Featured image of post Last minute trip to Dartmoor

Last minute trip to Dartmoor

The original plan for the weekend was for a BVCC club trip up to Yorkshire to sample some of the white water that is on offer up North, but it wasn’t too be. Not to be put of by the lack of water up north arrangements were for a few of us to head south instead, and down to Dartmoor. With the rooms booked in a local Travelodge on the Thursday night, and rain forecast it was looking like a good shout.

On the Saturday morning every meet in the little chef next door for some breakfast and Wifi signal so we could check the gauges and hut out a river. Unfortunately there hadn’t been as much rain as was hoped, and the gauges were still showing on the low side, but we decided to head to the middle Tavy which wasn’t far for the Travelodge we were staying at in Oakhampton and go for a look at least. The section in town looked like it was running, so we left my car at the bottom and headed upto the get on.

While all the travel faffing and driving had been going on the heavens had opened, little did we realize it but these little storms would keep going all day. With the river levels on the rise we were of, during the time we were on the water the level went from scrape/low on the rainchasers website to high.

The middle Tavy is a rewarding run, with its more or less continuous grade 3 water all the way down, most of which can be inspected from the boat, giving a good fun run. Most of the group had never run the river before, and those of us that had, couldn’t remember it, so gave a good opportunity to practice those river leading skills on some interesting water.

After running the river, and popping into Tavistock town center to get some food we went down to have a look at the Upper section of the River Plym. The section was running at a high level, but we only went for a look this evening.

After heading back to our accommodation, we spent an hour consulting which pub to visit for food asking the opinions of many including google, and some locals only to decide to spend the evening at the pub over the road.

Again over night there hadn’t been much rain, and by the time we got up on Sunday morning everything was covered in frost. With little rain forecast for the rest of the day we consulted the rain gauges, and settled on heading out and paddling the Lower Section of the Plym.

This lower section of the Plym, was of similar difficulty to the section of the Tavy we paddled on the Saturday with a grading of 3/4. The run starts of at it most difficult, with some of the rapids hard to see down, but then settles down into a nice run. At the level we ran it the group thought that a bit more water would have been beneficial, with a few of the rapids felling particularly rocky. All in all it was a good run, that we completed quickly as it was only a few km long.

After we decided to Pots Weir in Exeter to have a look at the play feature there, but we bravely decided to head into the pub there, as the weir was running very high after all the rainfall they have seen down that was in the last few weeks.

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