DATE: Saturday 1st May

LOCATION: Holme Pierrepont, Nottingham

DISTANCE: 700m over and over

PHOTOS: KEW Paddlers Facebook Page

As mentioned in our previous post Restrictions Lifting, We’re Back! it was time to dust off the cobwebs and scrub up on some of our skills this month, its also a good opportunity for us to get used to new personal boats some of us had purchased. The first trip of the month was HPP, the 700-meter, grade 3 white watercourse. As always this course is always interesting to navigate with the amount of slalom paddlers training.

DATE: Saturday 22nd May

LOCATION: Afon Gam, Dolwen Bridge to Llanerfyl

GRADE: G2 - 3 depending on levels

GRADIENT: 7m/km

DISTANCE: 6 Miles / 9km

TIME: ~2 Hours at a slow pace

PARKING: Sensible parking required on road at get in/out

GET IN: ///observers.certified.remotes

GET OUT: ///modifies.echo.tech

PHOTOS: KEW Paddlers Facebook Page

GUIDE BOOK: Page 140, The Welsh Rivers

Second on the trip list was Afon Gam, a river we had never paddled before, we were very much hoping for Grade 3 high levels but we had missed the peak of the runoff and we got a disappointing grade 2. Non the less it was a new route to test out, discover its dangers at low levels and generally just enjoy the weather and something different to paddle.

The intention was to go and do a couple of fast runs down the high levels on the Dee afterwards as we hadn’t got the levels on the Gam we were hoping, unfortunately, Mike snapped his paddle and with that in mind not wanting to rush to purchase any available paddle in a local store we called it quits and headed home.

It’s definitely on the list to do again at high level, we’ll just need to be very cautious of the overhanging trees as some of them will create some interesting entrapment issues.

DATE: Monday 31st May, Saturday 5th, Sunday 6th June

LOCATION: KEW Paddlers, Wansford Lock

DISTANCE: Not Recorded

PHOTOS: KEW Paddlers Facebook Page

Making full use of the weather and knowing we had trees in the river and large pieces of rubbish lurking around the island we had a crew weekend to sort these issues out and to give the seal launch ramp some TLC. It also gave us chance to catch up as we haven’t seen each other in so long due to covid rules.

We’ve also found another tree that needs clearing on the backwater for the Yarwell Lock loop we do, we’ll get this cleared before our September event as it doesn’t make passage very easy for us to bring you all down. It can be portaged but running the backwater weir is way more fun and we’d like to continue doing that.

Lots of people were out and about on the water these days so we got a chance to chat with several new people. We’re hoping we some of you on the September weekend!

Lastly while browsing Facebook looking for new places to post and to paddle, we came across the Nene River Kayak Litter Wombles, being dedicated to clearer waterways ourselves it was great to see other people as keen as we are. Go give them a follow and join in, we intend to get involved in a group capacity on their weekend outings.