Canoeing[!]

The weather in Cumbria has remained decidedly arctic for the past fortnight and today I was off canoeing with the University. We had been told to bring kit for heading off into the mountains to enjoy the snow, but we also had our canoeing kit. We decided to make use of this canoeing kit by heading to the River Eden to paddle the Lazonby to Armathwaite section.

An ice chocked River Eden at Lazonby.

We left a vehicle at Armathwaite and the river was frozen. It wasn't frozen from bank to bank; there was a channel through the middle stanchion of the Armathwaite Bridge so we headed upstream to the get in where we were greeted with an ice chocked river. However, it was flowing so we got on and headed off downstream.

Trying to make downstream progression through the frozen River Eden.

We were doing quite well, making our way downstream, until we came to one rapid. We ran the rapid and then were greeted with a river wide iceberg. We applied the power, road up over the ice and came to a grinding stop. For the next thirty minutes we smashed, slid and sweated our way through the ice blockade, back to the bank to reassess the situation.

In training for the North Pole: heading back to the minibus after admitting defeat with the frozen River Eden.

After assessing the situation we decided we were onto a looser, having only made a kilometer of downstream progression, and we were about to enter a section of river which hardly gets any sun, meaning more ice. In order to escape from our little predicament we turned the canoes into sledges, and acted as a pack of huskies in order to drag the canoes for a kilometer, back up river, to the awaiting minibus.

More pictures of the day can be found here.

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