Bank holiday paddling the Loki

 My club, Soak, always does a long weekend away on this bank holiday, and this time, we went to the mighty Tryweryn, but I wasn’t able to stay the whole weekend as I had to work the Sunday and Monday.
I packed my van Thursday night, so I could go to work on Friday, and pick up the Loki and set off for Wales as soon as work finished.

I was really looking forward to paddling the Loki on the Tryweryn, as I think it’s the perfect boat for the river, as its not big enough to need a creek boat, and I don’t really want to trash my play boat on all the rocks, and the Loki is sort of in between them, as its still long, so has so good speed, but its low volume slicey ends mean it can still be fun, throwing stern squirts into the flow and carving into the eddies as well as even throwing a few ends on the flat, where its deep enough!

Having paddled the river in my plat boat many of times, it felt strange being in a longer boat, and took me a while to get used to it, as I had to paddle slightly differently.
I didn’t need to put as much effort into making the eddies, as the Loki is a lot quicker and longer, which meant making the eddies super easy.
I also found that I had to really carve the boat into the eddies, which was super fun, as you gain the speed in the flow then carve the boat into the slack water, it felt so smooth and quick.

When we got down to the café wave, I couldn’t wait to see how this boat would react on a wave, I was expecting it to be pretty good, as I had managed to surf a few of the smaller waves on the way down with ease, where is in my play boat, I just couldn’t stick on them.

 I wasn’t wrong!

It was so much fun just carving from left to right across the wave and it felt really stable when on edge. I could have stayed there for ages just surfing away, but we had a swimmer, so I had to go help chase boat, and as soon as we picked up all the pieces, I walked straight back up to the wave to carry on surfing, until I got hungry and decided to meet the rest of the group for some lunch before heading down to run the lower.

Pete