With too little water in any of our ‘local’ rivers, a few of us headed West to paddle the Teifi from Llandysul to Henllan. A quick warm-up on the lake slalom course was followed by a wake-up run down the grade 2 slalom course (where Chris was caught out by an inconsiderate rock!) and negotiation of the grade 3 ‘cauldron’ rapid before 4km of gentle grade 1 meandering through pleasant countryside. The broken weir and short gorge section at Pentre-Cwrt provided some eddy-hopping fun, then after a brief lunch stop and another 3 flat km we arrived at the grade 3+ Henllan falls. Here we deliberated whether a tree stuck in the gorge below the falls presented too much risk for us to safely run this double-drop, but when we saw two other paddlers make it look easy, we decided to take our chances and Dave, Pete, Simon and Steve made it through – with the odd support stroke for good measure – while Chris ably manned a throwline on the bank just-in-case. Thanks to Pete for leading the trip (and entertaining us with half-a-swim as he got out of his boat at the end!); to Simon for joining us on his first club trip (and for sharing his expert knowledge with us); and to Chris, Dave and Steve for making up the numbers 😉
Our next ‘easier’ trip is scheduled for one of our less-used grade 2 rivers on Sat 25 Feb; and our next ‘harder’ trip to the River Dart on Sun 12 Mar – subject to river conditions as usual.
Trip information & 2023 statistics to date:
- 12 Feb 2023, River Teifi Llandysul to Henllan, 8km
- Low water (0.5m on Llanfair gauge)
- 5 kayakers: Chris, Dave, Pete, Simon, Steve R
- 1.5 swims (Chris, Pete)
| Paddler | No of trips | No of Swims | No of Rolls |
| Anne | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Chris | 4 | 2 | 0 |
| Dave | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Huw | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Mike | – | 1 (polo) | – |
| Pete | 4 | 0.5 | 4 |
| Sam C | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Sam H | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Simon | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Steve H | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Steve R | 4 | 0 | 0 |
Thanks to Ellie Ablett for the following pics via Facebook:
