Epic summer (part 2)

UK – French Alps – Lyon – French Alps – Norway – Uganda – UK – Austrian Alps – French Alps – UK

What a summer! Since May I’ve been travelling around running FlowFree trips, boating with friends, filming for upcoming projects and racing, with a very tight schedule to fit it all in! Last time I updated on here, I’d made it as far as Lyon (that blog post is here and is the reason this is called part 2!). I’m going to take you with me on a whistle stop tour of the highlights from the rest of my epic summer of paddling…

We begin back in the French Alps, around mid-June, when there was awesome river levels which were ideal for the grade 3-4 FlowFree trip – plus a few extra adventures…

Hammer time on the fournel… trying to go tandem with Geraint Anderson had rather mixed results, but was a lot of fun!

One afternoon we decided to go and investigate the top of the Biasse Valley. We looked at the so-called “Teacups” and decided they were a lot of effort for a couple of fairly manky drops, but on hiking up the other trib we found some rather exciting stuff…

Geraint Anderson getting in amongst it

One of my personal highlights from my 2 weeks here was “Guil Day”, where a bunch of us ran from above the Upper Gorge of the Guil, through the Upper Gorge, Chateaux Q, Guardian Angel and into the Middle Guil all in an afternoon. What a blast! This is one of my favourite rivers, especially in good flow.

Staircase at Twilight

Oh and I almost forgot, the annual Student Boater-x… good banter, fun races and a healthy amount of inflatables always make for a good event.

Thanks to everyone who I paddled with in France, it was most excellent. So next stop Norway and Uganda (via a couple of days downhill biking in Morzine and a very special wedding in Geneva)… Epic Summer Part 3 will be with you soon…

If you want to see more photos from the Alps (including more of the Biasse Superslide), check out my Flickr. Dates of 2013 FlowFree trips will be released soon, so if you fancy joining us keep an eye on the website and facebook page, or sign up to our newsletter.