Boxing Day

Looking slightly sophisticated in the car park

I've been out paddling again today. I like this Christmas thing, there is so much paddling that can be done and there are nice shiny new pieces of kit to try whilst doing it all. For me I could try my nice Palm Stikine Extreme Suit, which is that new water just beads off it, for others it was new boats and the like. Oops... I've still not mentioned where we were paddling. It was Halton again. There hasn't been much water around recently and it would have been a bit of gamble driving higher up the Lune Valley so we took the easy option and had an even lower day at Halton than last Sunday.

Me testing the dry suit

I'm the small blob in the centre of the picture about a third of the way down from the top

There were quite a lot of people on the water today so I tried my best to avoid them all as I wanted to paddle on my own and have some me time on the water. I don't know what it is, but when paddling on your own everything just feels so much different. There is that added bit of danger that if the s@&t hits the fan your on your own and you've got to sort yourself out and I must admit I like that added edge.

Getting back in the boat after heading higher up the river

Today was probably the first time that I've headed so high up the river and that was just to avoid the masses that were also heading upstream. However, as I headed further up river I did discover some new features that I've never really exploited before. They weren't great, but it was something new.

Me being a chimp

As the river was so low today one of the worst holes on the river came into play. When I say worst I mean worst for catching, not the worst for playing. In fact I nearly threw down my first front loop so it mustn't be that bad, however to get in the hole you have to drop in from above, which involves a bit of a walk back upstream. This for me is quite an inconvenience as I've got to deflate my Happy Seat and Thruster and then re-inflate them when I get back in.

More pictures and a couple of videos can be found here.

Good lines, stay safe and see you on the wet stuff...
Iain