We’re now back home from our Winter in Uganda. We spent the last 3 months there paddling the White Nile river, now one of the most popular winter destinations particularly for us freestyle paddlers.
It turned out to be my favourite visit there and one of the most enjoyable trips of my life! I really loved it!
Every day we’d wake up pretty leisurely, most of the time it wasn’t the best levels in the morning so we’d read, relax, look at the animals; basically just enjoying life in tropical paradise. Then when the levels were perfect it was time to kit up and surf some of the best waves in the World.
If you want to read about the waves or the condition of the river check my last blog but aside from the paddling here there was one other aspect of living in Uganda that made this trip so special…
I set out at the beginning of our time there mostly thinking of what moves I was working on, but aside from our paddling what gave me the biggest joy was having the time to think and observing the wildlife that was thriving and living all around us.
I never noticed it as much in the past, but this time a whole new world opened itself to my eyes, every day was like a wildlife film. I noticed more and more of the life that was going on all around us and it was truly a pleasure to observe. I feel that it’s so much we can learn from the natural World.
My favourite of the animals we saw were the bright blue Malachite Kingfishers that sat in the trees by the eddy, a Hornbill family with two clumsy youngsters that liked to spend their evenings stomping around in the tree branches, a thriving Monitor Lizard population with one particularly brave Lizard that liked my kayak and paddling shoes ;-)The beautiful green and red Sunbirds that came every morning from their nests to drink the nectar from the flowers, the Turaco bird with its bright red underside and distinctive call…it’s actually too many to name that were my favourites
For me it was a whole new side to Uganda that I hadn’t appreciated before. I think I spend so much of my time at home rushing around, paddling, driving, facebooking, watching youtube, emailing… that I often forget to stop and enjoy what’s around me in the real world. Going to Uganda this time really brought about an appreciation of the simple joys in my life and grew my love of nature immeasurably.
Paddling-wise we got a whole range of levels, from high Malalu to foamy low Nile Special with everything else in-between.
My goal for the trip was to get my wave paddling to the same level as my hole paddling, I learnt and understood so much on this trip, i’m not quite there yet but I left feeling satisfied with my progress and really fired up to keep on working on it.
It’s such an enjoyable & often frustrating process fine tuning moves, learning new ones and figuring out how to go bigger or do things better, but that process all together is what culminates to give the feelings that have kept me in love with Freestyle and have always provided the drive to seek perfection.
Here was no different you crash and crash trying to figure something out then the moment that you get it, it just clicks and all the frustration fades…you just feel so good. It’s why I love doing what I do.
It’s strange being back in the UK, for one Katya is in Russia so i’m on my own again now but mainly having constant power, fast internet, Tv and a food processor all at arms reach I was really looking forward too, but now I have it, the novelty has worn off after an hour. Its nice but i’m not sure I like it in the way that I used to
Being next to a great river with fantastic waves to surf on with fresh delicious tropical fruit in plentiful supply surrounded by beautiful wildlife is an experience that I think is hard to rival.
The trip really gave me a lot of time to think and ponder and I realise my biggest loves are Kayaking, the Natural World & Wildlife & being with Katya. Its fortunate that they all combine very well.
Where I want to go with these loves I’m not sure yet, but I love the natural way of life and focusing on my dreams, life seems to get brighter and brighter as the years go by and I think that kayaking or any outdoor sport makes a big difference to peoples lives. That connection to enjoying yourself in the outdoors in its various forms that kayaking allows is quite remarkable.
When they told me at School “These are the best years of your life…” I knew they were talking bulls@$t
Anyhow go paddle and enjoy yourself! Now i’m looking forward to competition season and its time to get in shape in holes, so I’d better get to work sorting this video from the trip out so I can get to Nottingham bye for now.
Since my first trip to Uganda in 2005 i’ve been out here every Winter and Katya likewise, it really is a playboaters dream Winter playground.
Last Winter we decided to take a break from uganda and headed for a month in Galicia/ Portugal instead.
So in the two years since we were last here a lot has changed on the river with the finishing of the Silverback dam. Undeterred however, me, Katya and Bren Orton decided to escape the cold and dryness of the UK and the harsh Siberian winter.
For myself and Katya we really just wanted to get on warm, perfect waves, relax in the tropical environment, watch the animals and nature thats so abundant here and feast on the many delicious fruits.
Here you can get the best banana’s, pineapples & passion fruit in the World and many other tasty fruits some unusual like Jack fruit and others more common like watermelon, all so fresh, ripe and tasty, perfect for our diet we (me & Katya) eat a raw diet of mostly fruits, so here is like a banquet for us.
The two waves we’ve spent our time on so far are Nile Special & Malalu.
Nile Special you’ve probably seen a 1000 times but at the right levels its really sick wave you can go huge on, its not the easiest wave in the World to surf as it can be a bit violent but when it greens out you get a perfect ramp to throw whatever you’d like off of.
When Special gets too foamy and the level starts to rise Malalu a big soft mostly green wave forms 40minutes paddle downstream. Very friendly and soft and in the evenings when it gets high and the wave gets steep and green it’s one of my favourite waves in the World.
Having spent the few weeks before I came here battling it out alongside Bren at a cold and deserted HolmePierrepont in Nottingham it’s so sweet to be out here with Katya on the waves I really love to paddle and best of all no thermals are necessary.
Between sessions we’ve been loving life on the second island at the Hairy Lemon campsite. It’s pretty special here as we are the only ones on this bit of the island and because of that the animals shelter there and enjoy the peace. Every day we are treated to the sight and sounds of the birds, monkeys & monitor lizards going about their daily routines. In the evenings across the little channel of river from us a rare African Finch Foot bird has been roosting! It’s a bit like being in a Wildlife documentary, I love it!
Bren, Palm’s junior star has been paddling so well out here too, he’s really getting the waves dialled in and his paddling is going pretty sick! i think he has 4 more weeks here and is pretty fired up to run some of the bigger rapids too having already been showing some of the other guys down Itanda so look out for more from him when he gets back to the UK.
Just before I came out here I drove down to Palm HQ to pick up some summer kit for the trip out here and they had a few new items to give to us to check out too;
The Paw Shoe and the Vortex Jacket
The Paw shoe is pretty much a dream for Playboaters, as lightweight and slimline as a neo sock but with a thin sole to protect your feet, we’ve been running around rough rocks everyday and squeezing into our boats and they’ve held up great to our abuse, pretty sick bit of kit for Playboaters like us.
The Vortex is a new lightweight cag that has been ideal out here to whack on over the top of my deck as it’s a bit too hot for my normal zenith shortie and I hate just paddling in a deck as too much water always gets in whatever I try (not fat enough to fill the gaps So the vortex has been an ideal lightweight solution for me and has so far kept the water out of my boat and not made me feel like i’m going to pass out in the heat every time I have a long ride.
Off to Jinja today to go get fast net and see some of our old friends at NIle River Explorers where I used to work and then paddling in paradise again tomorrow.
It’s also worth mentioning the rapids for paddlers wishing to head out here now the dam is in. Although there is no Silverback section now there is a cracking section of 50? km of river full of rapids and waves still here and with the constant high water now the big rapids like Dead Dutchman, Itanda, Hypoxia and Kalagala are at perfect levels and are getting ran very regularly by those who want to push themselves in that direction and of course there are plenty of nice grade 3 and 4 rapids and smaller waves as well as holes along the Day 2 stretch of river.
So me and Palm’s Bren Orton just finished making the Wrap Up Video of our time putting on the Kayak Display at the 2012 Tullett Prebon London Boat Show and all that was on during the show.
Our display was on for 15 minutes twice a day so this gave us plenty time to run around the show in-between demo’s to find all the activities you could try and cause a bit of chaos amongst the Yachting crowd It’s amazing what people will let you do when you have a Camera in hand.
Filmed by: James Bebbington, Bren Orton & David Bain
Edit by: James Bebbington RiverZoo.com
I met a Uk based reporter called Caroline Sandry at the Teva Mountain Games earlier this Year and she followed my progress through the event and caught up with me again just after Worlds to write this piece for the October Issue of Ultra Fit magazine:-
Our GBR team selection to pick the team to compete at next years European champs in Vienna is a 3 competition format with the best 2 results out of the 3 counting.
This weekends event at Hpp, Nottingham was the first 2 comps of the 3. One on the Saturday in the inlet gate and one on the Sunday in the Twin waves. 3 rides best 2 count.
For me I am away for the last comp of the 3 the Hurley Rodeo so I needed to do well to secure my place.
I’m not going to go into that much detail on my runs but I managed pretty sweet rides hit a few of my combos both days (2400 on Sat, 1600 on Sunday) to take the double win and give me a guaranteed spot on the team to compete at the Euros
Palm’s Bren Orton got two 2nd place finishes in the Juniors to get his place guaranteed and Palm’s Lowri Davies also made the team
The main thing about the weekend was the incredibly high standard, the level of kayaking here is phenomenal. To make the mens top 10 on Saturday you needed to score something like 1200 or more!! The Juniors and the ex juniors who have just moved to senior are killing it! Its a credit to the awesome setup of events such as the Youth Freestyle series and the great freestyle spots we have allover the UK.
All summer me, Bren Orton, James Benn’s, James Weight, Ryan Liqourish & David Wild have been paddling a lot together working on our moves and trying to develop new moves or combinations of merged moves. This event our whole group put on a sick showing nailing sweet rides as well as pretty much all of our combo’s we’ve invented.
The point we wanted to make by getting our combos in a comp environment was to illustrate the need for some additions or some changes to the current scoring. For example if you merge a Lunar Orbit with a Tricky Whu with a Loop it only gets scored a Trophy 3 (200) but if you were to do them seperately you would get 380… For hole kayaking we need to encourage people to learn these moves and go for them in comps so they need to be scored much higher in order to reward the risk/ skill involved to hit them.
Anyhow I had a real fun weekend and was super proud watching the standard of kayaking in all categories here. This last 3 years the standard and depth of talent here continues to explode, its so good to see.
Here is a video Jonny Williams put up of some of the action from Saturday:-
Pringle
All the results will be up soon on GB Freestyle website for those who want to see exact scores.
Photos by:- Simon Thorne, Chris Throne & Bren Orton
Last Saturday was the Youth Freestyle event on the Washburn River in Yorkshire. Check out the video above that me and Palms Junior star Bren Orton filmed and edited together to see what it was all about.
Its a great series of events for young paddlers of all abilities with the main aim of getting on the water having fun, getting top quality coaching and then doing some fun competitions. I’ve been at 3 YF events now and they have all been great days out showcasing an amazing array of talented young paddlers coming up in the Uk kayak scene. It looks to me like the future of British kayaking is in a very healthy condition.
Last weekend myself and Palm’s Bren Orton drove down to Broxbourne to the Lee Valley Whitewater Course to help out at the Youth Freestyle event. It was just a little one this time but great fun.
The Youth Freestyle Series actually started the year I was away living in Uganda and I remember that before I left it was noticeable that their were hardly any juniors moving up, then when I came back to the UK a year after the series first season I couldn’t believe the quantity and the quality of the many new freestyle kayakers that had come up. It has now produced some of the most talented Juniors the UK’s ever produced like Bren Orton, James Benn’s, James Weight and Matt Rodgers. Now there are many more new talented juniors coming up and following in their paths. Its really impressive to see, the organisers are doing a fantastic job.
I’ll be helping out coaching, judging and filming at all the events I’m around in the UK for including the Washburn one happening this Saturday!
Below is the video we shot of the Lee Valley event, Edit by Bren, Filming by me & Bren:-
The new whitewater course is incredible, you have two good freestyle spots on the Legacy Course and on the Olympic Course there are 2 or 3 really good spots and many good drops and features for river skills. The course is fast and steep, its really impressive what they’ve managed to create in an artificial environment!
Photos at Lee Valley below taken by:- Doug Blanks
If you’re a young kayaker wanting to get into freestyle, or even just wanting to get into whitewater check out the Youth Freestyle Series and if I’m around don’t hesitate to ask me for advice or help, I’m very happy to help you.
