his keys to Joe, who subsequently lost them somewhere, meaning after everyone else had gone home, we were still searching the car park for the lost keys. Eventually Dave had to ring someone to rescue his car and take a hire car home. Whilst we were waiting for them to arrive we headed into Bala for a takeaway! What a pair of muppets!

My Birthday invariably falls sometime quite close to Wet West, meaning Scottish boating is invariably a compulsory birthday present!

This year we went up for a long weekend of boating:

We drove up to the Meig, via an empty Tummel, where we camped and then paddled the next day, which was fun but involved quite a bit of portage faff.

We then went for a look at the Carron which was also empty, followed by driving to Glen Shiel where we cooked and ate dinner by the loch. We paddled the Morriston the day after that, and had breakfast in Mac Donalds on the Sunday (Yum/Yuck!) then went to investigate the Loy, instead of going to the Garry but this turned out to be much too high! After driving a shuttle for the Arkaig for the boys, we headed home.

Having spent a good deal of time in the Italian and French Alps this summer, the only logical thing to do was to head over to Austria with the family for yet more sunshine boating!

Austria is beautiful, with big volume Landeck and Toesens, and smaller volume Sanna (maybe my favourite river ever?!), lots of stuff up over the Swiss border, and the get out at the campsite this place is inevitably perfect!

Paddling with your family is awesome, although it has its downside of course… mum was very stressed this holiday so she maybe didn’t enjoy the boating as much as she could have. Luckily we did some walking and exploring, visiting the Kaunertaler Gletscher and other scenic areas as well as paddling!

After several weeks in quite scary levels in Val Sesia, paddling some of the hardest white water I had ever paddled, a lot of the French alps stuff that in the past had seemed a bit too much/scary was pretty chilled in comparison!

Of course that is in general, Dave and I had a scary paddle down the Middle Guil in pretty high flows, but we both survived with only a couple of portages and no swims! Otherwise everything else was relatively relaxed and I got to get on quite a few runs I hadn’t paddled before. We met up with Leeds University Club who were out there (and whom I’ll be joining in September once I go to Uni) and we paddled the Upper Ubaye, the Upper and Lower Guisane in much higher flows than I had before, the Durance Gorge, the Gyronde; which I had a very embarrassing flat water (grade 2 wave train whilst trying (failing) to do a wavewheel) swim on due to using someone else’s paddles, the Séveraisse, and the Souloise, as well as various other stretches of the Durance and Guil.

We also did a bit of Via Ferrata-ing on days off, which provided ample entertainment!

It was a very enjoyable part of the trip in which I got to meet lots of new people.

Leeds eventually left however, leaving me alone briefly before Aston University turned up, who I paddled with for a week or so. The levels by this point had become huge due to lots of sunshine and therefore snowmelt as well as substantial amounts of rain. This limited what was reasonable to get on, so we paddled bits of the Durance with freshers in tow most days, the Upper Upper Guil, and the Upper Guisane to try to avoid the scary levels.

After this I eventually decided it was time to head home as I was somewhat exhausted and needed a bit of down time!

The drive home on my own was hard work, but I successfully made it home without falling asleep at the wheel and eating only moderate amounts of crappy services food and energy drinks!

University exams for most people were over and done meaning we could set off on our road trip to Italy! Dave and I packed up the car and set off, catching the ferry and making our way through France, briefly stopping at a slalom campsite for the night (locating the unimpressed and disgruntled owners so we could pay at 8pm) before deciding to get on with the journey rather than waiting for the course to turn on the next morning.

We eventually arrived in Val Sesia, to pouring rain at 2am, pitched our tent (again campsite owner unimpressed, but this time we didn’t wake them up, just told them in the morning… can’t win!) and woke up several times during the night due to having pitched in a lake…

After hanging our sleeping bags up to dry the next morning we decided it was time to go paddling!

Due to all the rain the Sesia was huge! We decided to ‘start off easy’ and put on the Middle Sesia, I swam ~100m downstream, and ran the rest of the river down the bank whilst Dave went boat chasing. Whilst my boat was retrieved, my paddles were lost, so not an ideal start to the trip! Luckily I had brought spares, and we decided we’d paddle the Lower Sesia (even easier) tomorrow instead.

Dave’s friends Vince, James and Paddy had arrived by this point so we had a slightly more sensible group size. The Lower went mostly to plan with no swims, although a few hairy moments, with ginormous pour-overs and trees being narrowly avoided.

Luckily after this the levels started to drop off a bit, as I rather worried I wouldn’t be able to paddle very much due to everything being pretty scary!

The rest of the trip included the Val Sesia festival, in which I entered the Open boater-X, in which I came second (due to there being a grand total of two people…) and won myself a nice pair of red elbow pads and last year’s t-shirt.

We paddled the Upper (alpine sprint), Middle and Lower Sesia, the Gronda, the Lower Sermenza, and the Lower Mastallone. The boys also paddled the Sesia Gorge, the Sorba slides, the Egua and the Landwasser waterfall.

Although I paddled some of the hardest white water I have ever paddled in Italy, I spent a good deal of time feeling nervous and uncomfortable on the water, and lost a lot of confidence due to swimming a lot or deciding not run things. Overall, I’d like to return to Italy in a few years time when I feel like I would enjoy the whitewater there a little more, and find it slightly less intimidating. (Luckily I then headed over to the French Alps in Argentière to recover!)

Unfortunately not yet being a student meant I could not compete in the Universities creek race, but I went along to support my friends who were, and took lots of pictures! It was a pretty fun weekend, once again with very little in the way of water, but in contrast to my last Scotland (and Wales) trip, the ground was no longer covered in snow, but it was warm and dry… resulting in a few grass fires everyone rushed to help put out!

The first day and stage was located on Triple Step of the Etive, with a few targets people had to touch on their way down the course to make things more interesting.

There was a round for non-students (which I didn’t know about until it was too late!) with a no paddle round on Triple Step and a paddles but no deck round on the Allt A’Chaorainn.

There was an amount of rock shuffling before the actual Allt A’Chaorainn race stage due to the water being so low people were having to push themselves along on their hands. After this everyone piled down to get their times. Their times over the two Triple Step runs and two Allt A’Chaorainn runs were added up to give the overall results.

Having arrived back in the UK, I headed to Wales for the weekend with my boyfriend Dave. A harsh change to the balmy summer climate of Oz and New Zealand.

We arrived to a ridiculous quantity of snow. Dave had arranged for us to stay in a mountaineering hut somewhere up a farm track. On arrival at said quite steep, uphill, definitely buried track, we began to attempt to dig and drive our way up. We eventually got to a gate over which snow had drifted so it was possible to just walk over the top. We realised we really weren’t getting the car any further and loaded up all our bags onto our backs for the treck to hut. Turns out a mile up a track through waist deep snow is quite a long way and very hard going. Luckily we all had our kayaking kit on so we were relatively dry inside, if not exactly in the best of spirits. On reaching the hut we lit the fire and went to sleep.

We woke up in the morning to there having been even MORE snow over night, and we were pretty well snowed in!

After donning our kayaking gear to wade back through the snow which was even harder going than the night before we eventually made it back to the car. We attempted to dig it out and then reverse it back down the road, but this resulted in us skidding all over and being at risk of taking out the farmer’s walls at either side of the track. Luckily 2 guys turned up in a large land rover, and winched us out!

We set off to go kayaking and headed to the Aberglaslyn gorge, where we got on for a chilly paddle. I was quite nervous, and knew that the breaker was coming up. The guys however were just ready to go and off they went. Having caught the eddy above the drop I asked Vince if I could follow him, he replied ‘yeah sure, but I don’t actually know the line’ as he peeled out of the eddy, so left with the choice of run it completely on my own, vs follow him and hope for the best, I too peeled out of the eddy. Unfortunately, a guy in front of me had got caught in the hole, and I slowed down as I was unsure what to do faced with this! My lack of speed and lack of good line choice resulted in me replacing him in the stopper, and eventually having a rather freezing swim.

I got back on after this though and finished the short section in relatively high spirits, although somewhat chilly.

After this we went to do swallow falls but having been a little bit chilly I decided to just take pictures and warm up a little!

After my break from kayaking in Oz, I am finally at my desired destination! I arrived in Christchurch and after a few days hunting, found myself a camper van! She was briefly known as Mrs. Norris:

I then headed to the New Zealand kayak school in Murchison, where I did a course to get into the right mind set for the area, and then did a safety course because there was a bunch of us who fancied it. It was a very good course! We also spent a while hanging about here paddling together, and hucking the local Mauria Falls.

We then planned to head to the Citroen River race, so Will, Rose and I set off on our exciting road trip to the rest of South island… a whole 5 hours later Mrs. Norris broke down, the radiator overheated and she died, leaving us stranded for several days in a small town called Reefton. Whilst attempting to organise new transport we lived in a hobo tent made of taped together bin bags and tarps… good job it didn’t rain too much!

After a quick detour back to Christchurch in the complete opposite direction we did some vehicle swapping, slept in Mrs. Norris one last night on the street before finally setting off for Queenstown! Our new ride was actually a substantial upgrade:

and continuing the Harry Potter animal names, this one was aptly named ‘fluffy’. (Luckily Fluffy survived to the end of the trip, since he was a hire car this time round!)

We stopped along our journey to take in many spectacular views, and swim in a few fantastic lakes in the summer heat before we actually arrived in Queenstown, home of the furgburger, and some excellent white water.

On our arrival in Queenstown we set up camp just above the Nevis Bluff rapids (although we never actually paddled them) where a collection of kayakers were living during the summer. There was a great rope swing with a river pool to jump into, and wash in, as well as easier rapids upstream. We paddled the Shotover, Roaring Meg and the Dogs Leg.

After a short but pleasant stay in Queenstown, we said goodbye to Will who was staying in Queenstown for the ski season and we decided to head back up to Murchison in time for the Buller Fest, where we raced and partied!

After that Rose and I also said goodbye to each other and headed our separate ways.

I was then somewhat abandoned on my own, with a water shortage due to drought and a paddler shortage due to everyone having gone home. I decided to spend some time doing touristy things, from visiting pancake rocks, galloping on horse back down the beach, walking to the fox Glacier, to walks in the ‘jungle’. I also went back to Queenstown to see how Will was settling in. Eventually it was time for me to head home after an amazing trip, so I took Fluffy back to Christchurch and hopped on my plane home.

I decided to stop off in Sydney on my way to New Zealand to catch some sun. I arrived at the airport, to plenty of confused glances at my paddle bags, and ridiculous quantity of luggage, and headed for a taxi. I spent a week on Bondi beach (very typical touristy gap year!) where I got a fantastic suntan and a bit bored.

I then jumped on a package bus trip for a week of surfing on 7 mile beach at Surf Camp Australia, which was much less boring!

I had a fantastic week surfing, but this was also the week I heard the news that Matt had died. Unfortunately I could not attend his funeral as I was away, but my thoughts were with him for much of this time.

This made me think hard about my kayaking, and the dangers we face day to day, the risks that we take, and whether I wanted to continue. Luckily I am still paddling, and I suspect Matt wouldn’t want anyone to stop doing what they love because of what happened to him. R.I.P. Matt Parker.

I met Dave and friends (Harrison and James) at Gretna services where we ate some delicious crappy service food and I took on board a passenger (James) to accompany me for the journey. The drive went fairly well until well past the Scottish border, Dave texted us to say he was low on diesel but we’d stop at the Green Welly stop to fuel up. Unfortunately we discovered it was closed. After some debate over which petrol stations would still be open we opted to drive to Fort William in my car to collect a Jerry can of diesel to get us going. An hour each way, and driving the last 12 miles from one side of Fort Bill to the other with my car on empty too now was nerve racking, but successful, and we filled up, and drove back through mild snow showers and narrowly avoiding stray deer on the road.

After re-fueling Dave’s car we headed to Onich where we were staying in a mountaineering hut.

The weather was cold, with snow on the ground, leaving little water in the rivers, so we paddled on the Etive and the Allt A’Chaorainn. We also went to find some drops to ‘huck’ or perhaps ‘seal launch’ would be more appropriate! (I gave these a miss due to a sore back and general lack of desire to fall off rocks) It was Harrison’s birthday weekend, so inevitably drinking ensued, at which point being a small light weight girl vs 3 large arm ‘lads’ was a severe disadvantage, resulting in some throwing up on my part!

All in all despite the minor detour on the way up and the horrendous hangover on the way home, an excellent weekend.