Inflatable Adventure Paddlers!

Hello All!

Myself and some of the Palm crew have just returned from a fantastic weekend at Simon Westgarth’s Gene 17 Adventure Paddlers weekend on the river Dart.
I’m sure the rest of the team will update on the events of the weekend soon, but I couldn’t resist getting in there first to tell you about the most fun thing I have done for ages!!

I’m not even really sure how it came about, but I’m sure it was something to do with the combination of my own withdrawal symptoms from rafting in Costa Rica and a team of adventurers freshly returned from the jungles of Indonesian Papua. The result was a fair band of pirates (Pete Wood, Chris Easterbrook, Dave Fairweather and myself) at the put in to Dart Meet with one borrowed raft and a broken pump. Without even trying we somehow managed to get some friendly paddlers to help fix the pump and inflate the whole raft such was their desire to watch us descend the river, and no doubt provide them with hours of guaranteed entertainment! On the 50m walk to the put in we picked up two more heroic, but, as became apparent later on, rather disobedient crew members. They went by the names Luke Farrington and Tim Burne and had spotted the fun a mile away, immediately ditching their kayaks to join in!

I’m not sure what happened to the kayak race down the mad mile that was roughly planned for 2.30pm (did we hijack it?!) but we ended up being lead down the section by Simon Westgarth and being surrounded flotilla of around 40 curious kayakers, who I’m certain were hanging around to see a pin, a flip or a swim.

For some reason I decided that where the raft was going was my responsibility and turned into a surprisingly bossy assertive guide. But with such a dream team there was no way we could fail! We all turned into children again, the whole experience was a fantastic emotional rollercoaster of adrenaline, uncontrollable laughter, whoops and shrieks as we whirled down the river over holes and ledges. Wicked rumours were flying around the kayak flotilla that there were expressions of pure terror etched into the faces of those in the front of the raft on the precarious lip of Euthanasia and Surprise Surprise, however we all know that rumours are never true…

We managed to descend the whole river successfully, with only a few pins and swims. The aforementioned Tim Burne soon became the most unintentionally disobedient crew member by perfecting the art of tumbling from the raft disconcertingly slowly, and in such a way that we still just couldn’t seem to grab him in time.

Luckily pictures of the fun, courtesy of photographer Kev Winsor (who can be found at Paddle Photos on facebook) were taken, so enjoy. Check out the awesome splat at Lovers Leap – they boys were very happy with that! I hope it inspires you to try rafting – just because it is so ridiculously fun!

Cheers and thanks to all.

Rosie