“Une femme dans le bateau!”
On the 7th June, 18 of EUCC’s members headed out to the French Alps for two weeks of sun, paddling and beer! After much faffing over packing the van, we set off for Dover for a fairly uneventful ferry crossing, until we arrived in Calais and were called back to the car deck. The majority of the team managed this successfully, except one. When our queue started to move off we decided we would have to wait for Jess once we were off. Having tried to explain to a number of Frenchmen in fluorescent vests that we had left a girl on the ferry, Josh decided to help me out using some of his best French. “Une femme dans le bateau” he said. “Une femme?!….Dans le bateau!?!” repeated the Frenchman with a look on his face as if we had thrown her overboard. “Oui” I replied. “Oh”. After 10 minutes of anxious waiting Jess appeared on the ferry surrounded by the ferry’s crew who thought it was hilarious. From Calais we set off on the 1000km drive to Embrun.
“Come to France you say, beautiful sunshine you say…”

The club bus pulled up at the Rab campsite just a few minutes off Emily May’s prediction, meaning that she won the traditional sweepstake. And as we got out it began to tip it down. The Durance was very high, and when we asked the raft guide about the levels we were told that all the rivers were high and would not drop off in the next two weeks… With our spirits dampened (excuse the pun), we headed off for a run from the Rab down to Embrun. Feeling refreshed after our paddle, we set up camp and got out the stubbies.
Swimming!
Our first paddling day we spent at L’Argentiere Slalom Course, where Trip Sec Dickie gave a guided tour with a few fabricated facts about the lake, which “was built to house the 1978 Canoe Polo World Championships”. After recapping throw lines and safety we all went for a swim down the course to practice throwing lines for each other. Some had to swim further than others (Phil), but after a while everyone got the hang of it. All ready to fish people out, we started sending people down it, which resulted in some more throw line practice, but thankfully less than anticipated!
“Good job it’s a nice eddy”
Over the next few days we paddled pretty much every section of the Durance, as river levels were still high, and we wanted the less experienced paddlers to get used to the big and bouncy Alpine rivers. On one particular descent of the Sunshine Run, we found ourselves approaching a big cushion wave, which led into a nasty eddy full of recirculating trees on one side, and a cliff on the other. A few of us ferry glided across, but with fears that the others may not make it, they set off on a hike to find a better place to cross. They ended up climbing a cliff, and Hugh and I were sat in an eddy for long enough for us to make this short film. You’ll hear Hugh demonstrating how to do “a Ben Ames/Russell”. This refers to the time (earlier in the day) they watched the club paddles float straight past them at the St Clement Slalom Course. Apparently they decided it wasn’t worth picking them up…

“EUCC REPRESENT!”
Due to the time spent in certain eddies and portaging, we managed to miss the Student Boater Cross, but still headed out for the party. After taking advice from people there, we went for pizzas and sat in a pub with a French man who got on well with Emily!
Back at the slalom course we met our Scottish counterpart, Edinburgh University Canoe Club (EUCC), who appreciated our Party Bus stash. When we eventually tried to head to the party, we were stopped by the rising water levels, which had flooded the track.
“Confluence – the flowing together of two or more streams”

With the weather conditions and water levels being less than ideal we had not managed to do any particularly demanding rivers, so we seized the opportunity of a slightly drier day, and half the group headed out to do some via ferrata, and Em, Hugh, Dickie, Andy, Crazy, Phil, Noah and Pete headed out to look at the river Gyr. A few of us decided to paddle it, and Crazy took a nasty swim but came out unscathed, to see everyone else running down the bank to fish his boat out of the barrage. After quite a long rescue mission we re-grouped but had lost one of our members, with a worse than average sense of direction. Emily had somehow managed to walk down the Gyr, and then turn around and walk up the Onde. You might ask how…we did. She got the t-shirt she deserved. Later in the day we headed to the Gyronde, which was a fun grade 3 boulder garden that ends up at L’Argentiere Slalom Course, where we ended our day’s paddling.
Hugh – “I can cartwheel any boat in the club… almost”

On our last paddling day we headed out to Briancon Gorge for a run down with the more experienced members of the club. This was a great section of continuous grade 3, which everyone enjoyed. We had one hairy moment when Phil decided to head for the buttresses which had caught out his wife the previous year, but after a few moments pinning, and a couple of roll attempts, all was well! After this we headed back to L’Argentiere for a quick paddle, where I think it’s fair to say Hugh got slightly overconfident. When attempting to cartwheel the Java in the top hole on the course, “something went wrong”, which led to hours of driving up and down the Durance looking for the Java, until eventually someone spotted it pinned against the back. Chase boat extraordinaires, Andy and Pete, trekked through the woods, to fish the boat out. There was time to pose for a photo…

It was an awesome trip, and I can’t wait to get back on a river!

Thank you to all the people that made it happen…

• The outgoing committee, particularly Em, Dickie and Hugh who put lots of time into organising the trip.
• AS Watersports for supplying us with some shiny new kit, and an awesome discount night before we went.
• For Your Eyes People who did a brilliant job designing and supplying our stash.

This social was kindly held at Josh Cleall’s house and he was a wonderful host. As you crossed the threshold into the house you felt like you had crossed the border into Mexico! We were greeted by an authentic Mexican with a real handlebar moustache (no eyeliner involved!), Mexican music, cheesy nachos and more than enough dip.

Sat outside we couldn’t resist a bit of EUCC banter, consisting of playing with washing line pegs. I think the record has to go to Hugh Woods who managed to get Emily May with a train of about 5 pegs on front of her Sombrero.

Kindly supplied by Hugh, Jess and Jacky was a Piñata; people took it in turns to try to rupture it after being spun round whilst people chanted “SPINNY SPINNY HITTY HITTY”. There were a few near misses with the table and people’s faces but it was defiantly worth it. Overall a fun night… bring on next year!

Sounds great, and the feedback we’re getting from other clubs has been very positive. The site is very new, fresh, and itching to be (ab)used, so sign up and get chatting!

Hope to see you online soon x

Most of us assembled at the cave at 9am to sort out boats, when we were told that the bus wouldn’t start. After failed attempts to jump-start the bus, (because as most of us know, pushing it up a hill doesn’t generally work) the RAC was called. Unfortunately, “Heather” couldn’t pull through so we had to set off in 5 cars instead. We managed to make it a few miles outside of Exeter before smoke started billowing from under the bonnet of Noah’s car. After some further faffing and another call to the RAC, we left the Exeter area with an impressive journey time of 1.5mph. Luckily, we did manage to make it to Wales in time for a few hours drinking round a campfire before bed. There was even time for some of us to learn how to open and shut gates…

Saturday started with a lovely wake-up call from Noah, and a few privileged people were filmed with his camera. We spent the morning scouting out the upper section of the Tryweryn river and sending the A-Team down the white water course. In the afternoon, the less confident paddlers tried out the lower section of the river, which was very enjoyable and a great chance to practice eddying and ferry-gliding skills. We then went into Bala for some hard-earned fish and chips. Saturday night banter around the campfire was hilarious – some very funny jokes were told courtesy of Thomas.

On Sunday we all ran the upper section of the Tryweryn. Things were going well with only a couple of swims until the second group reached the big wave under the bridge. Kate found out that the hole in the wave on river left was very sticky and her heroic efforts to paddle out and high-brace resulted in a dislocated shoulder. She handled the 5+ hours of waiting in A&E and having her shoulder put back into place exceptionally well, plus the loss of her new cag and thermals! A few paddlers down, the rest of the group decided to give the upper section of the Tryweryn another try. A couple more swims, including Sarah’s long trip upside down as she struggled to get Jess’s deck off of the acrobat, proved that EUCC keeps paddling no matter what. Despite the problems, everyone seemed to enjoy the weekend and I think we’re all agreed that it should become an annual trip. Thank you to Noah for organising the whole weekend, and to Hugh and Pete for getting “Fix Up, Look Sharp” permanently stuck in my head!

There were a few first-timers at surfing amongst us, and they all did very well. A fair bit of time was spent out-back waiting for the perfect break and drifting further and further from the car park.

When we finally came back on to dryland, we went for a quick dip in the appealing, but very cold water, this was followed by much splashing and dunking, as well as try to jump over incoming waves.

Amateur hour goes to JC for walking the mile or so back to the car park but not taking his boat, leaving someone having to carry their boat and drag his boat all the way back, no hard feelings!

This fantastic day ended with fish and chips in Braunton and a pint at the impy. Now I need to start some revision….

Saturday started with a 7.30am wake-up and some tough games against Leeds, Cardiff, and Newcastle. They didn’t take the view that girls should be let off easily so well done to Kate “Mad Dog” and Jess who both managed to roll up after some pretty nasty tackles! Our games always attracted a good crowd as lots of people wanted to cheer “Come on My Face!”. We then got into the party mood using Southampton’s AGM. Josh Cleall won Safety Sec, Paulo won Competitions Sec, and Hugh stripped off in order to convince Southampton that he was the perfect person to become their next Captain! He also had an inspirational speech that went something along the lines of “more good things, less bad things, and lots of balloons”. After some more drinking we hit the marquee to show off our insane moves and conga around the bemused onlookers. We kept the party going long after most other universities had gone to bed by playing Chicken and (UmmYa?!). Some people got a little over-excited and fold-up chairs were broken…

Sunday started with games against Bristol and Hertfordshire, in which we managed some great goals from Hugh, Kate, Phil, and JC. We then organised a Plastic-Fantastic tournament in which we came a respectable 2nd! There was some doctoring of the numbers on the buoyancy aids – Hugh and Jams became 118 118, and 999 and a penis were also included. After a brief game of chariots and Jams (the NSR rabbit) picking me up and dumping me in the lake we packed up to go home. Our next My Face escapade will be against Southampton sometime in the summer term… Until then, lots of surfing!!

It was a long and arduous quest, filled danger and adventure…..who am i kidding it’s the Exe! We started by running the Tiverton stretch in 40 Minutes, which was a fun warm-up to the further 18 odd miles yet to cover. The order of the day was mainly paddle, keep paddling, then paddle some more…. and repeat. The few weirs we came across provided some light “entertainment” with Crazy getting stuck on some metal at Thorverton Weir and Jenny getting turned over and sustaining some minor injuries on a rather rocky weir just outside exeter.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it, but i think we all agreed that we wont be doing the whole thing again any time soon

Cheers again to JC Crazy Dave, Jenny and Kate for keeping me company on the 20+miles, and cheers to Bus wanker Dave for taking us to Tiverton, and picking us up from Double Locks. Also thanks to everyone who sponsored me, in all I raised about £120 for The New Build Uganda.

So i guess we’re all be learning to Surf after Easter, so i’ll be seeing y’all on the beach.