Back to Norway, The Land of Plenty!

After a great trip to Slovenia, with a brief stop over in Austria to paddle the Brandenberger ache, thanks to Matty N for the recommendation that was a cracking river! Finn Burrows and I started our long trek north to Norway. This would be my third season in Norway and yet I still feel I could go back for another twenty and still not even scratch the surface of all the boating in this amazing country.

Finn doing what he does best, navigating...

This year we got the ferry from Hirtshals to Kristiansand, I would say this is one of the nicest routes to take to Norway, particularly if you are heading to the west coast as it includes a lovely drive through southern Norway's fjords and lakes.

waiting at Hirtshals for the early ferry. Photo by Finn

The first stop for us was Voss for the extreme sports veko, a brilliant festival where loads of different people interested in different sports get together and have a big party. Finn and I had managed to wangle a great job filming the kayaking for 'today's video' with Josh Neilson and Julian Stocker. It was a good experience and the edits produced were real crowd pleasers, well done Josh.

 Lower Myrkdal, one of the best runs in Norway? Photo by Mike D

At the start of the week we had a great run on the Myrkdal and a few other classics around Voss with Joe and Mike (two English lads on a big old road trip). All of a sudden though, one thing really stood out in Voss... Rain, It wouldn't stop! As a result we had to look a bit harder to find some boating that was at a manageable flow. We went to the upper parts of the Eksingadalen, above lake to lake, it is briefly mentioned in the Guide book, but we thought we would check it out. It was a fun run with a few fun slides and rapids, if only it was a touch longer!

 Nick Pearce, Joe Leader and Mike Durrant on the Eksingadalen

Nick P hitting a sweet line on one of the longer rapids

After a rather exciting week in Voss, Finn and I headed back to Sjoa briefly to pick up Nick Horwood before heading to Valdal. We had a few nice sessions on Jorgens wave and some great runs down the various sections on the Sjoa. The photos below are from during Sjoa festival and the Frig Freestyle Jam competition.

 Charles Blyth sending a nice blunt on Jorgens. Photo by Sarah Tebb (ST)

 Myself finding my feet again in a playboat, it took some time... (ST)

 Going for a helix (ST)

 Finn, hitting up a huge backstab showing the form that helped him win the biggest move prize! (ST)

 Freestyle is all about having fun though really... King of the Wave! (ST)

Eventually we made our way to the land of strawberries and cake that is Valdal! We took loads of film and not too many photos. Here is a video still from a cracking new (we think) waterfall we found near valdal called Store fossen!

A really soft but still scary waterfall with a tricky line up...

More Norwegian updates to come including some video!

Thanks to: Zet Kayaks

Slovenia... Good Fun That!

Earlier on this summer I went to the beautiful and rather surprising Slovenia to paddle on the Soca River with Exeter University Canoe Club (EUCC). None of our group had been before so it was a nice little adventure for us.

A Classic scene for any Uni club - sitting around the Beers!

After the long drive from Italy, we made it to Camp Soca greeted by some rather heavy rain... We had a slow start getting the group river permits together but we were soon out on the river and found out that the rains had made some of so called boulder gardens to be somewhat devoid of boulders. Never the less the paddling was clean and perfect for our group. 

The mountains surrounding the campsite.

To begin with we spent some time on the upper stretches of the river, getting everyone (myself included) back up to scratch after a winter of minimal boating due to a disappointing lack of rain. Soon we ventured down to some of the lower sections, my favourite of these was the Altona section - a great and fairly continuous grade 3 (+) jaunt which was a perfect platform for some of our newer paddlers to test their skills.

Beans, enjoying the sunshine and skimming at the Altona take out.

To summarise the paddling, this really is a must visit place especially if you are mainly in to grade 2-4 boating and sunshine. There is a bit of everything, tight gorgey constrictions, boulder gardens and chilled gravel bed runs. It's not too hard, but if you're imaginative you can test yourself on all sorts of grinds, eddy lines and rock spins.

 A spectacular waterfall on one of the Soca's tributaries - this is worth a quick work to see!

I should mention to those who plan on visiting the Soca as a Uni group or just group of paddlers who want to have a drink and a party to pick your campsite carefully; particularly if, like us you go in early June during the German holidays as the campsites get very busy and our chatter (even though it wasn't very loud) at 11pm didn't go down well. So just do a bit of research and you'll find somewhere more open to larger, louder groups...

Water doesn't get much more blue than on the Soca!

And Finally here is a nice video summary of  our trip filmed and edited by Matt 'Noah' Langdon!

Thanks to: Zet Kayaks

Money Drop, Duo Video

Money Drop Duo Movie from Southern Underground Productions on Vimeo.

Here is a nice little video of myself and Julian Stocker paddling Money Drop on the Strondelva near voss during the Extreme sports week. This was my first time down Money Drop and my first time in a duo, it was great fun even though I broke my blades... Nice to have Julian in the back to help with the rolling!

 The video was filmed by Josh Neilson, Finn Burrows and edited by Josh. Great job lads! Thanks to: Zet Kayaks