Tees and Swale

We moved up to Richmond from Leeds 2 years ago, and joined SOC last year. Although we were member of the White Rose Canoe Club in Leeds, we hadn't done much paddling apart from flat water open boat trips for some time, and even after joining SOC have tended to go on more walks than paddles.

We finally wet our boats again a few months ago and ventured back onto moving water with an SOC open boat section trip on the Tees between Winston and Piercebridge. This was a bit scary at first with a lot of bouncy rapids and quite a few rocks to steer round. The river here though is quite wide with gaps between the rapids and lots of break-out points to stop and bail!

Our fellow paddlers, Wendy, Pete, Shaun and Anna were very friendly and helpful and we soon got the hang of things again and really enjoyed the trip which proved an ideal one to regain some lost confidence. I would recommend it particularly for inexperienced or rusty open-boaters wanting to try some white water.

Shortly after this 25 & 26 March was the weekend of the Swale Charity Paddle. We were pleased when we made enquiries to find that the SOC ran 'conducted tours' of the route and we joined the last of these on the Saturday, and after paying our œ5 entrance fee were joined once again by Wendy and Shaun and one or two others. At first I thought Shaun wasn't going to talk to us as we'd turned up this time in our kayaks rather than our open boats.

This is an enjoyable grade 2/3 stretch of river with testing narrower bits but as the river was quite low it was made more difficult by having to dodge exposed rocks or often grounding on barely submerged ones. However, it was a lovely warm Spring day and we were paddling through beautiful scenery, which made up for any inadequacies in river conditions.

At Marrick Priory, Wendy and Shaun got out and were replaced by Wendy's daughter, Elly, and her boyfriend, who turned out to be John Waterson, an old acquaintance from WRCC who I found now does most of his social paddling with Leeds University where Elly is a student. Elly had an 'incident' a mile or two further downstream when she lost an argument with a fallen tree and parted company with her open boat, but otherwise we all kept dry.

Eventually, after about 9 miles we arrived at Swale View Caravan Site where Gwyneth and I had pre-arranged to finish and had left our car. Here we chatted, ate our lunch and sunbathed for half an hour before Elly, John and the others left on the final leg of the trip. We had enjoyed the trip, meeting new and old friends, and again overcoming some nervousness at getting back on white water after such a long break. However, we were by now pretty tired and stiff and glad not to be doing the 3 or 4 miles more into Richmond.

These trips were an enjoyable introduction to canoeing with the SOC, and we are looking forward to doing more, though we do tend to have to be dragged away from the central heating on those cold wet days. Anyway, Wendy, you've got our number.

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	Swaledale Outdoor Club

Tees and Swale

Richard & Gwyneth Wright