Hot Dang Summer

The problem with summer…… is its so flippin dry. In a country where rain rules the kayaking world, this is not a great thing. I think we highland kayakers have made the best of it though….

Garry sessions galore only go so far in the quest to stay sane and soon you end up doing anything. Anything at all to get your fix. I even talked myself into walking into the middle of midge hell nowhere to spend the night in a wet tin shack with Lil Rich an Ed Smith. At least the River Kinglass that we paddled the next day was really full of water…Not! Oh well at least it was an adventure and there were some very very cool rapids up there somewhere.

The million k’s of flat water, the forever walk, no sleep, and way too many midges somehow made me forget about pretty much anything good about the trip though. Maybe I’m just being a grumpy boxtird though; I guess I’ll just have to go back to check! There was some amazing stuff up there…. I think the other two enjoyed it when I wasn’t whining too much. I guess its a good thing that the epics are way more fun to recall than the best of the best days.

Cliff huckin has been my saviour this summer and Thom Brown and I have desperately been trying to sack up. It just difficult though when you’re just not man enough. Luckily Thom had loads of Original Sauce orange energy to boost us on…. (surely you’ve seen the ad??!!)

It did rain a few times though and we got out here and there: the best trips were on the Leven. A few weeks ago I headed up with Thom and did some cool stuff on the upper section before paddling some awesomely powerful water below the End of the World. More recently I had a great trip with Ed Smith, Dave Martin, Lil Rich and Chris Radnuts. We paddled an awesome waterfall on one of the tribs then got some magic action on the river. We hucked, and survived, End of the World before enjoying the lovely lower section. Check out Ed’s post about it below…

I put a wee video together of the summer footage using some offcuts from my big giant movie project. Its all filler I’m afraid, but I can assure you that there’s no talking and there may be some rapids you haven’t seen. Bring on the rainy months and don’t forget to love yourself.

The video link…

http://www.wheresthewater.com/summer

Dave B