Griff’s adventure in Aberystwyth (or why we’re not in Pakistan yet)

Joe Rea-Dickins, James Smith and Chris Griffiths from Aberystwyth University were scheduled to begin their 5 month expedition to Pakistan, India and Nepal last monday. Here’s why they didn’t:

On the night of the 3rd of June, a higher power of some kind came to Griff in a dream. The mysterious voice told him that next week, Aberystwyth would experience a great flood. ‘But we fly to Pakistan tomorrow’ pleaded Griff.

‘Yeah, whatever’ replied the voice. And then it was gone.

Based solely on this information and no other organisational factors whatsoever, we decided to postpone our Pakistani adventure until the 21st June. That way, we get big levels in Wales and even bigger levels in Pakistan; win-win.

On the 9th June Mid-Wales experienced the biggest levels that any of us had ever seen. Quickly deciding that the Rhuddnant would be ‘a bit silly’, we headed for the upper-Ystwyth; a bouncy 3/4 on a regular flow, the river was almost two times higher than any of us had paddled it before. Finding that the river just kept on going, we walked up as far up as we could and ran a section which we’ll call the ‘upper-upper-Ystwyth’

 

 

However, due to the grey skies and horizontal rain the photos weren’t coming out as well as we had expected. To add a little ‘artistic flair’ and ‘excitement’ to the composition, Joe suggested that Griff capsize at the crux of the rapid and then leave his boat and paddles to explore the river alone. He naturally obliged and his boat is currently on display, wrapped around a tree towards the end of the run.

 

‘That colour boat simply didn’t go with my new drysuit’ he remarked. ‘It had to go.’

Simply put, we had a great final day in Aberystwyth on our local run and we hope that you enjoyed the floods too. In a little over a week, we’ll be heading out to Pakistan and we’ll post updates here when good stuff happens. We’d really like to thank Palm for their support. Have a great summer!

James

p.s. Here’s a quick video that Joe threw together on a steam powered laptop: