Ready, steady….. Kristian decided upon the Tay at Stanley. Two of his mates from sooth also joined us, all the more experienced people to scoop up the swimming novices!
Having now an experience of what river paddling was like, the two river novices rated their confidence at about 10% of Saturday’s level and there was much nervous paddling to begin the day. Ansgar got in his swim early to loosen himself up for the interesting bit, while I waited until slightly further downstream to do a stupid thing and ended up sideways to the wave, which promptly threw me in. I tried a couple of failed rolls which annoyed me greatly.
Hanging around in an eddy while the experts show off 
Kristian looking cool
”Look where I paddled!" 
Ansgar sets off down the Tay
Kristian plays at the weir
Ansgar and Peter watching from a safe eddy After that, I was quite warmed up too and really enjoyed the next section down to Thistlebrig. Because the water was quite high, we had loads of really fun bouncy waves to go over and I wished I had my sea boat (well, I wished I had someone else’s plastic sea boat) with me. The final big wave at the take out was excellent and I was happy when I found myself leaning downstream!
I could have happily gone back to the start to run the whole thing again but we had a canoe polo league to get to….
Chinwagging down stream The river novices ended the day tired but happy and I think would both like to get more river experience. A big thank you has to go to Kristian for taking us out and being happy to scoop us up when we swam. A special mention has also to go to the 4th member of the party, Peter, who appears to be made of teflon and remained bone dry throughout!
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