The Falls of Lora

A few times a year the UK boating community is blessed with a selection of truly world class waves in the Falls of Lora, one of the most unique rapids of it’s kind. Combining excitement with an initial intimidation factor, due to the power and whirlpools it creates, it only takes a couple of rides to crack the surface and get a feel for this gentle giant of a rapid. Nothing about it is a constant… with a multitude of personalities, it will show up on the biggest tides of the year, often presenting surging shoulders open to every wave move in the book and at other times presenting a taunting display of ripples that require the sleek lines of a sea kayak to attain. Suffice to say that in the words of Brian Fantana ‘Sixty percent of the time, it works every time’ and my birthday weekend was one of those days that leaves you feeling high as a kite.

Soul surfing in the Axiom provides an extra hours worth of play while the waves form as beautifully smooth ripples, well before and long after the exciting surging foam piles of playboat territory come into action. The ability to carve around these waves is an addiction that sees Dave Martin (my housemate) and I always loading a surf boat and the Axiom onto the car alongside our freestyle boats.

 The main waves kicks off the action with a foam pile that forms between two large but quite different shoulders. The surfers right shoulder (in this pic) is actually the shallower and slower of the two, but it grants easy set up of most lefty moves and in a fast boat there’s no trouble bridging the surface to air gap.

The surfers left shoulder is a much steeper learning curve, which has a tendency to get you into more turbulent affairs with the eddy line behind it. The lure of the speed and bounce it offers though is always too much to resist, particularly as the waves continues to build and the shoulder is more open allowing much easier set up. The whirlpools that follow a flush rarely fail to provide entertainment, particularly for the those watching in the eddy, who tend to chant louder for down time and beat downs than they do for big air moves (this is Scotland).

 Dave getting put on a cool cycle in the whirlies while making the most of his surf boat.

As the tide moves on, two other waves come into action. Second in line is the Ultimate Air wave which pretty much does what it says on the tin.

The last to come in is the Forever wave, which is such a glassy and forgiving ripple above the main wave, that it defines the term ‘soul surf’. As I mentioned at the start of this post; the Falls of Lora hold no consistency, even on such a great day with seemingly perfect conditions the Forever wave didn’t come in, but made up for it with the main wave holding out for an extra 40 mins than expected.

Many thanks to Peter Murray and Kacie Culshaw for being there taking photo’s!!!

See you at the Moriston River Race!

Ed