Fluid Kayaks Team

You'll be fine!

At Friday 7th November, Lennart, Harrie, Sven and Rein took off for a week creeking in Scotland.

The week before we went, we got emails from the locals saying that it was freezing instead of raining and the rivers were getting low and cold. But things can change in just a few days…

So off we go, with a bus full of Fluid Kayaks and a odd kayak from a different brand. The owner of that one will have it’s own Fluid real soon, because of a very special promise, but that’s for another story…

At the ferry from Ijmuiden tot Newcastle upon Tyne, we had a little problem. One of us, I won’t tell his name, (it was Harrie), had a passport wich has passed the expire date. So he had to stay a day longer on the mainland to arrange the paperwork.

We decided to wait a day in Newcastle to pick him up the next day. So we followed a car with a white water kayak on the roof and found ourselves at the Tyne Tour Festival, a mega kayak event with more than 1000 paddlers!

We did some paddling on the Tyne, drank some beer and promoted and helped selling some Fluid Kayaks from our UK dealers. Yes, we know, as Fluid Kayaks representatives, what we have to do when the opportunity is there! (drink some beer)

Finally we could pick up Harrie and went for Scotland! As a warming up we paddled the Falls of Leny, a nice grade 3/4 rapid. Everybody did well, except myself having to roll in my Fluid Solo small C1 conversion. I like it to make things difficult for myself it seems.

Monday the 9th. The real stuff; The Nevis! Well, it didn’t freeze, it did rain, and it did rain A LOT! And the rain came horizontally! So the river didn’t look anymore like those nice pictures we saw on the internet and in the guidebooks! A monstrous maelstrom was rolling down the hills. But our Scottish friends keep on telling “You’ll be fine” all the way up to the put in more and more. And we…well, we didn’t say anything at all anymore.

We all got a beaten in every way you can image, Boulder Blast was playing with Lennart like he was just a leaf. Sven had material bad luck. Harrie and myself had to walk around to much and could only get back on the river by unbelievable high Himalaya starts. Which we did, but we shitted in our pants more than once.

Yeah, you’ll be fine…

To get the smiles back, and get lost of that unsatisfied feeling like just not coming while having sex, we paddled the Fasfern afterwards, much better and good fun on rapids like Backwards Slab (witch you have to run backwards) and Master Blaster. Now we could fairly drink some Whisky.

Tuesday 11th. The Gerry. A nice river with lots of play waves and some nasty holes you had to paddle around. I missed some speed in the c1 and got spanked and beaten up in one, nothing else to do than swim. The guys got the boat fast on shore, so we could play the rest of the day.

Wednesday 12th. The Roy Gorge. A beauty of a river, short but technical. Impressive paddling with an even more impressive walk out. Never walked so long with a boat and Harrie did a little sleep halfway to get some strength back. I didn’t read about this extreme walkout in the guidebook….

We jumped back in the car to hit the next one; The Upper Spean!

I always thought that the Zambezi I’ve been paddling with my wife last year was in Africa, but Scotland also has one, with just one slightly difference; a little bit colder (-:

This river starts under a huge dam where five enormous pipes let an amazing amount of water airborne. Imagine an overpowered bulldozer drive over you fine car at full speed, well times that by five! And the guides keep on screaming “You’ll be fine”… bastards! It created a rain shower from hell! The paddling was amazing, you just had to take out at the eddy right before the grade six Inverlair Falls. And the eddies on this river were also beautiful … both of them…

Ice on the cake for this day was the Spean Gorge. Harrie and myself were done for today, but Sven and Lennart had some energy over. Well, they could loose it easy on this one. Sven had endless tail squirts in a Solo Large in the extremely boily eddy’s. A nice finish on the side of a monstrous outflow of a power central completed this one. (Two locals wanted to paddle the outflow but the officials didn’t understand the fun of hair raising extreme boating…)

Thursday 13th. The Etive! Starting with Triple Falls, a beautiful river with lots of boofing practice on rapids like Letterbox and Crack of Doom. Ski Jump has an auto-boof in normal conditions (on a kind of a ramp shaped rock), but now had a boof-it-yourself, because of the high levels, we noticed just on the lip…!

Right Angle Falls, normally a nice learn-how-to-go-down-a-six-meter-waterfall-any-way-you-like drop, but right now a bit too much of the good. Only two of the Scottish had the balls and they did very well!

Also Thursday 13th. The Coe, starting with Backdoor Man, than continuous WW 3 in a beautiful surrounding. Excellent river to finish this day! We got some dinner in a Scottish restaurant, enjoying Haggis (that’s food) and Nessies Piss (that’s beer).

Friday 14th. Last day. Starting with Falls of Lora, a huge tidal wave under a bridge. The surfing wave was not exactly at the right level, but the boils behind were! Sucking down complete kayaks! We had lot’s of rolls, overstretched muscles, eyes big likes cups and broken ego’s, but no swims, That would be a very, very long swim any way…

We finished with The Orchy, a nice river with lots of big play waves and holes, grabbing you by the balls and let you play when you don’t want it at all!

We couldn’t do this trip without the excellent help from our guides; Chris, Jamie, Matt, Dave, Dominique, Scrotch and all the other lunatics! We’ve promised them and ourselves to come back and get a second chance on The Nevis, the Right Angle Falls from the Etive and on the Haggis and Nessies Piss.

For more pics and a nice movie take a look at www.de-batavier.nl. There is also a more detailed description of this stunning week, sorry just in Dutch.

And remember; You’ll be fine!

Rein Hagenaars