After the lack of paddling while up in scotland the opportunity came for to spend the weekend up in north wales with Bromley Canoe Club. Unfortunately yet again it was looking like there would still be a complete lack of water, but knowing that at least the River Dee would be running I packed my Playboat and in the early hours of Saturday Morning headed to the bunkhouse they were staying at.

The Bunkhouse was one I stay at regularly, so regularly with the different paddling groups that lydia the owner wanted to check which name they knew me by “Potter”, “Harry” or “James” as well as find out the details of what had happened to Richard’s van while up in scotland. After much faffing and breakfast we headed to the River Dee, which in the past I have only paddled in low or very high water, but this time it was a good level, providing some good play waves and serpents tail almost managed to back loop me, but I managed to keep my head dry.

With the Trywern not releasing for the weekend and only a bit of rain for the night, we were expecting to end up back on the Dee again tomorrow, so I chose not to run town fall instead opting for one of the many river left lines down under the bridge, to get back to the car a bit quicker

So came Sunday morning, and it turned out there had been a fairly large amount of rain over night. It soon became apparent as we were traveling around that the rivers were high, as we saw groups paddling though fields alongside the A5! After looking around for a bit we settled on running the River Conwy, which made me wish I had packed the River Runner - as the playboat (Dagger Kingpin) was hardly the ideal boat to be takling this in, especially as we watched the gauge under the bridge disappear bellow the water line

The river turned out to be good fun, the river had become big and bouncy which was great fun in the playboat, testing my ability to stay upright all the way along. The stoppers produced some entertaining moments, which combined with the eddy lines ensuring I saw a lot of the sky on my way down the river. We had a few swims in the group, which produced some challenging boat chases especially in my little playboat searching for eddies behind trees and rocks that are normally on the bank.

All in all it turned out to be a great weekend, maybe next time I’ll think to pack my river runner just incase it rains in wales!