Another first for me – Ellie organised a club trip “Llangurig to Rhayader 17 Km Grade iii (iv)
Hopefully we will have some water in 2007. This is a scenic and exciting river with many small rapids and 3 major drops.
It is suitable for most of the club and all at low water. Beautiful scenery, despite the wind turbines and a good chance of seeing Red Kites” and having not paddled the Upper Wye before I decided to go along. Despite fears of it turning out like the excruciatingly long and dull Middle Wye trip I did last autumn this one turned out okay.

Paddlers: Lots – I drove Vicky and Lee down. Dave S brought some Pathfinders. Roger and Alistair paddled open boats. There were many others as well.

Level:Rising! the guage was at 0.74 at 6PM on the Saturday evening It then rained all night and all Sunday on the way home sections of road were submerged.

Conditions: Windy and rainy

Incidents: Alistair had a few issues with his open boat, swimming at the ‘catherine wheel’ rapid and getting into difficulty lowering his open boat down the coffin with a line. The two pathfinders with us took a couple of swims and one of them got off at the halfway point, the other doing the lot including the grade 4 town falls.

Post Paddling Activities: Getting home quickly – it was cold and wet!

Notes: The river rose an awful lot whilst we were on it.

Photos: Lee took some pics. If I can get copies of them I’ll link or post them.

Upper Wye details from UK Rivers Guidebook: Here