Immediately after breaking up from school, I flew to Porto (and then drove onto Spain) for the European Freestyle Championships. This was my first year in the GB team, and I was travelling reserve for the junior ladies, and competing in the king of the wave!
We (me, dad and Lowri Davies) arrived at the town late on the Saturday before the comp. It was very hot and being stuck in a car with no air conditioning hadn’t helped! After driving around the town for about half an hour just looking for the hotel we managed to find it and meet up with everyone else who was already there. I took this opportunity to find out what the wave was like and just catch up with people.
The ‘wave’ with no water – Saturday night
There was no official team training until a few days after I arrived but I was still waiting for my boat (we had given it to someone who was driving across). It arrived the day before team training started so, eager to get out of the boiling sun, I jumped on. Unfortunately this was just before the wave started to drop so I only got one surf. The next time I just flushed!
By this time everyone had arrived so team training started the next day. We were only given 1 hour on the water and, as we were the biggest team, we were split in to two halves so it was only half an hour. This session was just getting used to the wave as I kept on flushing on the far shoulder. The next day was also team training but this time we were last so we could stay on afterwards. The level that day was a great level (at least for me) so I stayed on for three hours until I was shattered! It was only interrupted at around 2 in the afternoon by about four people snorkeling down the wave!
I’m the dot on the right, spin to win!
Because only people who were competing were allowed on after that the rest of my week was spent cheering on all the competitors and checking out the local sights. I even tried squid which I found disgusting! Oh, and I also was lucky enough to be asked to be flag bearer at the opening ceremony, it wasn’t quite as grand as the olympics, but it was still another first – and great all the same.
I was still really sad that I didn’t get a chance to compete but I was pleased that I managed to see how a competition like this works and how people deal with the pressure. It was great how well we did as well especially Flea and Dave coming 1st in the senior women and C1 respectively.
Before I knew it my week was up and I was flying to Lyon with Lowri to spend a week in the Alps. We stopped off for a few days at the white water corse near Lyon. We didn’t do that much paddling though! We met up with another family so we spent most of the time going down the course in a raft, swimming to cool off and on hydrospeeds (small surfboards). These were such fun especially playing king of the wave on them.
After a few days we set off for the Alps. It took around three hours thorough the mountains. The scenery was breathtaking. We stopped of for a quick bite to eat up the top of them before setting of again, after Lowri debated leaving me up there (she has a problem with smelly kit!). We arrived at the camp site quite late, just before it got dark, and met up with the group of people we were going to paddle with,
The next day me and Lowri, along with a few other people, went to Rabioux. This was one of the biggest things I had run (’cause we have such small water in the UK). Lowri went down right in front of me and got back looped. All I remember is seeing that just as I went over and thinking great thats going to be me in a second! Thankfully I managed to boof over so I didn’t get sucked in but it took a while for Lowri to come out again.
The rest of the week was spent running the rivers around the Alps. The setting is just so nice! The only bad thing is that because the waters right off a glacier it’s freezing cold. Probably my favorite place was the Race course. I was the only one in a playboat so I was kind of worried that I would be backflipped but that only happened once and not even on one of the bigger drops!
I was sad to be leaving the Alps as there were still a few rivers that I wanted to run but we had a long drive ahead of us. I would defiantly love to go to there again and stay for a bit longer. Next time I might even get to go to Hawaii sur la Rhone!
I’m off to a family holiday in Ireland this weekend (no boating!), hope to see some of you at the Festival of Freestyle in September
Tash
x
Me in the Alps (c)Lowri Davies 2008
Photo guide to the Lower Karnali, Western Nepal.
Light streamed through the curtains of Hotel Snowland, possibly the poshest hotel in Pokhara. After the Marsyandi, Bhote Kosi, Upper Modi Khola, Upper Seti and only 9 days since landing in Kathmandu I was feeling rather tired.
“Rosie!”
“Whhhhaaaat…I’m tired, I just want to sleep and eat cake”
“Let’s go paddle the Karnali!
“Whaaaat’s …the Karnali’…?”
“180km, big water class 4, and total wilderness!”
His voice was getting more and more enthusiastic.
“Uh…How long does it take…” “7 days – but we can do it in 4!”
“But I only just got out of hospital 2 weeks ago – I feel weak.”
“But it’ll be amazing!”
“Yea, but we fly out of the country in 6 days, and what if it’s really high and we get stuck down some hideous gorge of doom and run out of food.”
“Oh come on. As if that is ever going to happen.”
“What about last year in India????”
“Oh yea…uh…but this is Nepal! It’s different! Hotter, uh, and stuff!”
“And what about my lack of medical insurance?”
“It’ll be fine – how would we contact emergency services anyway? It won’t make a difference!
“Urggg. Leave me alone. Don’t want to do it.”
“Rosie…”
“WHAT! Go away!”
“But it says in the guidebook that they saw leopards and coyotes, and eagles and monkeys on the river!”
“Did you say leopard?!
“Yes! Yes, yes I did, um, fluffy leopard and leopard kittens!”
“What! Why on earth didn’t you say so before?!”
And so not so many hours later the local bus, two tourists, one large and slightly scary bug, and two kayaks filled with noodles and tuna pulled out of Pokhara and heaved their way onto the long and dusty road West.
It wasn’t the most comfortable journey. Bags were packed solid around my legs, totally immobilising them. I fell into an uneasy stupor filled with endless cramps, dehydration and a seriously rattled brain box. About 4 hours in I woke briefly to ‘splat’ as a balloon full of cow dung exploded through the bus window onto my face. At 6 hours the large and frightening bug that had occupied the headrest of the seat in front bailed and spun out of the window. That made me jealous. After 17 hours, the bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. Unlucky as we had no water, map, or idea which side of the ridge the river was on; we had sort of expected there to be a town somewhere along the way.
Luckily and before too long, as is the way in Nepal, two men materialised as if from the dust of the road and offered to carry out boats the 2 hours down the steep trail to the river, for around £2 each.
Below is a photo diary of the rest of the trip:
Our first glimpse of the mighty Karnali.
Secretly I was quite glad that there were friendly cows at the put in, instead of leopards.
Until they tried to eat my Tevas.
We got on the river and passed through the first of many steep and impressive gorges.
I felt like a tiny paddler in an enormous gorge…hang on…
Over the first two days there were many rapids with spectacular backdrops. This is Rob on one of them.
Lines were big and open, see if you can spot Rob down the bottom of this one!
I was glad we had managed to stuff plenty of food into our dry bags; the alternative dinner didn’t look too tasty…
…and neither was the river water laced with iodine. It tasted disgusting.
To be continued in next post…
Palm and Dagger Europe are a main sponsor of the Youth Freestyle Series, which sees huge numbers of 18&under paddlers participate in coaching and fun competitions in various whitewater spots across the country.
The most recent event was on the Nene whitewater course. Thankfully this year we had exclusive use of the course as nearly 80 youngsters took to the water for ‘bungy racing’ (head to head creek boat racing with the boat attached to the shore with a bungy cord!), tips and advice on freestyle paddling and of course the freestyle competition.
Cheese and I helped out with both the morning coaching and judging in the afternoon.
Cheese demonstrating how to tricky whu.
Cheese got the crowd geared up and cheering loudly for all of the participants who competed on the ‘pool C’ feature (a slightly less intimidating feature than the pourover of ‘Pool A’ – where the rest of the paddlers competed).
Huge points were awarded for big grins, pop-outs, paddle spins and air guitars!
The winners and those who entertained the crowd the most were later awarded for their efforts with spot prizes from all of the sponsors including Palm and Dagger Europe.
There are still 2 more Youth Freestyle events of this year’s series. Visit youth.ukfreestyle.com for details.
Flea.
I’ve just finished 4 weeks of coaching and guiding in the French Alps. I met some lovely people, paddled some great rivers and generally had a lot of fun. Here’s a few photos:
Jon Warwick paddling the Fournel with a back brace on. Gnarly.
Nick Pearce and I on his virgin mission into Chatau Q. Photo: John the open boater
Nick immerging from Chatau Q with a big grin!
A week with Leeds and Regents Canoe Clubs
The CC bus overheating on the Col de Var
Surfing at St Clement
During the past month I’ve also witnessed a lot of carnage, here’s just some of the boats we retrieved!
This belonged to Cambridge Uni and was one of the many Gyronde casualties
This fortnight old Jefe was forming a nice boof ledge of the exit rapid of Durance Gorge
We pulled it out and found the contents of the drybag to be still dry, including the condoms and throwline(?!)
Half a Mystic on the banks of the Durance Gorge, which was littered with boat bits!
More photos from the last month can be found here. Thanks to everyone I’ve hung out with and paddled with this month 
I’m now on my way to Lyon for one week of training on Hawaii-sur-Rhone and the nearby White Water Course in Sault Brenaz; before flying over to Spain for the European Freestyle Champs!
See you on the water,
Lowri
Hi, as this is my first entry on the Palm blog – I thought I’d let you know a bit about me,
first thing – my name is Tasha, but you should know that by now! I’m 14 years old and I’ve been paddling seriously for 18 months.
I first started paddling one holiday down in Cornwall on a sit on top with my dad, early on I realised slalom wasn’t for me because I managed to hit the only windsurfer in the water!
When we got back home, I wanted to get the hang of steering so had a bit of coaching at the mighty Nene (which is near where I live), and on the less mighty and very flat Great Ouse.
My break through came at the Nene Youth Freestyle last year, before I tried the competition – I’d always been a bit iffy around the idea of competitions but once I tried freestyle I was hooked.
After the Nene I really started to try and get some freestyle skills, I competed again at the Nene and at HPP – and one of my coaches suggested going to the GB selections in December.
Selections were interesting, a freeeeeeeezing day at Hurley and a dirty water day at HPP put me into the team as reserve for the Europeans this summer – as I write this I’m thinking in 3 weeks time I’ll be at the opening!
In the future I want to keep learning freestyle and compete some more, I also want to do more and more river running – especially in the winter when sitting upside is not so good.
My plans for the summer are a week at the Europeans in July, then I’m lucky enough to be going back to the Alps with another Palm paddler – Lowri Davies for 10 days seeing what big water we can find.
On my blog, I’ll try and keep you up to date as I learn freestyle (as you all know it’s a long journey and I’m only just setting out) and as I try and run some bigger and bigger rivers.
Hope to see you on the water, look out for a few pictures from Europe soon
Say hi if you see me – this is what I look like! (This is me at Llangollen last winter – Palm-tastic!)
In the meantime – if you want to find out more about me, check out the interview in the current issue of Paddles magazine
See you
Tasha
xx
Me in the Alps (c)Lowri Davies 2008
