River Usk, Tal-y-bont to Llangynidr
Party: Andy and Ieuan, Emlyn, Nick B, Nick T, Paul Mac, John N., me (Hywel), Owain and Euros. We were nearly joined by Mark who'd driven down from north Wales after a night shift - but who'd been expecting to paddle the lower Taff. John O' was a more distant miss, having failed to read the e-mails' joining instructions to meet at 9.30 at Asda, a phone call to him at 9.40 found he'd just got up.
We got on the water about 12. Emlyn saw something interesting on the river bed at the first eddy line at about 20 seconds past 12 but failed to roll back up and swam. The water was medium high and we had nice weather for the first couple of miles, followed by a mile of rain, which got us to Mill Falls.
We took our usual route river left. I went first and took an eddy. The plan was for Paul Mac to follow me, which he did, but not to the eddy. He found a much more adventurous route down, sailing past me in the eddy and closely inspecting several rocks middish river before successfully breaking out at the bottom. Others came down well, including Ieuan on his first run of this river. Andy was to be last down and I think he visited some of the same rocks as Paul, but paying the bottom of them closer attention (cutting his knuckles and getting a few scrapes on his head to prove it). An attempted roll or two failed and he eventually swam.
Thereafter it was plain sailing, bar a couple of technical swims by Owain falling back into the river when getting out of his boat, and Euros rolling 4 times when getting caught out in his surfing attempts.
By about 2.30 we were back at the cars. John N and Nick T left us but the rest of us went for a pleasant pint in the Star, another enjoyable trip completed.
