From Andy. (All his own spelling):
"Six of us went [to Symonds Yat], Emlyn and daughter, Andy Peate and Jordan, Ieaun and me.
Weather was Sunny if a bit overcast but fairly warm and comfortable for a days paddling
Set out at 9 am, or was that 9.15 am Emlyn!, anyway we met at ASDA’s car park and trailed off from there. 50 minutes later we arrived at an almost deserted Symonds Yat car park. Water level was fairly high covering the first step on main landing/launching area. We got the safety bits out of the way and preceded to launch boats in various ways, everyone except me opting for the more sedate and conventional way of launch, while I went down the shoot! All I can say is the bottom bit hurts! We paddled up to the ROCK up stream where Andy Peate and I launched ourselves off the Rock followed by Jordan and Ieuan jumping in off the rock without boats several times. Current was quite strong around the base of the rock. We had to be careful with the kids as they would have been pushed in to a strainer just down stream of the rock. All passed without incident. Emlyn passed up the opportunity of lunching his aircraft carrier off the rock, thank god, it would have taken all of us to man handle it up there!
After that excitement we moved down stream to the grade 2 stuff. Emlyn stopped to change boats with daughter as he felt a little venerable in his barge and elected to paddle the Diablo. Pushing on (anyone want to buy a barge?) we arrived at the rapids with the plan to make the available eddies, however, the kids had other ideas, much more fun to blast through being chased by the adults! Anyway the first run was fine no casualties or swimmers. We started to chat to paddlers from Marlow Canoe Club who were down for the weekend. We decided to run one of the smaller rapids closets to where we had stopped to give the kids a chance to get on a wave. All was going well until Emlyn’s daughter fell off the wave and went swimming. The nice chaps from Marlow helped us out with rescuing kit and live stock. Eventually after having to swim back across the river to be reunited with her boat Emlyn’s daughter made back across to where the rest of the group where on the sandy beach at the bottom section of rapids. We decided to re-run the whitewater section again with a game plan in place! While Emlyn and his daughter elected to go to the PUB!
We carried our boats up the short section to re-launch via Seal! Various incidents with boats getting stuck in the mud due to the water depth being so shallow, after that we headed with children to the rapids. All went well for the first eddy then kids decided that they didn’t want to paddle so hard and drifted off through the rest of the whitewater until they reached the eddy just above the last rapid, all except Jordan who went screaming on by caught hold of a branch to stop him going in to the stopper and ended up swimming and again making the acquaintance of those awful nice chaps from Marlow Canoe Club. Once all the rescues were over we headed back to the launching area for a bit of messing about down slides and rolling, then a spot of lunch and of course a swift one in the Saracens Head before heading for home. Good day had by all. Thanks to all for attending. Need more days like this one! "
From Matt, a report on a surfing trip on Easter Monday (17 April):
"Myself, Piers and Phil met at Rest bay car park at one o'clock. Got changed and on the water for about half one. Choppy messy surf of around 2 - 4 foot waves. Great fun that said, the condition of the surf kept all the surfers away. Piers and Phil caught some cracking waves and had a great introduction to surf. No great calamities to report of.
Followed by coffee and cookies in the cafe. Tanned faces and aching muscles all round."
