In July most of Team Lost Property Headed out to the French Alps, for some kayaking fun in the sun.
Two weeks of sausage, Cheese, bread, beer by the Litre and as much white water as you can handle, and we all left feeling pretty happy with ourselves.
We ran some great river that we haven't done before, including a great grade 5 section on the Ubaye and the race course, and ran some classic runs that never grow old, including the middle Guil (twice) and Guardian Angle gorge.
On the way home we stopped to paddle another river Me and Mark had never paddled before, The Isère. While most of the rivers in the area seemed to be drying out as it was getting late in the season, the Isere still had a good flow going down it. It was a bouncy fun river with wave train after wave train. But the real fun came when we realised it is one of the most heavily rafted rivers in the whole of the Alps and it was a Saturday. So you spend half your time avoiding rafts. Add to that the excitement of a white water racing competition and several groups of Boogie boarders floating down stream like little groups of tadpoles in the middle of a huge torrent of white water, and you have one of the most exciting and comical runs of the trip. We ran the river at a near sprint, spending more time looking up stream, to see what was rocketing down at us, than looking at where we were going, every now and then stopping to watch a group of boogie boarders seemingly fearlessly bundle themselves into a huge rapid like lemmings off a cliff! A highly recommended run.
